The Rock Star's Baby Bargain - Lili Valente Page 0,36
myself to take a second look. When I do, I see the long brown face of a faded rocking horse, its yarn mane flopping in the breeze coming through the open attic window.
I exhale, shaking my head. “Yeah. It looks like a rocking horse. Though they could find a less eerie place to put it, couldn’t they?”
He hugs me to his side, his tone softening as he gazes down at my face. “You okay?”
“Fine.” I smile up at him, patting my belly. “Just hungry.”
“You sure?”
“Positive,” I lie, not wanting him to feel obligated to sleep with me in my room tonight. He needs his rest, and I’m a grown woman, not a child who doesn’t know the difference between a real threat and an imaginary one.
There’s probably no such thing as ghosts.
Probably…
Still, I can’t help but cling a little tighter to his hand as we start toward the house for dinner. I try to look on the bright side—I’ll have plenty of time to finish my book if I’m up all night unable to sleep—but I can’t help wishing I was going to be curled up with Zack in his bed.
He just makes me feel so…safe.
Which is also odd. People I don’t know well don’t usually make me feel safe—I don’t let them—but with every passing moment, Zack is feeling less and less like a stranger. We’re barely one day into our adventure, and already he feels like someone I can trust, a port in a storm, a good luck charm that wards off ghosts and all the other things that do their best to haunt a person.
Especially at the beginning of a new relationship.
This isn’t a relationship, I remind myself.
It isn’t, but that doesn’t keep me from enjoying Zack’s hand in mine and hoping that the next two weeks pass very, very slowly, ghosts and all.
Chapter Thirteen
Zack
Nancy puts dinner on the table and heads for the door with a knowing smirk.
“Really, we’d love for you to stay,” Colette insists for the third time. “There’s plenty for all of us. Jed, too, if he wants to come up and eat.”
“Jed doesn’t come up to the big house after dark,” Nancy says, gathering her jacket from the armchair closest to the back door.
Colette shrinks in her chair beside me—Nancy placed us both on the side of the table with the view of the yard so we could watch the stars come out during dessert. She insisted if we didn’t take at least two hours to eat, we were “doing life wrong.”
“Is it because of the…?” Colette’s finger drifts up to point toward the ceiling.
Nancy’s face remains blank for a long moment before she bursts into loud laughter. “Oh, no! Not at all. The spirits are a lot less active than Jed makes out. Ninety-nine percent of the time, no one sees or hears anything out of the ordinary. He just knows himself too well. If he made a habit of getting too friendly with the guests, he’d wear out his welcome. He never knows when to leave the party, you know?”
She reaches for the door but then pauses with her fingers on the handle. “But if you decide to go into town, give us a call. Jed would love to ferry you there and back again. Give him an excuse to hang out with his buddies at the hardware store. They have a secret bar in the back where they drink Pabst Blue Ribbon and take turns losing their paycheck over poker.”
“Sounds like a good time,” I say. “I’ll have to ask if I can tag along one night.”
“Can girls come, too?” Colette asks. “I’m pretty good at poker, if I do say so myself.”
“I’m sure they’d love to have you both,” Nancy says. “But fair warning. The rest of the guys are even chattier than Jed. You’ll be lucky if you can get a word in edgewise.”
Colette grins. “Good. The more they talk, the faster their money is my money.”
Nancy laughs. “Now you have to go play. I need to hear that story. You’ll be a legend in Little River in no time.” With a wave, she opens the door, disappearing into the sunset light with a final, “Good night.”
She closes the door behind her, and then there’s nothing to break the quiet but the occasional creak of the house settling and the caw of a crow outside on the lawn. Colette shrinks in her chair, making it clear she isn’t finding the silence as easy as I am.