Page 31 of Fight Or Flight

He didn’t follow.

“You can come in. Your jacket is just upstairs.”

He took a small step in, then another, looking around. “When I was ten, Adam told me this house was haunted.”

Natalie snorted a laugh. “Only for me.”

He looked like he wanted to comment but stopped himself. He took a few steps, bending to look into the parlour and the dining room. At the staircase, he took in the intricately carved design. “Impressive.”

She took a few steps up the stairs, then paused. She was going to leave him in the foyer while she retrieved the jacket. That way, she could just hand it over, say goodbye, and never have to look at his handsome, judgy face again. But she knew that would be rude. He was clearly interested in the old house, and no matter how high and mighty he was about saving the damn snakes, he didn’t deserve to be mistreated.

“Do you want a tour?”

His eyebrows inched up, and he tilted his head, as if deep in thought. “A tour?”

Good lord. It was a simple enough question. “Yeah, a tour around the house.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment, then a tiny smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Sure.”

She led him up the stairs, telling him all the little tidbits she had picked up over the months she’d lived there with Elizabeth. Guiding someone along was natural to her. She brought him to Elizabeth’s massive room and through the French doors to the third balcony that faced the orchards. Then to the sleeper porch on the east side of the house. And finally, to the third-storey turret.

Ethan stepped into the bright, round room and walked over to the centre window. “Yup,” he said, giving the glass a light tap. “This is the window the ghost was in.”

She laughed and walked over next to him, peering out. The window was high enough on the house that it could just be seen over the treetops from the street. “Your friend’s a real character, eh?”

“You don’t even know the half of it,” Ethan said with a laugh. “He started his own festival once.”

A laugh escaped. “I can only imagine what goes on at that festival. Did he say what the ghost looked like?”

“He just said ‘a ghost in a long white dress.’”

Natalie nodded. “Elizabeth used this as a sewing room. He probably saw a dress form with a nightgown on it . She was really short, so she did a lot of hemming.”

He turned and looked at her with a smile, and she noticed how his blue eyes were flecked with tiny bits of silver around the irises, and she counted the little wrinkles around his eyes that deepened with his smile.

There were four.

She was standing way too close to his face.

She took a big step to the side, then kept walking toward the stairs. “Come on, my room is this way,” she said, walking away and rolling her eyes at how that came out.

He followed her down the stairs, through the long hall, and finally to an open door. She walked in, grabbed his jacket from the chair, and handed it to him. “Thanks again. You were a lifesaver.”

“My pleasure,” he said, looking down at it without moving.

She was about to tell him to take his jacket and his calm, attractive demeanour and his beautifully crinkly eyes and leave when he looked up at her. He opened his mouth, as if he was going to say something, then paused again, before finally saying, “Would you like to go on an actual tour?”

Natalie stared at him for a beat. Was he asking her out?

“An actual tour?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, shuffling his feet. “You like waterfalls, right?”

“Yes . . .”

“I thought we could go waterfalling,” he said, with an awkward wave.

“Waterfalling.”

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