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“It occurs to me, Dan, that you might be willing to write a guest editorial for me,” Ed said blandly. “Something along the lines of a businessman telling the voters why it would be a good idea to educate their children to compete in the twenty-first-century job market.”
Cassie blinked, surprised at Ed’s request. Her surprise grew at Dan’s response. Instead of politely declining, as she would have expected, he gave Ed a rueful grin and muttered, “I’d love to.”
“Good. Good.” Ed rubbed his hands together in gleeful enthusiasm. “Now then—” he turned again to Cassie “—if you aren’t selling and you aren’t buying, why are you here?”
“I want your opinion.” She tried to inject an uncertain note into her voice. “Being a newspaperman for as long as you have, I imagine you’ve seen it all, and the most extraordinary thing happened yesterday. I saw something on the back stairs, and then again in the attic.” She shuddered and paused, giving the tension time to build.
“Spit it out, woman,” Ed ordered.
“If I believed in ghosts,” Cassie said hoarsely, “I’d say I saw the ghost of Jonas Middlebury.”
“The ghost of—” Ed sputtered to a halt. “How do you know it was him?”
“Whatever I saw looked exactly like Jonas Middlebury was supposed to have looked, and since he died a hundred and fifty years ago...” Cassie allowed her voice to trail away suggestively.
“Sounds like a ghost to me,” Dan stated calmly.
Ed gave him a scathing look and turned to Cassie. “And if the old geezer died a hundred and fifty years ago, then how do you know what he looked like?”
“They did have writing back then,” Cassie said, hastily improvising. “And old Jonas wrote to his fiancée.”
“You’re saying the inn is haunted?” Ed demanded.
“Nope.” Cassie was very careful not to make any false claims. “I’m merely saying that I saw something very strange that promptly disappeared. Since I don’t believe in ghosts, I’m hoping that you have another explanation.”
Dan studied Cassie’s earnest expression, wondering what this was all about. She didn’t seem to be the kind of nut who believed in the supernatural. His first impression of her—other than the fact that she was one very sexy lady—was that she was intelligent. But claiming to have seen ghosts was not exactly the hallmark of intelligence.
“Could you do a story on it and see if any of your readers have any ideas?” Cassie suggested with a hopeful look at Ed.
“You bring me a picture of your ghost, and I’ll run it on the front page,” Ed countered.
“If I can manage to get a photo, Ed Veach, I’ll sell it to the highest bidder,” Cassie shot back.
The editor chuckled. “That’ll teach me, huh?” He turned to Dan. “You won’t forget that editorial, will you?”
“No, I won’t forget,” Dan threw over his shoulder as he followed Cassie out of the newspaper office. “Is there really a ghost at China View?” he asked as he fell into step beside her.
“I saw something on the stairs.” Cassie stopped in front of the bank. Pulling the deposit envelope out of her purse, she carefully stuffed it into the automatic deposit slot, cautiously checked to make sure it had gone down and then headed across the street to the café, intent on spreading the rumor further.
“And you think it was a ghost?” Dan persisted as he held the door for her.
“I have never believed in ghosts,” she said honestly. “And I see no reason to change my mind simply because I saw something or someone who seemed to be able to disappear at will.”
“Who disappeared?” Annie, the waitress, looked up from the cherry pie she was cutting. “Don’t tell me we got us a little excitement in this place?”
“I don’t think so.” Cassie slipped onto one of the stools at the counter, figuring it would be easier to spread rumors from there than from one of the more-isolated booths in the back. “I’m sure it must have been my imagination.”
“You?” Annie scoffed. “You’re disgustingly levelheaded.”
“Her whole family is,” Bill, seated farther down the counter, offered. “When I was in school with your father, Cassie, he had no more imagination than a garden slug.”
“And your aunt Hannah has an explanation for everything,” Jim, his elderly coffee-drinking crony added.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Annie muttered. “I still remember being in her kindergarten class.”
“You and most of the town,” Jim said. “What does Hannah have to say about what you saw?”
“Aunt Hannah doesn’t believe in ghosts, either,” Cassie said truthfully.
“What makes you think it was a ghost?” Annie demanded.
“I didn’t say it was a ghost,” Cassie said. “Just because I saw something on the stairs...”
“Something?” Jim peered at her. “This ain’t no joke you’re playing on us, is it, Cassie?”
“Absolutely not!” The conviction in Cassie’s voice was unmistakable. It was certainly no game, she told herself, quieting her conscience. Her aunt’s livelihood depended on this charade.
“What about you?” Bill asked Dan. “Have you seen this ghost she’s talking about?”
Dan looked into Cassie’s hopeful eyes and felt a curious twisting sensation in his chest. Despite his horror of manufacturing news, he couldn’t quite divorce himself from whatever fantasy she was so carefully creating. And it wasn’t as if it were really news, he decided, appeasing his conscience.
“Well, I’m not sure I actually saw anything. Not exactly,” Dan said slowly.
“Well, what exactly?” Annie leaned over the counter.
“I heard something outside my room, but when I opened the door...” Dan paused.
“Yeah?” Jim demanded.
“I caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye, and when I turned, it had disappeared. And there was this smell.”
“What kind of smell?” Annie’s faded blue eyes widened in delighted horror. “Like something out of the grave?”
Cassie blinked. This was getting out of hand. She certainly didn’t want anyone associating China View with corpses.
Dan lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Of ambergris.”
“Ambergris is what those whalers were after, isn’t it?” Jim turned to Cassie in excitement. “And wasn’t the man who built China View a whaling captain?”
“Yes, Jonas Middlebury was his name,” she admitted. “But I’m sure there’s a perfectly normal explanation for it. Like...” She purposefully looked uncertain.
“Cleaning supplies?” Dan offered.
“Yes, cleaning supplies.” Cassie gave him a beaming smile that seemed to wrap around his chest and constrict his breathing.
“You were right.” Dan nodded decisively. “There was a rational explanation.”
“Ha!” Annie gave him a pitying look. “I’ve been cleaning more years than you been alive, and I tell you, there ain’t no cleaning supply that smells like ambergris.”
“Well, I, for one, prefer his explanation to ghosts,” Cassie said.
Annie shivered happily. “Was he handsome?”
Cassie instinctively looked at Dan, and then realized Annie was referring to the supposed ghost. “Well, I didn’t get a clear look at him, but he seemed to have a bushy black beard.”
“Sailing captains all had bushy beards,” Bill offered.
Jim nodded in agreement. “Every picture I ever saw, they did. Cassie, you got yourself a ghost.” He tossed some money down beside his empty plate and headed toward the door, with Bill hot on his heels. No doubt to spread the story, Cassie thought in satisfaction.
“Annie, I’ll have a cup of coffee and a piece of that pie you’re cutting, please,” she said.
“Same for me, plus a hamburger,” Dan ordered, rather surprised to realize he was hungry. It seemed so long since he’d thought about such mundane things as food.
“How can you be thinking about eating with a ghost haunting the inn?” Annie demanded.
“Nonsense,” Cassie said. “Dan just gave us a perfectly adequate explanation for what he smelled, and I probably just saw...” She waved her hand vaguely.
“Ha!” Annie muttered as she poured the coffee, shoved a piece of pie in front of each of them and then hurried back to the kitchen to get the hamburger.
Cassie surreptitiously studied Dan out of the corner of her eye as she added cream and sugar to her coffee. He was meticulously eating the cherries out of his pie. Why had he backed up her story about a ghost? she wondered. He couldn’t have really heard anything. She’d only just hired Jonas. The actor wouldn’t have had time to get upstairs and be seen. Although adding the smell of ambergris was certainly a nice touch, she conceded.
“What does ambergris smell like?” she asked him curiously.
Dan gave her a wide grin. “Cleaning supplies?”
Annie bustled through the swinging doors from the kitchen, plopped a steaming hamburger and a gargantuan pile of fries in front of Dan and then turned to Cassie. “Eppie says she don’t believe in ghosts, and she wants to know if this is something to do with your job.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts, either, and I swear on a stack of Bibles that this has absolutely nothing to do with my job.” Cassie put her hand over her heart. “I’m on vacation for the next month while I recharge my mental batteries.”
“Ha! If you got a ghost out there at China View, it’s more than likely he’ll suck out all your mental energies.”
“I think it’s vampires who suck things out,” Cassie said. “And I would definitely recognize a vampire. They smell like basements and dress in black and have long fangs.”
Dan nodded in agreement. “That’s why they absolutely never smile. Their teeth are a dead giveaway.”
“You two can laugh now, but we’ll see who has the last laugh,” Annie said with ghoulish relish. “You let me know if anything else happens, promise?”
“Promise,” Cassie agreed promptly, well pleased with the results of her afternoon’s work. Unless she very much missed her guess, Jim and Bill were now over at the library spreading the story around the reading room, and Annie would tell everyone who came into the café. Probably with a few embellishments of her own.
“What job?” Dan asked curiously when Annie went to clean away Jim’s and Bill’s dirty dishes.
“What?” Cassie blinked in confusion.
“She wanted to know if the ghost sightings had something to do with your job. What job?”
“I’m in advertising,” Cassie said.
“Advertising?” Dan repeated. His eyes wandered over her impossibly innocent looking features, lingering on the suppressed laughter in the back of her eyes and the upward tilt of her soft lips. She looked like a mischievous sprite. His glance dropped to her small breasts, outlined against her silk shirt. No, she looked like a very sexy, mischievous sprite, he amended. One whose secrets he couldn’t wait to delve into.
“I’m at Welton and Mitchell in New York City. I’m a vice president,” she couldn’t resist adding at his skeptical expression.
He blinked in surprise at her disclosure. People, especially women, didn’t get to be vice presidents of old established firms at her age unless they were very competent as well as very sharp. And very competent, very sharp people didn’t spend their time spreading rumors about ghosts without a very good reason. So what was it? Finding out could be the most fun he’d had in years, he thought, feeling a stab of excitement ripple through him.
Three
“You’re sure you don’t mind seeing to our guest this evening, dear?” Aunt Hannah asked uncertainly.
Mind being left alone with the most intriguing man she’d ever encountered at China View? Cassie thought as she smiled affectionately at her aunt.
“I don’t like to leave you to cope all alone, but poor Jessie—you remember, she retired from teaching at the same time I did,” Hannah added at Cassie’s blank look. “She called while you were in town, and she sounded positively frantic. She got a registered letter this afternoon evicting her. It seems some developer from Portsmouth bought her apartment building and wants to tear it down, to build a fast-food restaurant of all things....” Hannah shook her graying hair in exasperation. “I’m helping Jessie organize a meeting of the other tenants tonight.”
“I don’t mind,” Cassie assured her. “Dinner’s all ready.” She gestured toward the pots gently simmering on the stove. “All I have to do is serve it to him.”
“Thank you, dear.” Aunt Hannah gave her a warm hug and, with a militant expression that sat uneasily on her elderly face, marched out the kitchen door.
Cassie checked to make sure she hadn’t spilled anything on the front of her jade silk shirtwaist dress and then went in search of Dan. She found him sitting in one of the white wicker rockers in the sun-room off the lobby. He was industriously rocking back and forth as he read the Wall Street Journal. It was as if he were too full of pent-up energy to sit quietly, Cassie thought as she studied him. He’d changed for dinner into a pale blue oxford shirt and a superbly cut Harristweed jacket that was slightly frayed at the cuffs.
“Would you like to eat now?” Cassie asked.
Dan looked up and his eyes met hers over the top of his paper. They seemed to gleam with all kinds of concealed emotions, emotions that lent an intoxicating promise to the evening.
“I’m starved.” His eyes lingered on her mouth, adding intriguing shades of meaning to the simple phrase. “You will join me, won’t you?” he asked as he got to his feet.
“Sure.” Cassie accepted promptly, seeing no reason to be coy about preferring his company to eating alone. “Have a seat in the dining room, and I’ll bring out dinner.”
She hurried back into the kitchen and carefully loaded the serving tray. With any luck, he’d be so mellow from Aunt Hannah’s delicious cooking—to say nothing of her own scintillating company—that by the time the evening was over, she’d know everything there was to know about him. Starting with why he hadn’t used a credit card to register and why he’d agreed to write Ed’s editorial.
Cassie paused, frowning at the sugar bowl as something suddenly occurred to her. How had Ed known that Dan could write anything, let alone a well-reasoned editorial? Writing was a finely honed skill—a skill that Ed had automatically assumed Dan possessed. Why?
Cassie thoughtfully added the creamer to the tray as she remembered the sly expression on Ed’s face when he’d asked Dan to do it. Ed knew something about Dan. Or thought he knew something. But what? As an editor, Ed read all the dispatches from the news services. Could he have run across Dan’s name or picture in a story?
She felt a momentary frisson of fear tighten the skin on her face before common sense doused it. If Ed knew something unsavory about Dan, he would have warned her. And he wouldn’t have extorted a free editorial. He’d have called the police.
Picking up the tray, she shouldered open the kitchen door and entered the dining room. She automatically glanced around, looking for Dan, and found him bent over the huge fieldstone fireplace. He had taken off his jacket and was in the process of scattering her carefully laid fire with the brass poker.
Maybe he was an escaped pyromaniac, she thought ruefully as a shower of sparks disappeared up the chimney. She set the tray down on the table, and Dan glanced up at the sound.
“I love a fire,” he said slowly. “Somehow its light seems to hold the horrors of the world at bay.”
Cassie frowned at the bleak starkness of his expression. She wanted to erase it, but she didn’t know the right words. Nor did she know if he would resent her attempt. So she did the only other thing she could think of and pretended not to notice.
“There.” She finished unloading the tray and sat down, motioning him into the chair opposite her. “You have your choice of pot roast and veggies or veggies and pot roast.”
“In that case, madam, I choose pot roast and vegetables. And coffee.” He nodded toward the pot.
Cassie poured a cup and handed it to him. How could she direct the conversation along the lines she wanted? she wondered as she watched him stir cream and sugar into his coffee. A point-blank question would be worse than useless. Not only would he be unlikely to answer it, but it would put him on guard. It might even make him avoid her in the future.
The possibility sent a chill of loss through her. She didn’t want him to avoid her. She wanted... What did she want from this comparative stranger who seemed so tantalizingly familiar? she asked herself. Companionship? Her eyes traced over his firm lips. No, she wanted more than that, she admitted honestly. She wanted to touch him. To kiss him. She squarely faced the compulsion that had been growing from the first moment she’d seen him.
“Why?” Dan asked.
Cassie blinked, for one moment thinking that he was asking her why she wanted to kiss him. Common sense came to her rescue. Dan Travis might be a fascinating man, but he wasn’t clairvoyant.
“Why what?” she asked.
“Why is an advertising executive from New York City living in the wilds of New Hampshire spreading rumors about seeing ghosts?”
“I always spend my vacations with Aunt Hannah. And I happen to prefer the wilds of New Hampshire to the jungle of New York.”
“But that still doesn’t explain you telling people you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I did not,” Cassie insisted. “In fact, I quite clearly stated that not only did I not believe in ghosts, but that I was sure there was a reasonable explanation for what I saw.”
Dan eyed her through the steam rising from his coffee cup, his expression unreadable. “Tell me more about your nonghost,” he finally said.
Cassie frowned, wondering how it was that he was the one doing all the questioning when she’d been the one intending to. Maybe talking about Jonas would put Dan off guard, and she could slip in a few of her own questions, she decided.
“There’s very little to tell,” she said carefully. “I saw a man on the steps, and again in the attic, who looked like the description of Jonas Middlebury in Millicent’s diaries. Not believing in ghosts, I was hoping that someone in town might have a logical explanation for what I saw.”
“Maybe I’ll see him?” Dan gave her a slow grin that made her very wary. He would not be an easy man to con.
“I wouldn’t know. He didn’t give me an itinerary of his hauntings. Do you have a weak heart?” she suddenly asked. He didn’t look like he did, but then, looks could be deceptive.
“No, just a game leg.” Dan instinctively rubbed his hand over his right thigh. “I think I’d like some of that pot roast.” He purposefully changed the subject, and Cassie had no alternative but to go along with it.
She handed him the platter of pot roast, freezing as he reached for the plate and his rolled-up shirtsleeve stretched back over his forearm. Hastily she looked down at her own plate to hide her sense of shock. That was an almost-healed scar from a bullet wound on his arm! She was sure of it. Last fall she’d overseen an ad campaign to promote a violent cops-and-robbers film, and the makeup man had had a wall full of photos of various bullet scars as examples to help him create fake scars on the characters. Cassie had spent the better part of three days listening to the man expound on what bullets did to human flesh and the difficulty of recreating that impact with makeup. There was no way she could ever mistake a bullet scar.
So why did Dan have one? Surreptitiously, she studied him. He was pouring gravy into the hole he’d made in his mound of mashed potatoes with a concentration she found endearing.
Cassie unconsciously relaxed. She didn’t know why he’d been shot, but she would be willing to bet that he hadn’t been doing anything illegal at the time. Maybe he was simply a careless hunter with very bad aim.
“You still haven’t told me about your ghost,” Dan persisted.
“Yes, I have. You simply didn’t like what I told you. And since questions seem to be the order of the day—” she gave up on the subtle approach and opted for directness “—who did Ed think you were?”
“Beats me.” Dan’s shrug was a masterpiece of unconcern. “Ask him if you want to know.”
“Why did you agree to write his editorial for him?” she persisted.
He grimaced. “It seemed like the neighborly thing to do, and it’ll keep me from being bored. I’m not used to being idle.”
That was possible, Cassie conceded. Dan seemed to be surrounded by a force field of energy. He could well be a workaholic type who needed something to keep him occupied. Although she could think of far more interesting things for him to do than to spend his time writing Ed’s editorials, she thought dreamily.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“About why people do things,” she said obliquely.
“Personally, I’ve long since come to the conclusion that most people don’t have any motivation. They simply react to events and then try to rationalize after the fact.”
“You’re oversimplifying,” Cassie argued. “Most people have a goal. Something that drives them toward a certain end.”
“Such as what made you tell Ed about the ghost?” He eyed her narrowly.
“Has anyone ever told you that persistence carried to extremes is no longer a virtue?” Cassie shot back.
Dan studied her for a long moment and then said, “What do you think is motivating me?”
Cassie stared at him. The skin around the corners of his bright eyes crinkled as if in humor. Or devilment, she thought with a spurt of excitement. Her gaze slipped lower to study the humorous quirk of his firm lips.
“Hunger for your dinner?” she asked.
“You’re partially correct.” He got to his feet and slowly walked around the table toward her. “Hunger is very definitely a major part of what is motivating me at the moment. But food isn’t the source. You are.”
“I are...am?” Her concentration faltered when he stopped scant inches from her. If she were to move ever so slightly, she would be touching him. She swallowed uneasily at the depth of the longing she felt to do exactly that. She tilted her head back and looked up at him. His mouth was curled in a sensuous smile that reflected her own longing, a fact that didn’t help her crumbling composure.
“I want to kiss you.” His voice deepened perceptibly. “Would you object if I did?”
Cassie stared at him, intrigued by his request. She was far more used to men who grabbed what they wanted—whether it was a thing or a person. To have a man actually ask for what he wanted was a novelty.
“No,” she said slowly, “I wouldn’t object.”
“In that case...” He leaned forward and ever so gently pressed his lips to hers. A sudden surge of reaction shot through her, sending a flush of heat racing under her skin. The faint scent of his cologne drifted down into her lungs and then seeped into her mind, intensifying her reaction. His lips felt warm and firm and ever so faintly rough as he slowly rubbed them back and forth.
Cassie shivered, unconsciously clutching him. Her fingers dug into the firm muscles of his shoulder. She leaned forward, wanting more, much more than she was getting. She wanted to find out what it would be like if he were to wrap his arms around her and pull her up against him. If he were to press her body against his lean, muscled one.
Cassie blinked as a ringing sound filled her head. The telephone. Her mind automatically put a name to the sound. The telephone was ringing. She lifted her heavy lids and watched as Dan stepped back, a scowl on his face. That was exactly how she felt—as if she had been interrupted on the brink of some momentous discovery. But maybe it was for the best, she thought, a slither of reality chilling her sense of euphoria. She was getting in too deep, too fast with this man. She didn’t know why she was so drawn to him. Or why he fascinated her so. And, more important, she didn’t know how much of her fascination was reciprocated.
“Are we going to answer it?” His rueful question brought her back to earth with a thud. Her pride rebelled at the thought that he might think she was one of those vapid females thrown into a dither by a kiss. Because that was all it had been, she assured herself. A simple kiss. What hadn’t been simple had been her reaction to it. That had been a masterpiece of complications.