Chapter Nine
Nine
Nick fished in his pocket for his keys. It had been a long time since he’d been out with a girl, but even he could tell that it hadn’t gone all that well. Sure, he’d enjoyed talking to Cassie; she was smart and really damn clever. He’d wanted her to feel welcome in her new town, and thought that Sophie’s ghost tour would be a great way to make her feel like a part of things. Sophie obviously agreed; she had all but shaken pom-poms in their direction all night, cheering the two of them on.
But as he unlocked the door to Hallowed Grounds, he could tell from Cassie’s face that she had questions. Lots of them. And he was willing to bet that none of those questions were about when she could see him again. So yeah. He’d knocked that shit out of the park.
The ghost tour had come to an end, the trio of tourists sent on their way with a fistful of drink coupons to The Haunt. But Nick wasn’t one for karaoke, and when Cassie’s quick headshake confirmed that she wasn’t either, he’d suggested a nightcap at his closed-up café. Maybe if he was on familiar ground with her, he could salvage things.
“Want a drink?” After flipping the lock behind them, he moved behind the counter and turned on just enough lights that he could see what he was doing. Didn’t want to encourage any late-night customers stopping by. “No liquor license, sadly, but I’ve got some bourbon back here for emergencies. It goes great in hot chocolate.” He looked around the kitchen, mind whirling. What else? “Or I could get some coffee going. What do you think?”
“Hot chocolate sounds great.” She leaned her elbows on the counter. “Since I hit thirty, I can’t do coffee after three or else I’m up all night.”
“You’re over thirty?” The words popped out of his mouth before he could call them back. Christ, Royer. You’re really killing it with the ladies here. He could only hope that Elmer wasn’t listening in; he’d never hear the end of it.
But to his surprise, Cassie didn’t even react. “Thirty-two.” Her eyes were as dark as the cocoa he spooned into two mugs. She turned those big brown eyes to him now. “You?”
Well, that was only fair. “Twenty-nine a couple weeks ago.” He reached for the metal pitcher by the espresso machine, filling it with milk.
“Oooh, a younger man. I like it.” She batted her eyes in light-hearted flirtation that Nick couldn’t begin to parse. “Not even thirty, and you own your own business. Nice.”
“Oh, yeah.” He shot her a glance while the milk steamed, but she didn’t seem to be kidding. “I’m the king of everything you can see.”
Cassie gave a low laugh, acknowledging his sarcasm. “Seems great to me. It was good enough for Elmer, right?” Her lips quirked up in a smile while he poured the hot milk.
“Whipped cream?” he offered. “It’s just the stuff in a can, but it’s not bad.”
“Yes, please. Let’s live a little.”
Live a little. Hadn’t Elmer just said that to him recently? Maybe he was right.
As if she were reading his mind—and Nick was used to that kind of thing, considering his roommate—Cassie leaned her elbows on the counter. “Tell me more about Elmer.”
“What would you like to know?” He passed her one of the mugs before offering up the bottle of bourbon. She accepted both, adding a healthy dollop to her mug before passing the bottle back.
“You really…talk to him? Like, for real? This isn’t some touristy bullshit. You actually believe in ghosts?”
Nick glugged some bourbon into his own mug. “It’s not a matter of belief. It’s a matter of fact.”
“Fact?” Cassie raised her eyebrows. “You’re talking about ghosts here. I’m sorry, it’s just hard for me to get my head around it.”
“Here.” He reached under the counter, where he kept the extra copies of Boneyard Key: A Haunted History. During the season he kept those copies up by the register and they sold at a decent clip—here and at every other souvenir shop in town. Mr. Lindsay must have made a deal with the devil back in the day; the book was one of the top-selling souvenirs. Nick himself hadn’t read it in years. Not since he’d been forced to, back in school. He handed the book to her. “A housewarming present.”
“Ahh,” she said. “The textbook.” She flipped through it while taking a careful sip of cocoa.
“I know it’s a lot to get used to. Especially if you’re coming at it from a tourist mindset. Like mermaids at Weeki Wachee…” He raised an eyebrow pointedly, even as he regretted bringing it up. The comparison had triggered something in him, and he’d reacted badly. Defensively. He wasn’t proud of that.
She looked up from the book, shamefaced. “You know I was kidding about that…”
“I know,” he rushed to reassure her. “And you weren’t far off. It’s just that around here, the mermaids are real.” He kept his voice casual, like they were talking about something totally normal. Which of course they were…to him. If you’d spent your life in this town, lingering spirits were just part of the scenery. Like palm trees and the salty air. But to Cassie, they were still stories, like the fake mermaids or costumed characters at the theme parks. Something to believe in when you’re caught up in the moment, but recognize as fiction when you’re back home in the real world.
She didn’t understand that this was the real world. Nothing she’d heard tonight had been fiction. Well, except for that bullshit about the ice cream shop. He didn’t know where the hell Sophie had come up with that one.
He suddenly felt exhausted. Couldn’t they just skip to the end of this conversation, where Cassie left and he went upstairs to his ghost roommate, and they could both write off this whole damn night? But that wasn’t how life worked. No skipping the hard stuff.
May as well try a different tactic. Plunge headfirst into the hard things. Maybe he could get her to believe. “Look…” He came around the counter, reaching into his back pocket for his phone as he did so. “Check my texts.”
“Your…?” But she put down her cocoa to take his phone and started scrolling through, pausing when she got to what he knew she’d see: text after text labeled Unknown Number. “Damn. You get a lot of spam texts.”
“They’re not spam. They’re all from Elmer.”
“Elmer? The guy who used to own this place?” Now those big brown eyes were filled with skepticism. “You’re really telling me a ghost can text? How? What kind of phone plan does he have?”
When she put it that way, he had to admit it did sound ridiculous. “I’m not pretending to know how it works. But hand to God, the week after I bought this place, I started getting these texts. Elmer sees everything that happens around here, and texts me to tell me what I could be doing better. Believe me, he has a lot of opinions about banana bread.”
“I can see that.” She slowly scrolled through, sometimes tapping before scrolling some more. “He’s wrong, by the way. Your cinnamon banana bread is great. These are really all from Elmer?” Technically the question was directed at him, but she seemed to be musing out loud. “They do all seem to be from the same person. Can I call him a person?” She glanced up at Nick and he could only respond with a smile and a half shrug. She scrolled a little more, then her eyebrows flew up. “He thinks I’m cute, huh?”
“Oh.” Shit. In the veritable ocean of exchanges, of course she’d found those specific texts. The back of his neck burned, and he placed his palm there, soothing the heat. “Yeah. He, ah…He’s pretty old school. You know. Says what he thinks. Doesn’t have much of a filter.”
She gave a hum of agreement, a soft sound that went straight down to the base of his spine. He had to sneak in a deep breath before he could look at her again, and when he did, she was a lot closer than she’d been before. She leaned an elbow on the counter, her body canted in his direction, holding his phone toward him so they could both see it. She took another sip of hot chocolate, the pink tip of her tongue peeking out to catch a stray bit of whipped cream from the corner of her mouth.
It was suddenly warm in here, pleasantly warm. Maddeningly warm. Nick felt a little dizzy, like he was about to jump off a high dive.
Oh the hell with it. Might as well jump. Isn’t that what those Van Halen boys said? He took a step closer to Cassie, closer to that heat.
“I have to say…” He leaned closer, and Cassie licked her lips again, even though there wasn’t any hot chocolate left on them. Nick wondered what her lips tasted like. He wondered if she was going to let him find out.
“You have to say…?” Her voice was little more than breath, but it was enough to remind Nick that he’d started a sentence back there. Ages ago, before he got lost in the shine of her lips.
“He’s not the only one.” He traced the curve of her jaw with the backs of his fingers the way he’d been wanting to, following the line of her errant lock of hair, and Cassie sucked in a breath at his touch. He could relate; all of the oxygen seemed to have left the room. He was feeling a little lightheaded himself.
He asked a question with his eyes, and she gave the tiniest of nods in response before he bent those last few inches. Her mouth tasted like chocolate and bourbon. Nick wanted nothing more than to sink into her, claim her, but he settled for cradling her face in his hands. She sighed into his mouth, the rush of breath doing things to his bloodstream.
But he didn’t want to push it. So instead of deepening the kiss, instead of pushing everything off the café counter and hoisting her up onto its smooth surface, he pulled back slowly. Lingeringly. Let his forehead drop to hers and breathed her in for just a couple more moments before he let her go. When he opened his eyes, all he could see was her smile.
“Is this…” Nick’s voice had stopped working, the words coming out all gravelly. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Is this too soon? I feel like maybe this was too soon.”
But Cassie’s smile was almost as bright as her eyes. “Feels just in time to me.”
So he bent to her again, her smile dissolving under his mouth, and when her hand came up to touch his face, all doubt flew out the window and into the night.
This had been the best date of his life.