Chapter 6
Ava
I shook my head.
“No, it’s your house. Your mystery. You open it. You deserve the honors.”
Tyler looked just as good in a t-shirt as he had without one on. I liked seeing the way the fabric skimmed across his muscles, shifting with every move he made.
How is he so fit if he can hardly walk?
That was a mystery for another day. Right now we had the mystery of the jewelry box to figure out. I scooched closer.
Tyler flipped the lid open, and we both leaned forward to look inside, our faces mere inches apart.
“Wedding rings. But why are there three?” he asked out loud.
I pointed at the one with a diamond on it. “That one’s an engagement ring.”
Then I picked up the other two wedding bands and looked at their sizes. “And that one’s for a man. And this one’s for a woman. See?” I slipped it onto my finger.
Right as I did, a loud thump hit the floor from below. I screamed again and flung myself into his arms, tearing the ring off my finger. “Maybe I shouldn’t wear that. Maybe it belongs to your ghost.”
I felt the soft circling of his fingers on my back. “I don’t have a ghost, Ava. I have bad plumbing… or something.”
“How can you explain what just happened?”
“I don’t know. Like I said, this place doesn’t usually thump as much as this. It’s like you’re activating it somehow.”
“Me?”
He took a deep breath, as if he were breathing in my perfume. “You’re the only new variable.”
I glanced up at him, our eyes locking into place. “Or it could be because it’s Halloween. You know the pagans believe that ghosts return to the earth on Samhain. It’s tied to the moon cycles. Maybe the ghost can communicate better at this time of year.”
“You believe in all that stuff?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I just read about it somewhere.”
“Hm.” He looked into the jewelry box, shuffling around a few old coins, and a pretty gold necklace with a sapphire in it. “There’s nothing else here. Wait, I take that back.” He lifted the center of the box, revealing a second compartment below. “There are papers here.”
It looked like a few sheets of paper, plus one sealed envelope.
“I wonder what’s in the envelope,” I said, my curiosity getting the best of me.
He unfolded the loose sheets, and out fell a small photo of a couple. I picked it up and looked at it while he read the papers.
“It’s an obituary from Saint Louis for a man named Orson Myers.” Then he muttered to himself, almost inaudibly, “Died at sixty-three. That’s young. Left one surviving son.”
He unfolded the other piece of paper. “It’s a marriage announcement for Orson and Cordelia Myers.”
“This must be them.” I held out the old photograph.
He took the picture from my hand, his fingers grazing mine, and peered at it while I tried to recover from the shock waves that had just gone through me.
Hugging him earlier had been bad enough. I was having an unnatural reaction to this man. I wanted him something fierce. And by that I mean I wanted to have a party with his cock.
But that wasn’t me. I had decorum.
I waited for men to come to me. Not the other way around.
But it sure would be a Halloween to remember if I had a one-night stand with this grumpy man tonight.
A tiny giggle spilled past my lips.
He glanced up at me. “You all right?”
“Yeah. I think this mystery is just making me loopy. Isn’t it weird that we heard thumping sounds from this exact spot?”
He met my eyes, and for the first time tonight he admitted it. “Yeah. It’s real weird.”
“Do you think these people lived here?”
“I don’t know. The obituary says he died in Saint Louis. And it doesn’t mention a wife, only a son.”
I thought through the different scenarios. “If he died first, she should have been listed in the obituary as his surviving spouse. But if she died first, then who would have put his obituary under the floorboard?”
He looked at me with a question mark in his eyes. “The son?”
“Maybe.”
Right then, fireworks blasted into the night sky. Loud flashes of color popped outside the bedroom window while booming sounds filled the air.
It was louder than before, as though the fireworks earlier tonight were just a test run for this main event.
Tyler flinched, then knotted his forehead and curled in on himself slightly, his back bowing down an inch. If I hadn’t been looking at him, I wouldn’t have noticed, because he recovered himself in an instant, spine going ramrod straight again.
“Are you okay?” I looked at my watch. It was midnight. Everyone was probably setting off the fireworks to celebrate ‘the witching hour’.
His jaw was still gritted tight. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.”
As the booms got louder and closer together, and light flashed outside his window a pulse in his neck started beating visibly. A light sheen of sweat appeared on his temples.
He was trying to act like he was okay, but I could tell he was anything but.
I had to do something. I pulled out my phone and called Abby.
She picked up on the fourth ring.
“Abby, you have to stop them from shooting off any more fireworks. Can you do that? I’ll explain later.”
My friend sounded slightly drunk, and a little confused, but she said, “Uh. Sure, Ava. Are you okay? Are you coming soon? You missed the karaoke session.”
“I’m not coming tonight. Just hurry, please?”
Then I clicked off my phone, scooted over and held him as tight as I could.
It should have felt strange, hugging on a stranger who was obviously going through a dark patch in life. But it felt right. Like I’d held him a thousand times before, just like this.
“You’re going to be okay, Tyler.”
“I told you I’m fine,” he barked back, but didn’t pull away from me.
“Of course you are. Here, let’s split a cookie.” I grabbed the bag out of his hands and split a cookie in half.
Before taking a bite, I said, “I don’t think I mentioned that I volunteer at the animal shelter.
When an animal comes in who isn’t comfortable with something, one of the tricks is to give it something pleasurable to think about.
Like when they’re getting their toenails trimmed.
Sometimes I’d feed them treats while a vet tech trims their nails. It helps acclimate them.”
“Are you comparing me to a dog?” he growled out.
“No, I’m just saying you should eat your cookie, so you can think of something pleasurable at the same time that things you don’t like are happening.”
Tyler looked completely miserable, his jaw still knotted up tight, but he took a big bite of cookie and started chewing.
“I’ll bake you more chocolate chip cookies if you want. And they’ll be nice and warm when I bring them by. And I bet anything that when I do, you’ll eat half a dozen of them before the night’s over.”
He ate his cookie, then reached into the bag to get another one out.
We stayed like that, eating cookies, until the fireworks stopped a few minutes later.
When the last booms echoed through the air and the night became silent once again, he let out a deep, shuddered breath.
Tyler wasn’t afraid of the ghost living in his house with him. But he couldn’t handle the sounds of a celebration. My heart ached for him.
“I’ll ask them not to do fireworks anymore.”
He looked like he wanted to tell me not to bother, that it was no big deal. But instead he hunched his shoulders slightly and quietly grunted, “Thank you.”
“I think that was the big display for the night. It just turned midnight.”
“Is it that late?” he asked.
I smiled up at him. “Yeah. We got lost talking, didn’t we?
” I’d been here for hours. Knowing our night might be drawing to a close, I couldn’t help myself.
I circled back to the thing that had been on my mind all night.
“You didn’t really fall out of a helicopter because you forgot to wear your seatbelt, did you? ”
The edges of his lips curled up. “Busted.”
“Do you want to tell me what really happened?” He’d obviously gone through something major.
“Naw. Not tonight, pretty kitty. I think we better end our visit tonight.” His eyes scraped across me, something forlorn hiding inside them. “But I wouldn’t mind if you brought me cookies again in the future.”
I’d worn him down! Perfect.
“That I can do. And when I come back, maybe you’ll tell me what’s in that letter.”
I glanced down at the unopened letter one more time. Curiosity was killing me. But the man had asked me to leave, so I would.
He led me to the door while I basked in the heat flicking between our bodies. Something bigger than a welcome wagon visit hovered in the air between us. And I understood that an invitation back to his place for a second visit was a very big deal. A very big deal indeed.
I stood in the doorway, feeling like I was staring into my future. I wished like anything that he’d lean down and kiss me. But it didn’t seem like he was planning on doing that.
I’d be spending the rest of my Halloween alone.
Too bad. Maybe next time.