Better Homes and Hauntings

14 Unleash the F-Bombs

THE NEXT MORNING, Deacon sat in his office, drumming his fingers on his desk, waiting for Regina to arrive. He loathed the idea of allowing her back onto the island, anywhere near Nina, but he wanted to handle this meeting in person.

Regina’s inviting Rick to the charity party was unconscionable. Before, he might have tried to write it off as coincidence. It was possible that they’d met on a work site or even when Rick had bid for the job at Deacon’s office. Regina spent a lot of time skulking around his office.

He couldn’t take the path of least resistance with Regina anymore. It was far more likely that Regina had looked up Nina’s employment history, found out about the harassment reports, and connected with Rick in order to harass Nina even more. His blinders were off, particularly after he (somewhat illegally) accessed Regina’s EyeDee account and saw that she had recently sent an EyeContact request to Rick Douglas. And in a private message, she’d told him, “I think I can help you make sure a ‘mutual friend’ gets what she deserves. Discuss off of EyeDee,” and sent him an e-mail address to contact her. Regina had used Deacon’s own software to get at Nina. And he simply couldn’t allow that.

His laissez-faire approach in dealing with Regina had emboldened her. Because he didn’t react when she pushed a little, she figured he wouldn’t do anything to stop her when she pushed a lot. He shouldn’t have agreed to the trade-off she’d suggested. He should have just made it a simple no-interest loan. But he hadn’t wanted to embarrass Regina. He’d wanted her to feel as if she was earning her money, giving her the sense of accomplishment he got from earning his. His mistake was assuming that she cared about that sort of thing.

He heard the telltale click-clack of expensive designer heels long before the knock on his office door. But he made her wait until he was ready to get up from his desk and get this meeting started. He didn’t want her to have any sort of impression that she was an eagerly anticipated guest.

“Deacon,” Regina purred. “It’s been too long.”

“It’s been a few days,” Deacon countered, his tone cold and dismissive. He moved back around his desk and dropped into his chair. He didn’t bother offering her a seat. But undeterred by his rudeness, she followed him around the desk and balanced her ass against it.

“Yes, and in all that time, you haven’t called me. It’s going to be very difficult to complete this project if you don’t communicate with me. I want you to be comfortable telling me anything. Any little thing. And just to start this new level of honesty on the right foot, I should tell you that I think your little gardener has designs on you.”

Deacon resisted the urge to grin. For some reason, it made him inappropriately smug that Regina had noticed Nina having a reaction to him and vice versa. He wished he could find a way to let Nina know she’d made Regina jealous and insecure without looking like a total jerk. Nina deserved to know that she had that kind of power. “And what if she does?” he asked. “I don’t see how that would be any of your business.”

“Deacon,” Regina wheedled. “There’s no reason for us to do this silly dance. We should make our relationship official. We make sense. We’re from the same social circles. Our backgrounds are similar. Our lifestyles fit each other.”

“That would be awesome, if I were looking for a tennis partner. But I think relationships require a little bit more than that, Regina.”

“Oh? Like what?”

Deacon’s brain immediately went to Vodka Pursuit and blueberry waffles. He thought of their circle of friends and the clash and complement of personalities. He thought of shy smiles he had to work like hell to get and how they seemed so much sweeter, knowing that he’d earned them. Those insubstantial and yet completely necessary aspects of a life together.

Regina scoffed. “Like love? Love is for children and poor people, Deacon. People like us know what makes for a successful marriage. Marriages that last, that establish successful careers and social standing.”

“Would we be having children in this scenario, or would they be raised by their polo coaches?”

“Children would be negotiable,” she said. “After a reasonable amount of time.”

“Negotiable?”

“I would need some sort of incentive, I think, to bring children into the agreement,” she said, hooking her leg over his and sliding into his lap. She fussed with the collar of his button-down, smoothing it over his chest.

Deacon managed not to recoil, but he did enjoy saying, “I think you need to leave. Also, you’re fired. Consider your debt paid in full. I don’t want to have anything more to do with you.”

Regina’s expression didn’t change, but he suspected that was because of Botox. She unbuttoned his top button. “You’re making a mistake. I would hate to leave this job on bad terms, Deacon. The press might get wind of the story. And who knows what sort of details they might print?” She leaned close, as if to kiss him, and he was grateful when she stopped short of touching his lips. “And then lawsuits are filed, pending deals go wobbly, and you might not be able to finish this project without me.”

It was Regina’s turn to pull back when he flashed an almost feral grin at her. “Details like inappropriate conversations or unwanted sexual advances?”

“I—I wouldn’t be able to control what ended up in the news,” she stammered, trying to maintain her calm, seductive tone.

“Well, I think I probably could, considering I have videotaped you every time you’ve met with me in this office or my offices in Boston. Oh, including this conversation, which would probably reduce your credibility with pretty much everybody.”

And just like that, Deacon parted his legs, letting her drop to the floor on her ass. She scrambled to her feet just in time to see an image of her fall playing on the large-panel screen on Deacon’s wall.

“You videotaped me without my knowledge?” she shouted. “That’s illegal!”

He shrugged. “Technically, I did it with your knowledge. It was on the fourth page of our employment contract, under ‘Confidentiality.’ It’s not my fault that you don’t read what you sign.”

She snarled at him, possibly the least ladylike thing he’d ever seen her do.

And he just smiled. He was going to have to show Nina this footage at some point. Much, much later, when they were on steadier terms and the sight of Regina in his lap wouldn’t make her nervous.

Regina calmed her expression and straightened her dress. She snagged her briefcase from Deacon’s desk and turned on him. “Mr. Whitney, you will be hearing from my lawyers.”

“I know your lawyers!” he called after her as she minced down the hallway in her high heels. “And they like me better than you!”

NINA WAS GOING over a checklist with George, her grader, when Regina stormed outside. Cindy turned at the scrape of heels on the stone walkway. Jake and Dotty were also nearby, discussing Dotty’s lack of progress on her curse research. But unfortunately for Nina, she was the first person Regina laid eyes on.

“Nice to see you dressed up for work,” she snarked as she passed.

Nina glanced down at the stained work shirt, jeans, and muddied rubber boots she was wearing. OK, so it wasn’t her most elegant ensemble. But she’d spent most of her morning up to her knees in mulch. And her outfit was a hell of a lot more appropriate than Regina’s, which included spike heels that got stuck in the lawn every few steps. But somehow, Nina was left feeling dowdy and grubby.

Well, screw a bunch of that.

Nina pushed the clipboard into George’s hands and followed Regina across the lawn. “You know what? Screw you, Regina.”

Regina’s eyes went wide with shock. “I beg your pardon?”

“You have done nothing but condescend and sneer and prance around in those ridiculous little outfits. News flash, we don’t work for you. None of us. We’re partners in this, just as much as you are. So the next time you think about telling Cindy to fetch you a coffee or poke at some poor defenseless construction worker’s bicep like he’s a piece of meat on display, I want you to ask yourself, ‘How difficult will it be for me to remove Nina’s size-seven garden boot from my ass?’ The answer? Very difficult.”

Regina drew up to her full height and said in her most dignified voice, “I will not stand here and be insulted like that.”

“Well, it’s a hell of a lot easier than doing jumping jacks while I insult you. Now, run along.”

Regina sneered at her but turned on her heel and walked away. She didn’t stop or look back until she made it to the dock.

Deacon came out of the house just in time to hear Nina let loose an F-bomb-laden rant. She did George Carlin proud, using the F-word for all the parts of speech.

“I know we’re not super-religious, but maybe we shouldn’t use the F-word quite so much. Those angry vibes can’t be good around the house,” Cindy said, wrapping her arm around Nina’s shoulders. Nina’s head shot up, and she glared at Cindy, who put up her hands in a defensive position. “I’m not saying no F-word, just, you know, less.”

Dotty watched as Regina got her heel stuck in the planks of the dock, barely avoiding tripping headlong into the bay. Dotty bit her lip and shook her head. “She is not having a good day.”

She expected some response from Jake, but hearing nothing, she turned to see that he was far too busy practically dancing with glee. “The only thing better would be if Nina had suddenly demonstrated some heretofore unknown cage-fighting skills and roundhouse-kicked her to the face Chuck Norris–style.”

“Not all gingers know karate, Jake,” Nina grumbled. “It’s a misconception spread by the antiginger media.”

“Impossible. Chuck Norris invented the media,” Jake protested.

“I want you to block him from Chucknorrisfacts.com right now,” Cindy told Deacon. “Or we will be hearing these all day.”

“You do realize that I don’t control all of the Internet, right, Cindy?”

“I think you can probably pull it off,” Cindy retorted, just as Jake quoted one of his favorite facts about Chuck Norris and steak.

Deacon cringed. “Yeah, I’ll take care of it.”

“Where is Nina going?” Dotty asked, watching as their favorite landscaper made considerable progress across the lawn, toward the beach on the opposite side of the island.

“She probably just needs to blow off a little steam,” Jake said. “Having that kind of confrontation, after so many years of holding it in and being polite, it’s a shock to the system. She’s probably panicking because she was just really rude to someone and she doesn’t regret it, and she doesn’t know how to process that. She just needs a few minutes.”

Cindy was staring at him.

“What?” he demanded.

“That was an insightful and intelligent observation,” Cindy told him. “I think I’m a little turned-on right now.”

Jake’s eyebrows winged up. “Really?”

Dotty kept her eyes on the second-floor windows. “I think I’m going to go . . . elsewhere.”

“I’ll just go talk to Nina,” Deacon said, ducking away while Cindy and Jake stared at each other.

Deacon caught up to her on the beach. The choppy dark blue water rolled across the little inlet east of the house. Nina was sitting on the dunes, with her shoes off and her toes dug into the sand. Her expression was unreadable as she stared across the water. She didn’t seem upset, but she certainly wasn’t smiling.

Deacon sank into the sand next to her, stripping off his shoes and socks and stretching out his legs.

“So that was a lot of curse words,” Deacon said. “An impressive amount of them. A plethora of curse words, if you will.”

“Yes, it was,” Nina said, nodding. “I would say I’m sorry, but I’m not. I won’t even lie about it.”

“You shouldn’t. Regina had it coming,” he agreed. “I appreciate your restraint in not smacking her in the face with a rake.”

“Why are you friends with her?” Nina asked.

“I’m not. Really,” he swore. “Maybe we were, once, when we were too young to know better. I think I should explain why I’m in a business relationship with her. A strictly business, no-other-past-history-implied relationship.”

He heard Nina grumble under her breath.

“About three years ago, right after EyeDee took off and my offices were still in the basement of my ratty old apartment building, Regina came to me. She needed money, a lot of it.”

“I thought she already had money.”

“Her family has money. Regina has an allowance from her parents, but it’s pretty limited for a girl of her tastes. She doesn’t come into real money until she inherits, and her parents are hale and healthy. Her decorating business is more of a full-time hobby. Her overhead is pretty ridiculous. She keeps an office in a very swanky part of Boston. Nothing but the best furnishings. And despite the crazy prices she charges, she’s not making a profit. So she started opening credit cards, a lot of them. When she maxed one out, she would just open another. She’d racked up some pretty hefty debts, and her creditors were getting impatient with her. She could ask her parents for money, but they already give her an annual stipend in addition to her monthly allowance to help her along. She didn’t want to admit to them what she’d done with the cards, so she came to me and asked for a no-interest loan. In exchange, she offered to decorate the offices I’d just purchased and any future jobs I might have for her.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

“I just wanted you to know that I never dated Regina. I don’t really date anybody, but be certain, I am not, will not, and won’t ever date Regina. I just wanted you to know that.”

Nina beamed at him, ridiculously pleased. “Not really your type?”

“No, I’m more into the Titian-haired, secretly snarky earth-goddess type. Especially lately.”

Nina’s face blushed beet-red. “But you don’t date?”

“Not in a long time,” he told her. “I got hit with three paternity suits last year by women I’d never even met. They thought I would just pay them off to make them go away. A woman walked up and kissed me as I walked out of a Celtics game with Jake, and the next morning, I opened the papers to find out I was having an affair with one of the Real Housewives of Long Island.”

“Charmaine?” Nina asked, vaguely remembering a news blurb about the EyeDee founder getting hot and heavy with the spray-tanned wannabe starlet.

“She set the whole thing up to try to get more air-time on the show. And what better way to do that than to make your formerly wealthy real-estate-developer husband think you’ve displaced him with someone who’s in the financial papers? So yeah, I don’t know what to expect from women anymore. And I don’t know what they expect from me. I consider Papa Massimo’s pizza and a movie to be a quality first date, but I think they expect foie gras and the symphony.”

“Papa Massimo’s?” she repeated. “They make this incredible garden-veggie pizza with—”

“Eggplant and broccolini?” He chuckled. “Yeah, it’s one of my favorites. Have you tried their white pizza?”

“Are you kidding? That pizza is practically its own food group!” she exclaimed.

“By the way, this is my awkward way of asking you out on a date, just in case you hadn’t noticed,” he said.

“I wouldn’t have to watch one of your crazy sci-fi movies in this scenario, would I?”

“Do you consider Sean Connery running around in red suspendered Speedos and a man-braid a crazy sci-fi movie?” he asked.

“I’m ninety percent sure that I would.”

“Eh, we can debate the merits of Zardoz versus . . .” He paused and waited for her to name a title.

“Oh, uh, Legend.”

Deacon frowned. “Really? With the Peter Pan version of Tom Cruise?”

“With the supercool demon version of Tim Curry,” she retorted.

He considered it for a moment, then nodded. “I concede. So this weekend? We could actually leave the island. I won’t make you ride a boat, if that’s a determining factor.”

“It’s a date,” she said, grinning at him.

He smiled right back. “It is.”

He settled back on the sand, his hand settling in the space behind her back. She smiled, keeping her eyes on the water as it rolled and pitched before them. A long, lovely, silent moment passed, in which they could enjoy the sound of the sea, away from the noise and chaos of the house.

“I was thinking,” Deacon began.

“You always are.” She giggled.

“I was thinking that we’re not going to have a normal first date. I mean, we’ve practically lived together for the last few months. It’s going to help us get past a lot of the usual first-date awkwardness.”

“Surviving the terrors of a haunted house together is a bonding experience every potential couple should go through,” Nina agreed.

“I’m going to let the ‘haunted’ comment slide for the sake of harmony,” he said. “But really, the only big first-date hurdle we’ll have to get over is the whole awkward first kiss.”

“You’re assuming I kiss on the first date,” Nina said primly.

Deacon groaned and clutched his chest. “Way to snatch a man’s hope away, Red.”

She laughed. “You will never know if I’m teasing.”

“OK, well, assuming there would be a first kiss on our first date, that would be the only potentially weird moment we would have to overcome.”

“I’m sensing a scientific hypothesis in the making.”

He cleared his throat. “It’s more of a proposal.” When Nina’s eyes went the size of saucers, he added, “Not that kind of proposal! Not before a first date! I’m eccentric, not insane!”

She flopped back onto the sand, cackling.

Deacon carefully eased down on his elbow, aligning his stomach with her side. When she stopped giggling, he said, “I propose that we avoid the awkward first kiss at the end of our date by getting it out of the way now.”

“Getting it out of the way?” She poked his ribs with her fingers. “That’s a really romantic way of putting it! Also, we’ve already kissed.”

“You know what I mean.” He laughed, nudging her right back. “And we haven’t had a first-date kiss. Totally different experience from just a regular kiss.”

“Spoken like a man who has been negotiating deals with scary international conglomerates for years. Your game needs work, my friend,” she said, shielding her eyes from the sun so she could look up at him. She smoothed his wavy hair back from his forehead and considered it.

“Well, maybe you can help me practice,” he said, leaning just a bit closer.

She pulled at his collar, guiding him down to the sand with her. Deacon ran his nose along the line of her own and pressed his lips to hers. She kept her eyes open, watching the light play on his tawny eyelashes. He seemed so absorbed by the act of kissing her, totally devoting that giant brain of his to running his tongue along the rim of her bottom lip, teasing her mouth open. Nina moaned as he pulled his mouth away from hers, sliding his lips against her cheek, over her nose, her eyelids.

“I’ve missed you,” he whispered against her forehead. “It’s been too long. A man shouldn’t have to wait for time alone with the woman he loves. Promise me it won’t always be like this. Promise me that one day, it will just be you and me, and we’ll have all the time in the world together.”

The language was a little flowery for her favorite sensible computer genius. “Deacon?”

Without answering, he crushed his mouth against hers. Images flashed through her mind, crinolines and satin-covered buttons. A beautiful blond woman—Catherine—threading her fingers through dark hair and pressing that head to her breast. She gasped. He kissed her again, increasing his efforts, biting the length of her neck until he reached the sensitive place where her neck and shoulder met. Another image, of Catherine’s fingernails scraping down a bare male back, leaving raised red welts.

Nina jerked away from Deacon.

He kissed her forehead, the bridge of her nose, and both of her eyelids and finally pressed firmly against the line of her mouth. “Please.”

Pushing her back into the sand, Deacon threw one leg over Nina’s hips, pinning her to the ground. She blew out a shaky breath as he rolled his hips, the smooth weight of his erection grinding into her jeans. She clawed at his shirt, tugging it around his shoulders.

“Catherine,” he whispered.

Nina stopped cold. Did he really just call her by his dead several-times-great-grandmother’s name? He kissed her, rolling his hips again, and Nina felt the pleasant rush of warmth between her thighs. It would be so easy to ignore it, to pretend she hadn’t heard. He felt so good against her, and it had been so long for her. Would it really be so wrong to just—

“Catherine,” he whispered again.

Damn it.

But before she could push him away, Deacon’s hands stole up the line of her shoulders to her neck. His thumbs rubbed along the hollow of her throat, pressing until it was difficult for Nina to breathe. She pulled away, gasping, clawing at his fingers as they tightened around her throat.

Nina shoved Deacon’s shoulders until there was space enough for her to sit up. While Deacon’s eyes were blank and unfocused, his lip was curled back in concentration, as if he needed every neuron in his brain zeroed in on controlling his hands. Nina grunted, swinging her hand back and smacking the side of Deacon’s head.

“Ow!” he yelped.

“Deacon?”

Deacon’s eyes were glazed over, and his breathing was heavy.

“Deacon, who are you right now?”

He blinked, still too unfocused to answer. “What?”

“Who are you right now?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You called me Catherine.”

Deacon’s brow furrowed, and he pushed to his knees. “What?”

“You called me Catherine, and you said a bunch of stuff about missing me, asking me to promise you that we could be together again. And then you started squeezing my throat. Deacon, I don’t think it was you. I think someone was speaking for you.”

“No.” Deacon stood and shook his head, backing away from her. “No, that’s not possible. No.”

“Deacon, do you think you’re being influenced by the house?”

“No.”

“Because I think we all are to a certain extent. The important thing is that we choose whether we resist that influence or let it run us over. We still have a choice! We always have a choice!”

“Get back to the house, Nina. Don’t stay out here alone!” he yelled as he stumbled back through the grass.

Nina groaned, flinging herself back to the sand. She couldn’t believe that Deacon had run off like that. After everything they’d seen, how could he deny that something supernatural had just happened? Who had spoken through Deacon? Was it Jack Donovan? Or Gerald Whitney? Had she and Deacon somehow stumbled onto a meeting spot used by Jack and Catherine during their days on the island? Had they been discovered in this spot where they’d kissed in secret, hiding from the prying eyes of Catherine’s husband? Had Gerald found them here on the beach and strangled her?

Poor Catherine. Poor Jack. Both long dead but clearly trapped in the unhappiness that had kept them so preoccupied during their lives.

Had they felt like this? This confused, jumbled mess of emotions that left her unable to think straight? She stared up at the sky, running her fingertips along the lines of her kiss-swollen lips.

She didn’t blame Deacon for running, she supposed. If she was confused, she could only imagine what it was like for Deacon, who was far more connected to the Crane’s Nest than she. Still, it sort of sucked to have what was a pretty epic kiss interrupted by ghostly possession. Ghosts were so damn rude.

“Well, I’m glad we avoided that first-kiss awkwardness,” she muttered.

JAKE HATED TO admit that he actually checked under his bed before he slid between the sheets. It was demoralizing to be frightened of your own bed when you were a grown man.

After an afternoon of publicly berating obnoxious interior decorators and inappropriate eye sex between coworkers, the group had been exhausted. They’d eaten Cindy’s clam chowder for dinner and retired early. Honestly, the sheer amount of blushing and head ducking between Nina and Deacon had been enough to make Jake want to call it a night. He had done all he could to avoid bed, spending a few hours sketching in the living room and taking a long, hot shower.

Walking into his room, he could make out the shape of a human figure under his sheets. “N-no, no, no,” he stuttered, backing against the door and fumbling for the light switch.

“Jake?” Cindy sat up in his bed, rubbing her eyes. The sheets fell from her shoulders, puddling around her waist, revealing a very sensible pair of pink striped cotton pajamas.

Jake edged forward. It looked like Cindy, and it sounded like Cindy. But what if this was some sort of trick? He picked up a pillow at the end of the bed and tossed it at her, stepping back out of range. The pillow landed against her face with a soft thwap.

She shook her head, sputtering. “Is this some sort of payback for the can of polish?”

“Sorry. I thought maybe you were Catherine again.”

“I just—I couldn’t sleep,” she said, toying with the sheet. “I’ve already had my go-round with the ghostly stuff, but hearing Dotty’s story about waking up with—I can’t seem to close my eyes. Dotty and Nina drank some sort of stinky herbal tea to help them conk out, but I couldn’t stand the taste. I don’t want to feel like they have to stay up to babysit me. And I just sort of ended up here.”

To Jake’s recollection, that was the only time Cindy had ever apologized to him. This must be serious. He lifted the sheets, telling himself that he wasn’t checking to make sure that she had legs and was a real person. He slid under the sheets and adjusted the pillows beside her, tucking his chin over her shoulder.

“Is it weird, trying to sleep on the wrong side of the dorm?” he asked. “What do you girls even do over there at night?”

“Oh, you know, lounge around in our undies, feed each other grapes. We have tickle fights on Tuesdays.”

“I knew the legends were true,” Jake grumped into her hair.

She chuckled.

“Want to talk about it?” he asked.

“Decidedly not,” she told him. “It’s a little humiliating to realize you’re a grown woman who’s afraid of sleeping in a room by herself. Also that you’re smart enough to recognize that you should probably leave an employment situation that is basically insane, but you don’t want to do it because you’ll lose some of the closest friends you’ve ever made.”

“Really?”

“I don’t have a lot of girlfriends,” Cindy admitted. “I haven’t always had time to maintain those kinds of friendships. Here I don’t really have a choice. We’re just naturally together, because we’re all on the crew. And I’m afraid of what’s going to happen when we leave here.”

“I’m sure we’ll have ‘I Survived Renovating the Crane’s Nest’ reunions every summer,” he assured her. “With T-shirts and everything.”

“That’s not funny,” she said, slapping at him. But she was laughing and relaxing into his arms all the same. “And thanks for not making any jokes about finally getting me into bed.”

“Hey.” He turned her over to face him. “This is not a joke. I’m—I don’t want to use the word ‘honored,’ because you would call bullshit on me, but I’m really happy that you trust me enough to come in here. And I’m not going to do anything to screw that up. I don’t want to ever give you reason not to trust me again, Cindy, I mean it. And if that means that we wait until we’re off-island before anything serious happens between us, I’ll wait with a smile on my face. But I just—I won’t waste the second chance you gave me.”

She threaded her fingers through his hair, leaning up to kiss him. All of the things that she’d been holding back from him she gave him now. True affection, trust, sincere pleasure, and, if not her love, then the promise that one day soon, they might be headed that way. “You’ve got a deal. We’ll wait.” She looked strangely vulnerable, her eyes wide and without guile as she stared up at him.

Wait a minute. Cindy didn’t do guileless. “If you’re messing with me right now, that’s just mean,” he told her.

She laughed, pulling him down to the mattress, snuggling her head against his chest. “You’ll figure it out eventually.”