CHAPTER THREE
Emily absently gazed at the contents of her baking pantry, trying not to let her bad mood ruin a perfectly good day of baking. The rolled oats and organic raisins on the shelf taunted her. She glared at them before pulling out chocolate chips instead.
Stupid Jericho. Stupid man. Stupid stupid.
Their date hadn’t gone swimmingly. Or at least, it seemed like it had until he’d kissed her. Then she’d gotten all freaked out, asked him to move in, babbled on about how she didn’t want him sexually, and then things kind of went south from there. She’d spent most of the movie shoveling greasy popcorn into her mouth and kicking herself mentally.
Why on earth had she told a man that she was out on a date with that she wasn’t ready for a relationship? Especially after he’d kissed her and her entire body had responded? She must be three kinds of stupid.
It was just…gosh. She hadn’t been on a date since college. What was that, seven years? And then she’d babbled on horribly about her ex, and got all weirded out by her own words. So yeah. When the movie ended, they’d driven back to her place and he’d dropped her off without even trying to come in.
So much for that.
He’d even chickened out of work the next day. Cited a ‘plumbing emergency’ for another client and asked if they could reschedule. Emily knew a blow-off as well as anyone, and didn’t give him a hard time about it.
But she’d be damned if she made him cookies.
And really, she could fix her own toilets. Eventually. Maybe after she stripped the wallpaper from the bathroom. There was no rush. She’d just add it to her laundry list of things that needed to be done. Her Victorian was pretty, but it required constant upkeep.
Someone knocked at the front door. Emily’s heart thumped. Maybe he’d come by after all? She rushed for the foyer…only to see her storky, crazy sister Luanne. Her hair was pulled up into two pink-and-blonde knots and she wore a pink tank top with jeans and no makeup. “Hey, Em! How’s it hanging? Thought I’d swing by for some java and eats before heading to work.”
“Hey, Luanne,” Emily said, forcing a smile to her face. “I’ll put on some coffee.”
“Don’t look so thrilled to see me,” Luanne teased, heading into the kitchen after Emily. “I can drink the station coffee if you’re busy. It just tastes a bit like tire treads is all.”
“You’re fine,” Emily said. She headed back into the kitchen and poured water into the coffee pot, then flipped it on. “I was just about to bake some chocolate chip cookies. Maybe.” She shrugged. “Maybe not. I haven’t decided.”
Luanne moved to Emily’s side and pressed a hand against her sister’s forehead. “Not baking? You? You feeling okay, kiddo?”
Emily snorted. “Don’t call me kiddo. I’m two years older than you.”
“Yeah, but I’m taller. And wiser. Now fess up. What’s bugging you?” Luanne smoothed Emily’s hair back over her shoulder and then went and sat down at the breakfast bar, her watchful gaze on her sister.
Darn Luanne for being so intuitive. Emily pulled out a pair of coffee cups and debated lying to her sister. Truth was easier, though. “I had a date last night.”
“Oh snap! Your first one since the big divorce. Who was it with?”
“Jericho Lozada. Handyman. He’s new to town.”
“I don’t know him, so he hasn’t been to the police station,” she said with a grin. “Cute?”
Emily thought of Jericho’s wild hair, his gorgeous smile and tight pants. “Real cute.”
“Clearly it did not go well, hence the funky mood? Closet douchebag? Skeezy sex-hound?”
Emily shook her head. “I kind of wish he had been a sex-hound. Didn’t even kiss me goodnight. I think I kind of killed the mood with mentioning my ex.” She grabbed the coffee pot out from under the drip and poured a cup. “And then I told him I wasn’t ready for a relationship. And then I offered for him to move in to the house in a purely platonic fashion because I needed company and not a relationship.”
Luanne’s eyes widened. “Oh, Em. Did you lose control of your mouth or something?”
“I was just nervous. Really nervous.” Emily shoved the pot back onto the warmer and waited for more coffee to dribble out. “Like you said, it was my first date since the divorce and I haven’t been sleeping and I kept wondering what a guy like him was doing dating someone as boring as me—“
“Stop, Emily, stop!” Luanne raised her hands in the air. “What on earth are you going on about? You’re not boring.”
Maybe not to her sister, who loved her unconditionally. But to someone like Jericho? All she did was bake cookies and keep a big house. How could someone like that be exciting to him? She shook her head. “Braden thought I was boring.”
“Braden was a pompous douchebag and he’s only gotten worse since he started hanging out with those Ghostbuster nuts. I bet he’s insufferable on his TV show.”
Emily kind of bet that he was, too. Luanne was a good sister for making her feel better. “Well, I ruined the date. I’m just not confident like you.”
“Confident like me?” Luanne snorted. “Hank’s the first one that wanted to date the real me ever since, well, forever. You want something to do a number on your ego, have guys ask you to ‘dress up’ as your alter-ego in bed.”
Emily nodded, remembering Luanne’s stunt videos as ‘The Legend of Jane’, a web blogger with roller-derby style and zany antics. She knew her sister had tired of the persona long before her audience had, and appreciated being ‘normal’, working as an administrator and computer guru for Bluebonnet’s tiny police department.
“And if there’s one thing that being Jane taught me,” Luanne said, sipping her coffee. “It’s that you fake confidence and the rest sort of follows. Next time you see that guy, you be your brilliant self and act like you’re the best thing since sliced bread.” She grinned. “Since your sliced bread. Which is pretty awesome. And speaking of, got anything I can take to the station with me?”
~~ * * * ~~
To Emily’s surprise, Jericho showed up that next afternoon with his plumbing tools. “Oh,” she said at the sight of him. “I didn’t expect you over.”
He gave her an odd look. “Did you not want me to work on your toilets? I thought—“
She waved a hand. “No, no, of course I do. Come on in.”
He hauled his toolbox inside and she noticed today there was no leather jacket – just a black concert tee and jeans and a tool belt that emphasized his tight ass. She caught herself staring and then shook her head.
“Sorry about the delay,” he said casually. “The elementary school’s gymnasium was knee deep in shit from some backed up pipes and a friend needed some help with the job.”
Emily was surprised. “Oh wow, really?”
He set down his tool box and gave her an odd look. “Didn’t you get my text message?”
“Well, yes, but I thought…you know what? Never mind.” Emily smiled at him and gestured at a door down the hall. “Let me show you one of the bathrooms where I need the toilet re-seated.”
“Sure,” Jericho said, his smile a little hesitant, but still sexy. “By the way, you look nice today.”
Boy, she’d really messed this one up, hadn’t she? “Thank you. Right over here.” She showed him the bathroom and then hurried to the kitchen.
Time to make some cookies.
~~ * * * ~~
Emily rolled over and squinted at her alarm clock. 2:47 AM. She blinked at the red numerals, not quite sure what had woken her up.
Something heavy shuffled upstairs.
Instantly, every nerve in Emily’s body fired awake. She stared up at the ceiling with a mixture of dread and terror. Maybe she’d imagined that noise. Maybe it was just a bad dream carrying over to wakefulness.
A thump, then a low dragging noise echoed across the ceiling.
Her body broke out in goose bumps. Not again.
Emily reached over the side of the bed and gripped her cross. Another heavy foot slid across the floor upstairs in the attic. She wanted to cry. She’d had such a good day earlier. She and Jericho had chatted for hours, the awkwardness left over from the movie date gone. She’d asked him to stay for dinner but he’d declined, since he had another client to run out to. He’d taken a plate of cookies with him and told her to call him for any other repairs.
It hadn’t quite been romantic, but it hadn’t been uncomfortable, either. And it had made her happy.
But now, staring up at the ceiling, all she felt was dread and sheer loneliness. Here she was again, at three in the morning, terrified out of her mind and no one to call on. She could call Luanne, but her sister only laughed at Emily’s fears. She was a bit of a daredevil and didn’t understand Emily’s distress over the thought of having a ghost in the attic and having to deal with it by herself. The police department hadn’t exactly been super receptive the last time they’d come out, so she’d baked double batches of their favorite treats and promised not to call again for a few weeks.
She had no one she could turn to, and right now, she felt terribly, horribly lonely.
Maybe Braden would be available if she called. Maybe he wouldn’t be a total dick about it.
She doubted that, but when she heard another noise upstairs, she reached for her phone. Right now she just wanted to hear a human voice, someone to tell her it was okay, and to not be afraid of ghosts despite living by herself in a big, creepy old house.
Emily flipped to the ‘recent calls’ screen on her phone to pull up Braden’s number…and saw Jericho’s name staring back at her.
Would he answer if she called? She supposed she could always fake a plumbing emergency. But…that felt wrong. She just wanted a friend right now.
On impulse, she hit ‘call back’.
Jericho’s phone rang four times, and just when she was about to hang up and declare herself stupid for even trying, someone on the other line picked up. “Mmm, hello?”
It was obvious he’d been asleep. “Hello? Jericho?” Emily hated the way her voice trembled. “It’s Emily.”
“Em? You okay? What time is it?”
“It’s late,” she said tearfully. “Or early. I guess. I just…needed to talk to someone. I keep hearing things in my attic.”
“You want me to come over?” He sounded a little more awake.
She caught the sob in her throat. God, she was being such a baby. But she felt like a big ball of emotional distress. She wanted help, and she didn’t have anyone to turn to that might possibly understand how she was feeling… except him. “That would be great. You don’t mind?”
“Not at all. I’ll be there in about twenty.”
“Thank you,” she said softly. “I’ll make you cookies.”
“You don’t have to bake me anything to get me to come over, Em.” She heard the rustle of clothing as he moved around on the other end of the line. “I’ll be there soon.”
“Okay,” she whispered and hung up.
~~ * * * ~~
Jericho showed up in a roar of mufflers at precisely 3:15 in the morning. Normally she’d have been one of the people in town pissy at the noise in the middle of the night, but today? She didn’t care.
It just meant that she had a friend.
He strode to the door, a worried look on his face. His hair was a rumpled mess, the floppy black locks going in every which direction. He wore Scooby Doo sleep pants and a plain gray t-shirt under his jacket, his hands stuffed in his pockets as he headed to her front door. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” she said, hugging her bathrobe closed. But she felt like a fraud saying it. “Actually,” she added, voice trembling. “I’m really not. I’m scared and no one believes me and I don’t have anyone to depend on and—“
“Hey,” he said softly, moving forward. “Shh. Shh. It’s okay. We’ll take a look at things, all right?” Jericho pulled Emily against him in a warm, comforting hug.
“Everyone thinks I’m crazy,” she sobbed. “And no one will help me. Even Braden. And I’m…scared of my own stupid house. I can’t even sleep in my own stupid bed.” She buried her face against his shirt. God, he smelled good. She was wimping out on him, but she didn’t care.
For once, she just wanted someone to lean on. She normally took the mothering role, but this time, heck, it was so nice to have someone else hold her and tell her that it would be all right.
Jericho’s hands rubbed up and down the arms of her bathrobe. “You need to sit down and have a good cry?”
“I need someone else to hear these ghosts so I know I’m not crazy,” she said, sniffing against his shirt. Her fingers curled into the soft fabric. “You smell good.”
He chuckled. “Thanks?”
“A-are these pajamas?” She sniffed again. “Did you come over in your pajamas?”
“You seemed like you wanted someone over ASAP. So here I am.” He rubbed her back. “Shall we go inside?”
She nodded and surreptitiously wiped her nose.
Jericho took her hand and led her back into her own house. “Lead me to it.”
“The attic,” she said, pointing upstairs. “The noises always come from the attic.”
“Of course they do,” he said with a chuckle. “Typical horror movie shit. The bad stuff is always in the attic.”
“I’ve had it checked before and no one can find anything,” she whispered. And even though she wanted to kick herself for it, she clung to his arm. “I’m sorry I’m being such a baby.”
He looked down at Emily, and the look on his face was surprisingly tender. “You’re not being a baby, Em. You’re scared, that’s all.”
“I hate being alone,” she whispered, leaning closer as they headed up the old staircase. “I’ve never liked it. Especially at night.”
“That why you invited me to live with you the other night?”
“Mostly. I like your company, too.” She felt a little uncomfortable but since he’d gotten up in the middle of the night to come be her hero, the least she could do was confess how she felt. “I acted really weird on the date. I wanted to apologize. It wasn’t that I didn’t like you. I just…I haven’t dated anyone in a really long time, and my ex kind of did a number on my self esteem. And you were looking at me weird with the ghost stuff, and I think I just started babbling.”
Jericho’s smile widened. He put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a casual hug. A warm, sincere hug. “We all get nervous. I have to admit, I wasn’t sure how to take it when a girl tells me she wants me to move in but in a completely platonic sort of way. And here I was having dirty thoughts about you.”
Emily’s breath caught in her throat. “You were?”
“Fuck yeah. In that demure little cardigan? Was thinking about peeling it off of you and seeing what was underneath.”
Suddenly the arm around her shoulders felt a little too innocent — she craved those filthy thoughts he’d been having. “Well, I—“
A massive thump sounded overhead, silencing them both.
“Well, damn,” Jericho said, glancing up at the ceiling.
“I didn’t lie,” Emily told him, a little breathless at being proven right. She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t. “I have a ghost.”
His sexy mouth curled a little at the edges, and she noticed he was unshaven. Oooh. “You’ve got something up there. Got a flashlight? We’ll go check things out.”
She’d never been quite brave enough to check things out on her own. Braden had probably filled her head with too much nonsense. Still, the thought of confronting whatever it was upstairs freaked her out a little, and she moved even closer to him. “Are you sure?”
“Only one way to see if it’s what I think it is.”
“What do you think it is?”
That mouthwatering smile quirked again. “Don’t know, but really hoping it’s not a ghost.”
They headed up the stairs, turned past Emily’s room, and then further up toward the attic space. Emily’s attic staircase was a cramped and twisting set of narrow stairs behind a door at the end of the hall on the second floor. At the top of the staircase was another ominous door. Just looking at the stairwell gave her the willies.
Jericho turned to her. “Flashlight?”
“Right,” she said quickly, and ran to her second floor storm closet. She kept emergency supplies on both floors just in case she had guests and the power went out. A heavy Maglite was in the closet and she grabbed it, then raced back to Jericho’s side and offered it to him.
“Thanks. You want to stay down here?”
Oh God, did she ever. It thumped again, and she moved a little closer to him warily. “Um. Will you think less of me if I do?”
He chuckled. “Not at all. Just call the police if I’m not back in twenty.”
Emily glared at him. “That’s not funny.” The lights flickered as if to agree with her. Ugh. Emily squeezed closer to him and closed her eyes. “Are you sure you want to go?”
“It’ll be fine.” He pried her away from him and tapped her cheek so she’d open her eyes. When she did, he gave her one of those bad-boy winks. “Don’t worry.”
“Easy for you to say.” He didn’t live here, after all.
But he was already climbing the stairs. “Be right back.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and watched as he disappeared around the bend. She heard the attic door open and sucked in a breath, waiting. Waiting for him to say that yes, he saw a ghost, or no, there was nothing and she was still crazy.
“Shit.”
Emily felt like her throat was closing. “What is it? What do you see?”
“I see shit.” He laughed, and relief flooded through her at the sound. He didn’t seem worried or frightened at all. In fact, he sounded pleased. “Who did you say you had coming over here to check for ghosts?”
She frowned up at the staircase. “A few of the officers. Sometimes Hank, sometimes Old Charley. Mostly Old Charley. Why?”
“Because I think I know what your ghost problem is. Want to come up?”
Buoyed by his ease, she went up the narrow staircase after him. He stood just in the entryway of the attic, the bulb hanging from the ceiling on overhead, and the mag-lite in hand. And he was smiling. He looked over at her and waved her forward. “Come on. You’re going to want to see this.”
“Am I?” she asked skeptically. “Because I’m pretty sure whatever it is, it isn’t good.”
“Well, in the scheme of things, it’s not ideal, but it’s not the worst,” he said, and offered her his hand.
Emily put her fingers in his and let him lead her into the attic. The room was too shadowy for her liking, the ceiling tall and gabled overhead, raw beams of wood creating even more shadows. Tufts of insulation were everywhere, like snowy piles of pink cotton. It covered the floor of the attic and bunched up along the sides in mounds dotted with smaller, darker spots of dirt.
“See,” he said, giving her hand a comforting squeeze. “No ghosts.”
With someone at her side, she had to admit that things seemed a lot more benign. “It…doesn’t look so bad.”
“I’m surprised no one has noticed this before. You ever had a pest guy come out?”
“No, why? Do I have bees?”
With his free hand, he pointed at one of the brown spots of dirt. “You see that? That’s shit.”
“It’s what?” She asked, horrified. She pulled her hand free of his and grabbed the mag-lite from him, then shone it on one of the spots. Sure enough, now that she had a second look at it with a brighter light than the yellow bulb that hung down from the ceiling, it did look like a big nasty turd. “What the hell? What is pooping in my attic?”
“Unless you have a ghost with incontinence issues, my guess is possums.”
“Possums?”
“Yep, and it looks like a lot of them.”
“Possums,” she repeated. That was…too simple an explanation. Surely it was more than that.
“You ever had any weird smells you couldn’t figure out?”
She started to shake her head, then gasped. “When…when we first moved in, there was this god-awful smell like dead things. Braden kept saying it was the ghosts telling us about their presence.”
“It was probably a dead possum in the walls somewhere.”
“In the walls?” Her voice rose a bit. “You’re kidding, right?” She’d heard noises in the walls once or twice, but she’d never guessed…and Braden had always filled her head with stories of spirits attempting to send them a message…
God, either she was a huge idiot, or Braden was. Or both.
“I’m guessing there’s a few of them in the walls,” he said, tapping one of the beams overhead with his hand. “Especially in these old houses. I’ve seen it before. That’s why when I saw the droppings, I figured that’s what’s making your ghost noises. Never seen a ghost in an old house, but I have seen lots of rodents.”
“And that’s possum poop,” she asked. “You’re sure of it.”
“Pretty sure. If you’ve got a stick, we could always go poking around in some of these tufts to see where they’ve buried themselves. They bite, though. And some carry rabies.”
Emily shuddered. “How do I get rid of them?”
“Pest service, I imagine. I know a guy. I can call him in the morning.”
“So…possums.” It couldn’t be that simple, could it? “Not ghosts?”
“I’m not saying you don’t have ghosts,” Jericho said with a slow smile. “But your attic noises are probably caused by these guys running around at night. I’m pretty sure they’re nocturnal.”
She stared up at him, then around her attic. Possums. Something she could easily have removed. The evidence of rodents was all around her – poop was sprinkled liberally amongst the insulation puffs. How no one else had picked up on it before now, she didn’t know. Even as she shone her flashlight around, one of the piles shifted and she gasped.
“That’s probably one of the culprits right there,” Jericho said, pointing. “Want me to try and flush him out so you can see him and know for sure that it’s possums?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s okay. I believe you.”
“You’ll probably want to get all the feces out of here, too. It’s unhealthy and will probably attract others.”
Emily wrinkled her nose. “I believe you. I’ve seen enough poop for now, thanks.”
“Want to go downstairs then?”
She nodded and was surprised – and pleased – when he offered her his hand again. They went back downstairs and paused in front of Emily’s bedroom door. She looked in her room, the blankets still mussed and trailing over the side of the bed.
“I can’t believe it’s something so easy,” she murmured. “Possums. I can take care of possums.”
Jericho pushed his messy dark hair off of his forehead. “Kinda glad it wasn’t ghosts. I don’t know what I’d have done if I’d seen Casper up there.”
She laughed and wrapped both of her arms around one of his, hugging him. “This is the best news I’ve had in years. I could just kiss you.”
The look in his eyes grew interested. With his free hand, he reached up and caressed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “So…why don’t you?”