Lover Mine

THIRTY-SEVEN

As he sat in his guest room at the Rathboone mansion, Gregg Winn should have felt better than he did. Thanks to some evocative camera shots of that soulful portrait down in the living room, coupled with some stills of the grounds taken in the gloaming, the brass back in L.A. was thrilled with the presell footage and was set to start running it. The butler had also come along nicely, signing the legal documents that gave permission for all kinds of access.

Stan the cameraman could perform a proctology exam on the damn house for all the places he could stick his lens.

But Gregg didn’t have the taste of victory in his mouth. Nope, he had a case of the this-isn’t-rights riding his gut and a tension headache that ran from the base of his skull all the way into his frontal lobe.

The problem was the hidden camera they’d put out in the hall the night before.

There was no rational explanation for what it had captured.

Ironic that a “ghost hunter,” when confronted with a figure who disappeared into thin air, needed Advil and Tums. You’d think he’d be overjoyed that for once he didn’t have to get his camera guy to fudge the footage.

As for Stan? He just shrugged it all off. Oh, he thought it was a ghost for sure—but that didn’t faze him in the slightest.

Then again, he could have been tied to a set of railroad tracks on some Perils of Pauline thing and just thought, Perfect, time for a quick nap before he got greased.

There were advantages to being a pothead.

As the clock struck ten down below, Gregg got up from the laptop and went to the window. Man, he’d feel better about this whole thing if he hadn’t seen that long-haired figure roaming the grounds the night before.

To hell with that: Better that he hadn’t seen the fucker outside in the hall pulling a hallucination’s trick of now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t.

From behind him on the bed, Holly said, “Are you hoping to see the Easter bunny out there?”

He glanced over at her and thought she looked great propped up against the pillows, her nose in a book. When she’d taken the thing out, he’d been surprised to see it was the Doris Kearns Goodwin about the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys. He’d have figured she was more a Tori Spelling-bio kind of girl.

“Yeah, I’m all about the cotton tail,” he murmured. “And I think I’m going to go down and see if I can get the bastard’s basket.”

“Don’t bring back any marshmallow Peeps. Colored eggs, chocolate bunnies, that fake fuzzy grass—all good. The Peeps freak me out.”

“I’ll have Stan come sit with you, ’kay?”

Holly’s eyes lifted from Camelot’s backstory. “I don’t need a nanny. Especially not one who’s liable to light up a joint in the bathroom.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“I’m not alone.” She nodded to the camera in the far corner of the room. “Just turn that on.”

Gregg leaned back against the window jamb. The way her hair caught the light was really nice. Of course, the color was undoubtedly an expert dye job... but it was the perfect shade of blond against her skin.

“You aren’t scared, are you,” he said, wondering exactly when it was that they’d traded places on that account.

“You mean about last night?” She smiled. “Nope. I think that ‘shadow’ is Stan playing a trick on both of us as payback for jerking him around between rooms. You know how he hates moving luggage. Besides, it got me back in your bed, didn’t it. Not that you’ve done anything much about this.”

He snagged his windbreaker and went over to her. Taking her chin in hand, he looked into her eyes. “You still want me like that?”

“Always have.” Holly’s voice dropped. “I’m cursed.”

“Cursed?”

“Come on, Gregg.” When he just looked at her, she threw up her hands. “You’re a bad bet. You’re married to your job and you’d sell your soul to get ahead. You reduce everything and everyone around you to a lowest common denominator and that allows you to use them. And when they aren’t useful? You don’t remember their name.”

Jesus... she was smarter than he’d thought. “So why do you want to have anything to do with me?”

“Sometimes... I don’t really know.” Her eyes returned to the book, but they didn’t go back and forth over the lines. They just locked onto the page. “I guess it’s because I was really naive when I met you, and you gave me a shot when no one else would, and you taught me about a lot of things. And that initial crush is hanging on.”

“You make it sound like a bad thing.”

“It can be. I’ve been hoping to grow out of it... and then you do stuff like look after me and I get sucked in all over again.”

He stared at her, measuring her perfect features and her smooth skin and her amazing body.

Feeling tangled and strange, and like he owed her an apology, he went over to the camera on the tripod and turned it on to record. “You got your cell phone with you?”

She reached into her robe’s pocket and took out a BlackBerry. “Right here.”

“Call me if anything strange happens, ’kay?”

Holly frowned. “Are you all right?”

“Why do you ask?”

She shrugged. “Just never seen you quite this...”

“Anxious? Yeah, I guess there’s something about this house.”

“I was going to say... connected, actually. It’s like you’re truly looking at me for the first time.”

“I’ve always looked at you.”

“Not like this.”

Gregg went over to the door and paused. “Can I ask you something weird? Do you... color your hair?”

Holly put her hand up to the blond waves. “No. I never have.”

“It’s really that blond?”

“You should know.”

As she cocked her eyebrow, he flushed. “Well, women can get dye jobs down... you know.”

“Well, I don’t.”

Gregg frowned and wondered who the hell was running his brain: he seemed to have all these odd thoughts playing over his airwaves, like maybe his station had been hijacked. Giving her a little wave, he ducked into the hall, and looked left then right while listening hard. No footsteps. No creaking. No one with a sheet pulled over his head, Casper-ing around.

Yanking his windbreaker on, he stalked over to the stairs and hated the echo of his own footsteps. The sound made him feel pursued.

He glanced behind himself. Nothing but empty corridor.

Down on the first floor, he looked at the lights that had been left on. One in the library. One in the front hall. One in the parlor.

Ducking around the corner, he paused to check out that Rathboone portrait. For some reason, he didn’t think the painting was so fucking romantic and salable anymore.

Some reason, his ass. He wished he’d never called Holly over to look at the thing. Maybe it wouldn’t have marked her subconscious such that she fantasized about the guy coming to her and having sex with her. Man... that expression on her face when she’d been talking about her dream. Not the fear part, but the sex, the resonant sex. Had she ever looked like that after he’d been with her?

Had he ever stopped to see if he’d satisfied her like that?

Satisfied her at all?

Opening the front door, he stepped out like he was on a mission, when in reality, he had nowhere to go. Well, except for away from that computer and those images... and that quiet room with a woman who might just have more substance than he’d always thought.

Kind of like a ghost being real.

God... the air was clean out here.

He walked out away from the house, and when he was about a hundred yards down the rolling grass, he paused and looked back. On the second floor, he saw the light on in his room and pictured Holly nestled against the pillows, that book in her long, thin hands.

He kept going, heading for the tree line and the brook.

Did ghosts have souls? he wondered. Or were they souls?

Did television execs have souls?

Now, that was an existential question and a half.

He took a leisurely loop around the property, stopping to tug at the Spanish moss and feel the bark on the oaks and smell the earth and the mist.

He was on his way back to the house when the light on the third floor came on... and a tall, dark shadow passed by one of the windows.

Gregg started to walk fast. Then broke out into a run.

He was flying as he leaped onto the front porch and hit the door, throwing it open and pounding up the stairs. He didn’t give a shit about that whole don’t-go-to-the-third-floor warning. And if he woke people, fine.

As he came to the second floor, he realized he didn’t have a clue which door could take him to the attic. Walking fast down the hall, he figured the numbers on the jambs were dead giveaways that he was ripping past guest rooms.

Then he got to Storage. Housekeeping.

Thank you, Jesus: EXIT.

He broke through, hit the back staircase and took the steps up two at a time. When he got to the top, he found a locked door with a light glowing under the bottom.

He knocked loudly. And got a whole lot of nothing.

“Who’s there?” he called out, yanking on the knob. “Hello?”

“Sir! Whatever are you doing?”

Gregg wheeled around and looked down the stairs at the butler—who was, even though it was after hours, still dressed in his tux.

Maybe he didn’t sleep in a bed, but hung himself up in a closet so he didn’t wrinkle overnight.

“Who’s in there?” Gregg demanded, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, sir, but the third floor is private.”

“Why?”>

“That is none of your concern. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to ask you to return to your room.”

Gregg opened his mouth to keep arguing, but then slammed his gap shut. There was a better way to deal with this.

“Yeah. Okay. Fine.”

He made a show of thumping down the stairs and brushing past the butler.

Then he went to his room like a good little guesty-poo and slipped inside.

“How was your walk?” Holly asked, yawning.

“Anything happen when I was gone?” Like, oh, say, a dead guy coming in here to bang you?

“Nope. Well, other than someone racing down the hall. Who was that?”

“No idea,” Gregg muttered, going over and shutting off the camera. “Not a clue...”