A Babe in Ghostland Read online

  A cynical look settled over Case’s features. “How much is well enough?”

  Megan opened her mouth to answer, but Tracie’s words were in the air first. “Three hundred an hour.”

  Megan gasped.

  Case’s breath burst from him. “That’s criminal!”

  Tracie shrugged. “You get what you pay for.”

  “He’s not getting anything,” Megan said. “Mr. Lambert, please be so kind as to leave. Now.”

  “Three hundred bucks, that’s what you charge for an hour of your mumbo jumbo?”

  “My mumbo jumbo? Why did you come in here if you’re so convinced it’s nonsense?”

  “It wasn’t my idea, believe me! It was Ramsey’s. He insisted he needed you in order to do a thorough investigation, but he said you wouldn’t come if you knew he was going to be there.”

  “Smart man! Although if you don’t believe in my mumbo jumbo, why did you hire Eric?”

  “I didn’t. He’s doing this for free.”

  “But why call a parapsychologist to look at a house if you don’t believe in ghosts?”

  “Because I don’t think it’s haunted. Something is going on there, but I’m sure there’s a scientific explanation for it.”

  “And you think Ramsey will find that for you.”

  “With all that equipment he has? Yes.”

  Megan laughed. “A tool is only as good as the brain that uses it.”

  “His seems plenty sharp to me. He said he’d never once come across a supposed haunting that didn’t turn out to be something completely rational.”

  “Did he, now.”

  “You saying he’s lying?”

  She arched a brow. “Yes.”

  “That’s not kind repayment for his faith in you.”

  “I don’t lie.”

  “Ah. So you’re one of the ones who believe their own gibberish.”

  “Gibberish!” Tracie blurted. “Megan—”

  “Don’t bother, Tracie,” Megan said. “A ghost could climb into bed with him, and he still wouldn’t take it as proof.”

  Case’s face went pale. “I’d assume it was a dream.”

  Megan cocked her head. “Would you, now.”

  “Hypano-, hypannia-”

  “Hypnagogic,” Megan supplied. “The hypnagogic state right before sleep, when the brain plays naughty tricks on you—a feeling of presence in the room, paralysis, inability to breathe. Eric’s been explaining things, I see.”

  “You don’t believe that theory?”

  “I believe it. But it’s not the explanation each and every time.”

  “How could you tell any difference?”

  “I use my magic fairy dust.”

  His lips tightened.

  “I assume Eric sent you here because I’m the only person he knows who can tell the difference. His sensors and infrared cameras can’t detect everything.”

  “So how much are you going to pay her?” Tracie piped up. “Megan, you are going to do it, aren’t you?”

  Megan felt her determination slipping, pulled down by curiosity and a perverse attraction to the very things that scared her the most. How long had it been since she’d investigated a house? Two years? She’d sworn off doing it since that last disaster, but she wasn’t immune to the lure. It was like an addiction, the promise of things that go bump in the night, pulling her toward an experience she knew to be dangerous. “I’ll come look at the house if, and only if, Eric isn’t there.”

  “How much?” he asked.

  “Five hundred,” Tracie said.

  “Shush,” Megan scolded her friend. “I’ll do it for nothing.”

  Case looked suspicious. “And then you’ll tell me that there are a dozen ghosts and I’ll need to hire you for a six-month ‘cleansing ritual’?”

  “Fine. Never mind my offer. Good day, Mr. Lambert.” She went back to work on the lamp.

  Tracie scowled at Case and kicked his shoe. “What’s the matter with you?”

  Megan waited, watching from the corner of her eye as Case shifted his weight, distrust and indecision spelled out in every muscle of his body.

  “You won’t let me pay you?” he asked again. “Just for lost time at the shop?”

  “No money. This will be a one-time thing, just to give you my impressions, and then that’s it. No more. No ‘cleansing rituals’ or séances or sitting up all night waiting for ghosts to molest you.”

  “I’d feel better about it if I paid you,” Case said.

  “So you don’t have to stop thinking of me as a fraud who fleeces the innocent?”

  He chuckled. “Yeah.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Will you accept dinner, then?” he asked, his voice dropping to a seductive rumble. “I’d love to take you out.” The look in his eye said that wasn’t all he’d love to do.

  Megan blinked.

  Tracie’s jaw dropped open.

  “N-no, I-” Megan stammered.

  Tracie punched her arm.

  “Ow!”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Tracie whispered. “Look at his ass!”

  Case’s mouth twitched.

  Megan spoke through gritted teeth covered by a smile. “I can’t see his ass from here.”

  “It’s mighty damn fine!” Tracie punched her again. “For God’s sake, say yes, you moron.”

  Megan’s heart thumped. Dinner, with him? He might be a closed-minded jerk, but he wasn’t like any of the other men—no, boys—she had gone out with in the past. Case Lambert was a man, full-grown and sure of himself, and that scared her. This was one man she would not be able to control.

  But as with the dead, what scared her also lured her.

  “Okay,” she said finally.

  “Okay?” Case repeated, surprised.

  “Dinner. Okay.”

  Tracie clapped her hands in delight and did a boxing dance, faux-punching Megan’s arm.

  “Stop it,” Megan said.

  “I’ve got an appointment now, but I can be back at four to pick you up. We’ll go to the house first, then eat,” Case said.

  “Wait, you mean today?”

  “Yeah, why not? You’ve got plans?”

  “But…” Didn’t he understand that a woman needed more warning for a dinner date?

  But that was just it. This wasn’t a dinner date. No need to shave her legs or fuss with her hair.

  “Okay, fine, four o’clock,” she grumbled.

  “See you then.” He held out his hand to her.

  She slipped hers into his broad palm. As he released her hand, he let his fingertips graze against the inside of her wrist. Her eyes met his, and he smiled, his gray eyes intent.

  “Ms. Thomas,” he said, turning to Tracie and shaking her hand. And then he was gone, the ringing of the bell marking his passage.

  Megan sank down onto a stool. Her thoughts were scattered, her emotions a jumpy blend of fear and anger and arousal, all of it tinged with surprise at the scene she’d created. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d had as angry an exchange as the one she’d just had with Case Lambert. She was usually calm and collected.

  She touched her upper lip, feeling the dew of nervous sweat. How had Case Lambert managed to have that strong an effect on her?

  “Whooeee!” Tracie said, plopping down onto a Victorian fainting couch and throwing her arm over her brow. “What a piece of man-beef! I wouldn’t mind getting a slice of that.”

  “Be my guest.”

  Tracie shook her head, smiling. “No, he’s got the hots for you.”

  “He does not. He can barely stand me. He thinks I’m a charlatan.”

  “Like a guy cares about that? He wants to jump your bones, I’m telling you.”

  “Delightful.” Megan was silent a moment. “Do you really think so?”

  “He wants you to take a ride on the ol’ bucking bronco.”

  Megan rolled her eyes, a small traitorous part of her hoping it was true. “I don’t care what he wants.”
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  “Megan,” Tracie said, her tone changing, “don’t shut him down. Don’t treat him like you treat all the other guys.”

  “How’s that?”

  Tracie waggled her head. “You know.”

  “I don’t know!”

  “You make yourself so unapproachable. No guy thinks you’ll give him the time of day.”

  “I’ve had boyfriends!”

  “Wimpy little guys looking for a mother figure to be their backbone for them.”

  “They’ve been smart men! Intellectuals! Artists! Scientists! And they’ve been empathetic and sensitive. Philosophical. Spiritual. Unlike that Neanderthal.”

  “They’ve been low-testosterone flakes, and you know it. Stop being a ball breaker, and give this one a chance.”

  Megan set her jaw. “That’s the impression I give? A ball breaker?”

  Tracie nodded.

  “Well, never mind. It’s not going to matter today.”

  “Heh. Right. You want to borrow a dress from the shop? I’ve got something that would look great on you.”

  Megan bit her upper lip. “I have no interest in Case Lambert.”

  “The dress looks innocent, but it’s really very sexy. He’ll have a hard-on the whole time he’s with you.”

  “You’re so crude.”

  Tracie grinned.

  Megan sighed. “Do you have it in my size?”

  Case headed across the street to his car, confounded by Megan Barrows. She had seemed so rational at first; so wry and levelheaded, and so unexpectedly sexy in her plain white blouse that showed the bumps of her nipples. He’d caught himself staring at them—a juvenile mistake he hadn’t made in years.

  But then he’d mentioned Eric Ramsey’s name, and she’d turned into a hyperventilating banshee.

  Which was what he’d initially expected of her: dramatics and hair tearing. From what he’d seen, “sensitives” came in limited varieties: you had your overly emotional hair tearers, you had your grandmotherly muumuu-wearing earth mothers, and then you had your foreign-accented black candle crowd. A pretty young woman like Megan was most likely going to be a hair tearer.

  He’d seen plenty of frauds as his mother bankrupted herself by hiring them. It was beyond ironic that he’d now been put in a position where he had to hire one himself.

  He opened the door to his old BMW and got in, welcomed by the familiar smell of spilled coffee. The leather on the driver’s seat was splitting, and the car hadn’t been detailed in at least two years, but Case never missed a tune-up. He sat behind the wheel now and stared at the glass windows fronting Antique Fancies.

  Megan was either as loopy as the rest of her colleagues in the mediumship arts, or Eric Ramsey had done something to her that deserved her wrath. But what could Ramsey have done to so distress her?

  It was hard to imagine. Megan was five-foot-ten if she was an inch, with a slim athletic build and a sharp attitude. It was difficult to imagine that Ramsey could, by force of either will or sluggish body, do anything to harm her.

  Which left “flake and drama queen” as his explanation for her behavior. Not that that meant they couldn’t enjoy a little time together, given the chance. Just the thought of those long legs wrapped around him…

  He shifted in his seat and took a deep breath. His eyes roved over the facades of Megan’s and Tracie’s shops, then to the left of Antique Fancies to the hole-in-the-wall grocery. All three businesses were lodged in the same decrepit building, a single-story, flat-roofed, stuccoed rectangle entirely unsuited to the rainy climate or to the up-and-coming neighborhood. High up on the wall of the building was a For Sale sign.

  Case turned in his seat and looked at the other shops nearby: an Irish pub, two popular restaurants, a quaint coffee shop, a pet grooming store, and an upscale hair salon. He looked back at the ugly stucco building and programmed the number of the real estate agent into his cell phone.

  He glanced at the time. He was late for a meeting at one of his job sites. He started the car and pulled out into traffic, his mind ticking over the possibilities presented both by Megan Barrows and by the building that housed her shop.

  Two

  “He’ll know I changed clothes,” Megan said, pulling at the low neckline of the sea-green halter top. It was edged with white eyelet lace, the bodice falling to an A-line skirt of thin cotton.

  “Stop fussing with it,” Tracie said. “You look divine, except for that cardigan you insist on covering yourself with.”

  “I’m cold,” Megan lied.

  “You’re afraid to show your bare back.”

  “It’s not appropriate ghost-busting attire.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come along?” Megan asked.

  “And get between the two of you? No. I’ll see the place the next time you go.”

  “There won’t be a next time.”

  “Sure there will, and you’ll make him pay for it, too.”

  “Tracie, you know how I feel about taking money for this type of thing.”

  “And I know how badly you need money right now. You’re going to need a second source of income if you hope to pull off your big dream of buying the building.”

  Megan buttoned the cardigan. “I know, but there are safer ways to make a buck.”

  “You can’t let one bad experience dictate your life.”

  “Can’t I?”

  A dirty BMW pulled up to the curb outside, and Case got out. Megan shut off the lights and locked up her shop, ushering Tracie out before her.

  “Now, you keep your hands off her,” Tracie said to Case. “At least until you’ve bought her a drink.”

  “Ah, come on, I’m a gentleman. I’ll let her get through the appetizers.” They both laughed, and Megan rolled her eyes.

  Tracie winked and said her good-byes as Case came around the car and opened the passenger door. Megan started to get in, anxious to get away before Tracie did something else to embarrass her, but Case suddenly stopped her.

  “Oh, jeez, wait a second. Sorry!” he said, slipping past her and bending down into the car. Loose papers and notebooks began flying into the backseat. “There!” He stood aside.

  Megan gave him an uncertain look and got in, using her foot to nudge aside a thermos and a wadded-up Dick’s Drive-In bag. Dirt and stains covered the floor mat, and the console between the seats had dust, fir needles, and sticky, fuzz-collecting spills embedded in every nook and cranny. The car smelled of old coffee and honey.

  Case shut her door, and as he jogged around the car, she took the brief moment of privacy to close her eyes and let her mind take in what it could from the vehicle around her.

  Stress. Always busy. On the move, no time to relax.

  She opened her eyes as he got in, the atmosphere of the car filling with his vibrant presence. She watched him buckle up and start the car, his quick, efficient movements echoing what she felt from the vehicle.

  “When’s the last time you had a vacation?” Megan asked.

  “Vacation? I don’t take vacations. Why?”

  “Just curious.”

  Curious, too, why a man who seemed as busy and hardheaded as Case Lambert should be so desperate as to call on paranormal investigators. She’d been so caught up in her troubling attraction to Case that she had barely spared a thought for that. Numerous dark possibilities began to fill her mind, and with them came a slowly growing sense of dread.

  She tucked her hands under her thighs and crossed her fingers. She hoped Case Lambert was worried about something benign, like a noisy haunting that merely made a house difficult to sell and sent one’s hairs standing on end. The last thing she wanted to face was a conscious spirit intent on harm.

  She’d faced that once before and come out the loser.

  Case snuck a glance at Megan as they cruised along Greenlake Way. The sun was fighting its way out from behind late-spring clouds, sending sparkling light across the surface of Green Lake to their right. The light highlighte
d Megan’s delicate profile and turned her shoulder-length hair to spun gold.

  Her beauty wasn’t of the lush Victoria’s Secret variety, nor was it the cold hauteur of a runway model. She reminded him of early-Renaissance portraits he had seen of fine-boned women painted in profile, their hair in braids twisted with pearls, their shoulders weighed down with gold chains, their breasts covered in scarlet velvet and fine gatherings of lace. As pampered as the portraits would imply the women were, there was nonetheless always a dark glint of intelligence in their eyes, a set to the jaw that hinted at the will behind the pretty face.

  A hum of attraction buzzed in his blood, making his hands tighten on the steering wheel, his foot press a little harder on the gas pedal. She had turned her face toward the window, watching the lake go by, and he suddenly had the sense that there was more sadness behind her features than he had recognized.

  Was it the death of her mother, which he knew would still feel recent even at two years? It wasn’t the type of question she’d answer, he suspected.

  If he were honest with himself, the question he truly wanted answered was whether or not the two of them would end up in bed tonight. He didn’t think she’d be in the car with him now—or that she would have changed clothes—if that thought wasn’t also on her mind.

  “Why don’t you take money for what you do?” he asked. “I do hear of people spending three, four hundred dollars for an hour with a medium. Seems like it would be a lucrative career, if you’re legitimate, or at least make a good show of it.”

  She shot him a frown, then looked back out the window. “I don’t do consultations anymore.”

  “Why not? Help grieving people and such.”

  She turned away from the window and looked at him. “It doesn’t help people. It does quite the opposite.”

  He thought about it. “What, do they hear their loved ones are suffering the fires of hell?”

  A smile quirked her lips. “No. I’ve never gotten the least whiff of sulfur during a reading.”

  “Then what? My only guess is that it might make it harder for people to let go.”

  “Bingo.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe people aren’t ready to let go.” He thought about her and her shop, and the connection it must give her to her mother.