Molly Harper - Better Homes and Hauntings

Cindy growled. “I can’t even talk to you when you’re like this!”

“Like what?”

“All arrogant and jackassy.”

“ ‘Jackassy’ isn’t even a word,” he retorted.

Cindy snagged a container of grout cleaner and turned on him with murder in her eyes. Now that Jake thought about it, his correcting the way she insulted him might be the reason Cindy didn’t want to go out with him.

THE SUN BEAT down on Nina’s shoulders, a pleasant burn that soaked into her skin and chased away the pervasive chill that had plagued her since she’d stepped onto Whitney Island. Perched on her knees, clearing gnarled weeds from the base of the water fountain, with the sound of the waves in the distance and the sun on her back, Nina felt she could breathe deeply for the first time in months.

As intimidating as it was to be so isolated, it also gave Nina a measure of freedom. She was too far from the mainland for her creditors to reach her. Rick and his cronies couldn’t influence what happened to her here. She could finally relax and enjoy getting her hands dirty again.

The six-man day crew she’d hired had arrived at first light to start clearing away the overgrowth. They’d ferried over that morning with the construction crew, who were swarming the interior of the main house like little worker bees. The construction team was headed by Anthony LaRossa, a sweet old bear of a man who smelled like peppermint candies and Old Spice and had big, fluffy gray eyebrows that came down over his eyes when he spoke.

Anthony had barely recovered from triple-bypass surgery the year before and was therefore the only key member of the staff who was allowed to stay off-island, so he could be near his cardiologist. With his loud, booming laugh and heartfelt promises to direct his crew’s footsteps away from her flower beds, Nina was sure Anthony was going to be her favorite coworker. Or, at minimum, he would be the least crazy.

To be fair, she’d seen more of Anthony than she had of the other island residents all day. Although he’d promised a meeting with “Team Crane” over breakfast, Mr. Whitney had received some sort of important business call around seven that morning and hadn’t been seen since. Jake was holed up in the main house’s library, reviewing blueprints. Cindy had been called away by her crew with questions about furniture for the guest rooms.

Nina’s first night as a resident of Whitney Island had not been a momentous one. Dinner had been a stilted, uncomfortable affair, with the team seated around the long dining table in the men’s dorm, scarfing down takeout Japanese food that Jake had ferried across from the mainland in a cooler. Jake had tried valiantly to get a conversation going, bringing up Deacon’s love for a particular sashimi bar in Boston near EyeDee’s corporate headquarters and funny stories from Jake’s family’s travels to Kyoto when he was a teenager. But Cindy had glumly picked at her food—when she wasn’t narrowing her eyes at Jake in suspicion.

And Nina had studiously kept her head bent over her plate, unable to make eye contact with Deacon, who was staring at her as if she was some sort of puzzle he was trying to unlock. Maybe he didn’t like people who threw up on his fancy boat? But considering that the ink on their contract was of the nonerasable variety, he could just deal with it until she made an actual termination-worthy error. At which point, Nina would be screwed and possibly homeless.

Right, moving on to a plan that involved making nice with her new boss and not ending up fired and homeless. She would be as personable and professional as possible, and Deacon would have no choice but to love her work. She would stop seeing imaginary shadow people. And she would stop reacting to the island and the people on it like one big exposed nerve.

“It would be a cliché for me to complain that this is what I use as bait to catch real food, right?” Cindy had whispered to Nina. “I mean, I like fish, but I’m more a beer-batter sort of gal.”

“Yes, yes, it would,” she’d whispered back. “But I brought the makings for blueberry waffles and my own waffle iron. And yes, I do consider waffle ingredients to be basic survival gear. So if you can hold out until the morning, I can arrange carb compensation.”

“You’re a good woman, and one day, people will write songs about you,” Cindy had said, poking halfheartedly at her green dragon roll.

Nina had made an airy gesture with her hands. “Yes, the Ballad of the Waffle-teer.”

Cindy giggled, making Nina snicker. And when she’d looked up, Deacon was staring at her again. Gah!

Deacon had seemed to thaw a bit when the group started making checklists and plans—cooking rotations, the shower schedule, a “first-day to-do list” to determine exactly how over their heads they were with this project. So they’d finished dinner and settled down to brass tacks, each presenting his or her immediate plans for the house—stabilizing or rehabbing the interior structures, salvaging what few furnishings and antiques were left—and how they would work around one another to prevent delays and hissy fits involving power tools and garden implements.

Curled in her solitary iron bed that night, Nina had dreamed she was pulling the sheets tight over her mattress. The feather-tick mattress was hers. The sheets were hers. But the arms stretching out in front of her belonged to someone else. A large diamond flanked by sapphires winked on her ring finger. The sleeves of her dress were a beautifully embroidered blue muslin, with silver stitching at the cuffs. The soft white hands smoothed the counterpane. She was pleased that she was able to provide clean, comfortable rooms for her staff. She knew how hard the servants worked to keep a home running. And while she certainly didn’t need to make up the beds, she found a certain satisfaction in seeing to them herself. She could walk down the rows of rooms, seeing a freshly made bed in each, and know that she’d done something productive with her day. Besides, the servants wouldn’t arrive for a few days anyway. And it seemed inhospitable to welcome them to their new home with bare beds.

She bent over the far corner of the mattress, tucking the sheet tightly. And when she rose, she felt a large hand slide down the small of her back and give her backside a pinch. She squealed, and another hand clapped around her mouth, pressing her back against a broad male chest.

“Well, look at what I found here,” a seductive voice whispered against her ear. “A pretty piece of skirt already bent over the bed.”

A thrill of fear rippled up her spine as those hands slipped around her hips and pressed her bum against his solid frame. Teeth closed gently over her earlobe, tugging insistently. She relaxed into the masculine embrace, sighing as the mouth moved from her ear to her neck. The hand cupped her chin, tilting her head back toward him. The scene changed, and instead of a bright, sunlit room, she was outside in the dark, with the wind whipping at her skirts. The grip around her throat tightened, squeezing the breath from her lungs. She scratched and coughed and fought, but he was just too strong.

Suddenly, the pressure at her throat disappeared. She was falling, tumbling through space until she was underwater, watching waves roll over her head. She tried to swim to the surface, but she was held in place by growing pressure around her legs, tugging her down like an anchor, crawling up her body like greedy, grasping hands until it settled around her throat. She reached upward, trying to claw her way toward air, toward light, but was unable to make any progress. Now she saw herself, her arm extended over her head in a mockery of a ballerina’s pose. Her delicate blue muslin sleeve fluttered against the water, and she stared at its motion as it slowly turned brown and disintegrated with age. The sleeve rotted away, leaving a grotesque, decaying limb behind, sloughing and dissolving until all that was left were bleached ivory bones reaching up toward the light.