LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

I don’t want to get married tomorrow.” I took her hand and kissed her knuckles. “But not because of anything you’ve done or a lack of total devotion to you on my part.”

      Allie stepped back from me. Hurt darkened her face. “What is it, then?”

      I slipped my hands into my coat pockets, then took them back out. I wanted to scoop her up and take her far away from here, but I had to face our ghosts, or ghost in this case, head on. “It rained here last night.”

      Allie rolled her eyes and ambled toward me. “Surely, you don’t want to talk about the weather?”

      “The creek that goes to the waterfall redirected and has moved to the pond on the backside. You can’t see it from here, but I can.” I waited for my words to sink in.

      Her hand stopped at the bottom of my tie, and her eyes slowly widened. “Grace.”

      “She might be free. I can’t go on with the wedding with a possibility of her roaming the estate.” I stepped into arm’s reach of Allie, but once again feared to touch her with such a high probability Grace was near. Putting Allie in danger was out of the question.

      Allie dropped her hands to her sides. She looked to the pond. Devastation darkened Allie’s face, and the rims of her eyes teared up. “No. This isn’t happening.”

      “Come on.” I took her hand and led her back up the steps. “We’ll get through this. I promise.”

      Allie’s blank stare didn’t leave the pond until we got to the first landing on the new steps. From there, she robotically followed me to the house without a word.

      * * * *

      For the remainder of the evening, Allie played her host role perfectly, but the guests didn’t know her the way I did. As she carried on hollow conversations and gave meaningless hugs and handshakes, her shoulders had fallen from the sure young lady I’d seen when I arrived tonight to sagging with the weight of her dead sister’s lifeless body on her shoulders once again.

      Before the evening came to a close, she announced that due to circumstances beyond our control, the wedding would have to be postponed indefinitely.

      After giving the audience a little bow, Allie turned to me but didn’t make eye contact. “I need a few minutes of fresh air.”

      “I’ll come with you.”

      Allie pressed me back with her hand. “Alone. Please.”

      Thomas came from a group of caterers and stepped up beside me as we watched Allie stalk toward the house. “Why in the world would you postpone the wedding?”

      “As usual, Grace.” I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. “I never can quite get away from her. If I don’t soon get her out of our lives, I’ll lose Allie.”

      Thomas nodded to a passing guest, then leaned in to me. “You don’t know her as well as you think you do. The whole time you were gone, the only thing she could talk about was how much she missed you and something about strangling you because turnabout was fair play.”

      I gave a half-hearted laugh. “Yeah, I can see how she’d want to strangle me. I would if I were her.”

      Who wouldn’t want to strangle the person who’d killed them two weeks ago? I’d thought Allie had been possessed by Grace and that the only way I could rid her of the possession was to kill her, then kill myself.

      We’d start over the way we always had.

      Thank God for Kaitlyn and Shelby’s CPR skills.

      “I thought you had Grace under control enough to be happy at least for the rest of this life.” Thomas kept his voice low so the guests wouldn’t hear.

      “The pond we buried her in was supposed to stay completely stagnant. Any moving water around the Amiante stone that housed Grace’s soul would free her. The storm you guys had last night redirected that creek and overflowed the pond.” I nodded to a smiling guest as they passed me to leave. “I haven’t seen Grace yet, but I can’t take chances of her hurting Allie. If we are married with Grace anywhere near us, she’ll be sure to find a way to maim or disfigure Allie.”

      “I thought she was supposed to leave you alone after the new moon commenced?”

      “Me too. This is uncharted territory for me, so I’m taking no chances.”

      Thomas patted my back. “It’ll all work out, I’m sure.”

      “I hope so. I’m going to find Allie. I don’t want her alone with the threat of Grace riddling the property with her psychotic pranks.” I nodded a good evening to Thomas and slipped inside to search for Allie’s thoughts, my handy way of finding her when she was nearby but not in sight.

      * * * *

      On the balcony of the second floor, a pair of silver stilettos lay off to the side. For a second, my heart almost slammed a hole in my rib cage. I pictured her standing on a ledge, ready to give up, but she was leaning on the cement wall overlooking the east side of the grounds.

      Relieved, I stood in the doorway for a few moments.

      Her long hair flowed in the summer breeze. She’d freed it of its elegant up-do, and now I had to try to not think impure thoughts.

      With the emotional seesaw slingshotting my thoughts all over the place, I was quite proud of my composure thus far. Virtually no urge to cat out at all.

      The last time I’d seen her on a second floor overlooking the property, she’d been in a thin white night gown with her hair flowing in the wind. I’d almost climbed the stone wall to gather her into some sort of erotic embrace I was sure to get myself killed over. I didn’t exercise near the control I did today. That had been over a hundred years ago.

      Taking a deep breath, I clutched a little box. I’d found time to sneak away while Allie was attending to the needs of her guests to retrieve her original rings. She’d been so down when I told her about the pond that I thought the prospect of wearing them might raise her spirits, and I’d decided how I’d tell Allie about the hotel incident in the same swoop.

      “A penny for your thoughts?” she asked sadly.

      I jumped. I would have to work on my stalking skills.

      “You know, in 1879, a penny was worth a lot more.” Squeezing the box, I recalled exactly how many pennies had been involved in its purchase. I walked to the cool cement wall that overlooked the grounds and leaned against it with my side. I opened my hand in front of Allie.

      With tear-rimmed eyes, she touched the faded blue velvet.

      “I saved every penny I made for months, and with a loan from your parents, I bought our wedding rings. These are the set we were to exchange the day of the wedding. Your family wanted me to let you wear yours to the grave, but I couldn’t allow it. They didn’t know you weren’t in that pine box.” I stared into the sky.

      Guys don’t cry, Pop always said.

      I let the light breeze dry the moisture building in my eyes. “If what that lunatic told me about our curse was true, I wanted the rings to be available to you in a later life, if we could beat her. I wanted to believe you were floating around out there somewhere waiting for me.”

      She slid the top off the ring box and stared at the twinkling diamond and our matching wedding bands in silent awe. The wind blew her hair and the breeze brought the light scent of her perfume to me.

      “We have a love story even Shakespeare can’t top,” she said sadly. “I just hope it doesn’t turn into a tragedy.”

      “I’ll do my best not to let it, but please remember, I’m not one of Shakespeare’s heroes. I’m far from perfect. I have something to tell you that’s going to upset you. I would have proposed to you just now and slid that ring back on your finger where it belongs, but in our past experiences, you have a pretty good throwing arm. Especially when

Скачать книгу