Page 5 of The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street
I gasped as his teeth found my earlobe. “You better not be practicing dialogue for your book.”
He continued nibbling at the delicate skin of my ear. “I do like to re-create dialogue as authentically as possible.” He used his hands topress me back against his chest, his interest in things other than dialogue apparent.
Although most of my brain cells were rapidly jumping ship, some of them clung to the memory of my earlier conversation with Anthony Longo. “So, the book’s going well?”
His tongue did interesting flicking motions that he knew I loved against the area behind my ear. “Uh-huh.”
“No more writer’s block?”
“Nuh-uh,” Jack said, blowing warm air on the damp skin, which nearly undid me. But, like a dog with a bone, I couldn’t let go of Anthony’s words.
“So, no problems with your new agent or publisher?”
He lifted his head, turning me around to face him. “Why are you asking?”
“Because...” I searched for something that was as close to the truth as possible so I couldn’t be accused of avoidance later if this conversation ever came back to haunt me. “Because I was thinking this morning how happy I am to be living in this house with you and our family, and with my parents and your parents so close by. How I can’t wait to see our children grow up in this house. I was just wanting to know if we’re okay financially. I mean, I have a fairly good idea of what’s in the bank accounts and what we have in investments, but I just want to make sure I’m not missing something. I don’t know if I could take another scare like we had before, and I don’t want to ask Nola to bail us out again. It’s not fair to her.”
Jack’s eyes became serious. “Since we agreed to be completely honest with each other, I’ll tell you that we’re doing okay. If we keep to the budget you and I worked out, and this book does as well as my publisher expects, we might even be able to get ahead. My mother insisting on paying for Nola’s tuition at Ashley Hall has been a huge help, and those two big sales you made last month were instrumental in putting us solidly in the black. You know you are more than welcome to go in my desk drawer where I keep all of our financial records. Honesty, remember?”
I nodded, my gaze slipping down to his lips, both because I couldn’t meet his eyes and because his lips were so much more interesting than the conversation. “So we wouldn’t need the money Marc’s throwing in our faces for us to agree to film his movie here.”
“Not right now. That could change, of course, but I’d rather have all the unpleasant ghosts you’ve gotten rid of come back to rattle their chains than agree to that.”
My eyes shot back to meet his. “Don’t say that out loud. You never know who might be listening.”
Cocking his head to the side just like JJ did when watching Sarah babble at shadowy corners, Jack said, “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Maybe.”
He quirked an eyebrow.Just one more week,I thought to myself. Just one more week of domestic peace and contentment. One more week to get my life in order before I would attempt to discover what was lurking in my backyard. And who, or what, had taken up residence in Nola’s bedroom.
“‘Maybe’?” Jack repeated.
“I can’t tell you about your Christmas present. Or am I not allowed to keep it a secret?”
He kissed me softly on the lips. “You can try. But I have ways of finding out all of your secrets.”
“Do you, now?” I asked.
His phone, left on the counter, beeped. He glanced at it expectantly before turning back to me, but not before I’d seen the shadow of disappointment cloud his eyes.
“Who was it?” I asked, although what I really needed to know was who itwasn’t. Right before we’d discovered that Marc had stolen Jack’s book idea and had already signed a huge publishing deal, Jack’s agent and editor had stopped returning his phone calls. For the second time that day, alarm bells began clanging inside my head.
He paused for a moment before answering. “It was my mother. I’ll call her back.”
“Were you expecting someone el—” I began, my words swallowed by his kiss.
“Let’s find out if this dress is waterproof.” His words were muffled against my neck as he dragged me into the shower, my senses perilously close to abandoning me completely, but still clinging to me enough to make me wonder what he was avoiding telling me.
•••
Women’s voices came from inside my mother’s Legare Street house as I pushed open the front door. The house had belonged to her family for generations, our ownership interrupted for a few years by a Texas junkyard millionaire following my parents’ divorce. My formerly estranged mother, retired opera diva Ginette Prioleau, and Sophie were still working hard to erase the “creative touches” inflicted on the house by the previous owner, but at least the house was now back in the family. My mother had remarried my father on the same day I’d married Jack, and my parents now appeared to be living in marital bliss in the home in which I was born and had lived for the first six years of my life.
I followed the voices to the front parlor, where the glorious floor-to-ceiling stained glass window sparkled in the morning sunshine. A few years before, Jack and I had discovered the secret hidden in the glass that led us to unraveling an old family mystery, but now all I could see was the beauty of the window and the way it seemed to draw me into the parlor. Or maybe it was because of the sudden drop in temperature or the slight scent of Vanilla Musk.
There were about fifteen women seated in the parlor on the sofas and chairs, the furniture recently having been rescued from the leopard and zebra prints it had been forced to wear by the former occupants and now re-covered in historically accurate (and contemporarily expensive) damask and silk upholstery in shades of cream and pale blue.
I knew I’d find Veronica Farrell in the group even before I caught sight of her red hair. The presence of her dead sister’s perfume had already alerted me that she’d be there, although I was surprised to find her at the Ashley Hall Christmas Progressive Dinner fund-raiser meeting.Her daughter, Lindsey, was a close friend and classmate of Nola’s, but ever since I’d flat-out refused to help her communicate with her deceased sister, Adrienne—and then been more or less threatened by her husband, Michael, to let it be—I hadn’t seen her. Even at school functions, we always seemed to be on opposite sides of the room, although I could never be sure by whose design.
