Kiss Me Hello (15 page)

Of course he would like them. Bonnie had noticed Sara’s nails. They were uneven, chipped, unpolished—in short, the nails of a woman who didn’t care about her appearance. As dull as her faded jeans and funky misshapen cotton sweater. Sara Lyndon didn’t care for her husband any more than she cared for herself.

If she lost him, she’d deserve it.

Bonnie stretched out her fingers to better display the ten small works of art, glossy cherry red with white and pink stylized apple blossoms. On a whim, she curved her fingers, making tiger claws, and uttered a quiet—hopefully sexy—growl. Just joking. He grabbed her wrists and pushed them down until her fingers splayed flat against the table.

“You’re artistic,” he said. “I like that.”

He caressed her left little fingernail. His touch sent a thrill through her as he moved to the next fingernail, then the next, his gaze on her hands, his long dark lashes moving slightly as his eyes shifted. His touch was light, but it felt dirty, possessive. Exciting.

Without warning, the color drained from his face.

“God, Bram.” She grabbed his hand. “Are you all right?” His skin was clammy, and his face was draining of color. “What’s happening?”

The door to The Coffee Spot opened. Sure enough, there went Sara back across Bird Way. Oblivious to her own husband’s distress.

“That was weird,” Bram said. He blinked a few times and scratched his head with both hands.

Poor guy. That settled it.

“Let’s get out of here.” If Sara didn’t want him, that wasn’t Bonnie’s fault. “My place is only a few blocks away.”

Dammit.
Her phone went off, playing
Optimistic Voices
from The Wizard of Oz, the ringtone for Gracien. She let it go to voicemail and switched the phone to silent mode.

“We’ll have a glass of wine, and I’ll tell you all about Gracien’s offer. I don’t like to mention actual figures in public.” She hoped he wouldn’t comment on the fact the restaurant was almost empty.

“That’s probably a good idea,” Bram said. “I don’t know what happened just then. It was like something alive was picking at my brain.”

“Like an insect bite?”
Eww
.

“Not my head—my brain.”

“Ugh.”

“That’s the word I was looking for.” He smiled and energetically slapped the table with both hands. “Wow.”

“How do you feel now?”

“Like it never happened.” He closed his laptop. “But I’d better not drive for a while, and I do want to hear more. Not cutting my wife, but Sara doesn’t know what she wants. Give me the details, and I’ll win her over.”

“That was my thinking exactly,” Bonnie said. “And if you wouldn’t mind, I’d love to hear about your next book.”

“That would be awesome.”

Bram’s smile broke her heart. He was so grateful to have someone take an interest. Bonnie would never in a million years set out to be a homewrecker—like some people she could mention—but in her opinion Sara Blakemore didn’t deserve this wonderful guy.

Bonnie insisted on paying the bill—for her it was a deduction. They walked to her house at the edge of the village, and she slipped her arm into the crook of his elbow. He didn’t object.

Possibilities swirled in her mind. People got divorced all the time. Sometimes it was for the best. Sara obviously didn’t love Bram. He’d be so much happier with someone who did. It wouldn’t be so wrong if Bonnie helped him see that.

Besides, a Lyndon had ruined her life. It was only fair to return the favor.

- 16 -
Whispering

S
ARA DROVE DOWN TURTLEDOVE
Hill Road to the house and parked at the back stairs. In the kitchen she called out to him. “Joss! I know what to do now.”

He wasn’t in the guestroom. In fact, the house felt empty. She should have asked how to whisper a ghost as well as how to unwhisper one. “Joss?” She headed for the aerie, keeping hold of the rail and stepping over the bad tread.

The air was cold on the landing. Sara smiled as she reached for the door. “I can help you, Joss.” It was locked. Odd. She didn’t think she’d closed the door last night, let alone locked it. The skeleton key stuck out of the lock. She turned it and put it in her jeans pocket.

“Joss, are you here?”

The journal lay open on the desk in front of the empty chair. A flicker of irritation tweaked her, but she let it pass. Maybe Joss was like the little girl ghost at the Blue Pelican, always taking her doll back to the window seat. Maybe he couldn’t stop himself bringing the journal up here to the desk.

Good lord, Sara. As if this was all so very normal.

“Joss?” She waited and listened. Why didn’t he come?

The late afternoon sky had begun the long slog to twilight, still hours away. Yellow-gold light washed over the rolling landscape and out to sea. On the widow's walk the breeze played in the wisteria, jostling the hanging white flowers. The two mourning doves were nestled together. Their shiny black eyes appeared sweetly vulnerable, and she moved away so she wouldn’t frighten them.

There was no fog yet. The first quarter moon hung low over the horizon, a faint crescent in the blue sky above the ocean. So beautiful. She should be happy.

She saw what Bonnie was doing at The Coffee Spot. Touching Bram. Laughing at his jokes. Looking into his eyes meaningfully. And he had responded. Nothing overt, nothing obvious, but little things Sara recognized. He paid attention to Bonnie. He saw her. Like she was a planet, and he was her moon.

Sara had noticed. She’d even felt sick about it. A voice in her head had told her to stay, sit down in the booth beside Bram. Join in the conversation. Make Bonnie know Bram was off limits.

She told herself she didn’t have time. She had to tell Joss what she’d found out from Spot. To save her marriage, she had to ignore her marriage—for a little while. First she had to see Joss.

But if all she wanted was to get rid of him, why was she so eager to see him? And so disappointed when he didn’t answer her call?

“Go to the light?” Joss appeared between her and the wisteria. “Are you kidding?”

“Sheesh, would you stop doing that?” She grabbed onto the walk’s guardrail. “I almost fell.”

“I wouldn’t let you.” He didn’t look at her. “You know that.”

She did know. He was a ghost. He was a threat to her marriage. She had to help him move on for his own sake. But she couldn’t deny how safe she felt with him.

“I thought you’d left,” she said. “The house felt empty.”

“It is empty.” Finally he met her eye. “Cavernous.” He looked sick. No, he was upset—with her. “You didn’t tell me. Amelia’s gone.”

“She died, Joss. Yesterday morning.” Only yesterday? It felt so long ago. “I’m sorry.”

“I knew it. I felt it when I saw you walking away from the barn, I knew she was gone. It was just like the other time.”

“What other time?”

“When her friend Eleanor died. Eleanor and Amelia used to ride out almost every day on the horses, a pinto and a palomino. They were looking for me—my body, anyway. One day Amelia came back to the barn with both horses, but Eleanor was missing. There was only the nothingness of death.”

Sara pictured Aunt Amelia’s lifeless body at the rehab center.
The nothingness of death.
That’s how it was. But not with Joss. There was none of that
nothingness
about him.

“What happened to you?” she said. “How did you die?”

“I don’t know. One day a strange fog rolled in off the ocean. It was so thick that if I stretched my arm out completely I couldn’t see my hand. It seemed all of existence consisted of me and the gray mist. I thought I’d died and gone to hell. Not a pit of fire and drama, but cold unending gray.”

“How awful.”

“What made it worse were the scattered glimpses. Every so often, the mist would clear and I’d see something of the world. Snowdrops at the pond, the aerie, the vineyards. I saw people, but none ever saw me. Life was there, but beyond me. The longer I was disconnected, the less I could remember, the fewer glimpses of life came to me. Existence was a cold soup of endless gray.”

“Are you ever warm?”

“When I come out of the mist and see real things, I have a sense of warmth. Am I warm now?” He put his hand over hers.

“No.” The same creepy-crawly chill passed over her skin as earlier at the pond. She looked away from him. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. No need. One day, I heard a bell ring.” He continued. “It sounded familiar. Important. I followed the sound, and then all of a sudden Amelia was standing in front of me. Looking at me. No one had actually seen me since I fell into the mist. I said hello. She heard and answered. She disappeared, but later I saw her again, and again. Each time I saw her it was for longer periods of time. She became my anchor on sanity.”

“I’ll bet.”

“She was like you. She wanted to help me.” Joss didn’t hide his sarcasm. “She came up with the idea of burying my bones on consecrated ground. She believed then my soul would find peace.”

“And I thought Aunt Amelia wasn’t religious,” Sara said.

“She wasn’t,” Joss said. “Not in a hellfire and brimstone sort of way. I’d say she was spiritual.”

Sara smiled. That was exactly how she’d described Aunt Amelia. “I rang a bell the day I first saw you,” she said. “Years ago. The brass bell in your trunk with the snowdrops on the rim.”

“That’s the bell. I’d forgotten it until you read about it in the journal.”

“Aunt Amelia was so upset when I rang it. She wasn’t worried about chickens. She was afraid I’d see you.”

“And you did see me.”

“I rang it again yesterday, the same bell.”

“I heard. I followed the sound and the mist faded as I expected, but no Amelia. I was by the barn while you walked away. I was desperate to get your attention, so I shoved the barn door.”

“I saw it close, but I didn’t see you. Not until later on the stairs.”

“And then later in your room.”

“Technically, that wasn’t you I saw in bed,” Sara said. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

“I think our discussion of my existential status qualifies as personal. But go for it.”

“Did you try to have sex with Aunt Amelia?”

Joss rolled his eyes. “She wasn’t like that,” he said.

“What does that mean? I am
like that
?”

“And just a technical point, doll.” Joss ignored her question. “I didn’t
try
to have sex with you. You attacked me.”

“I still don’t understand how that happened,” Sara said. “I mean how did you end up in Bram’s body?”

“I can’t help you there,” Joss said. “I tried to do it again today, get back in his body, when that other guy was telling you how to get rid of me. But it was a no-go.”

“You were there?” Sara turned away. There was a lot to digest in what Joss just said. “I’m not trying to get rid of you. I’m trying to help you.”

“Right. By getting rid of me.”

“By helping you move on. Are you happy like this?” She turned back and grabbed his forearm. Proving the point, her hand made a fist and passed through.

“Of course not.” Joss looked at her eagerly. “But something’s different now. I mean with you. I don’t see just you and some of the space around you. When I see you, I see the world—as if I’m actually in it. I hear other people. When you read my journal, everything you read comes back to me. Like my memories are restored.”

“Why me and not Aunt Amelia?”

“It’s like we’re connected where time and space have no power,” he said. “It’s as if we’re…”

Soul mates.
She finished the thought, but she couldn’t speak it. To speak it would give it power. Make it closer to true. It was the opposite of true. It was ridiculous.

“You know, you can’t just go around taking other people’s bodies,” she said. “I mean, even if you could…you can’t!”

He shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was on a sofa listening to that woman, Peekie, telling sad stories about Amelia. The next minute I was in a booth watching your manly man make goo-goo eyes at that blonde. I thought I’d do you a favor and interrupt the two of them.”

“You thought no such thing.”
Goo-goo eyes?
So Joss saw it too. This time it really was different. Bram liked Bonnie. “You wanted to be in a body again.”

“Maybe a little.” Joss grinned at his understatement. “But it’s not going to happen. That guy is a paradox. His body is strong, fully alive. But he felt inconsequential inside, almost empty.”

“That shows you what you know,” Sara said. “Everybody loves Bram.”

A seagull screamed overhead and was answered by a faint cackle somewhere near the cliffs. Sara watched the bird soar over Highway 1 to join its flock. She didn’t want to fight with Joss, but she didn’t want to hear about how empty Bram was inside, and she certainly didn’t want to hear about his attraction to Bonnie.

A faraway look came over Joss. “I shouldn’t have said he was empty. His life force is strong. But there was no spiritual pathway into him, not that I could find.”

“Maybe because you’re the one who’s dead.”
Crap. Crap
. That was mean. “I’m sorry, Joss. But Bram is…” Bram was what, her husband? Technically, but he hadn’t acted like a husband in a long time. If ever. And she wasn’t even sure she loved him anymore. She was so confused.