Mark of Damon by Eva Chase Page 0,26

her in farewell. “Glad to have done business with you.”

She drove out, the gate clanged shut behind her, and I was left in the hot mid-afternoon sun. I ambled along the garage’s car ports to my next—and final—sales project. Rose had asked me to find new homes for three of her father’s vehicles: the Bentley I’d seen off a few days ago, the Jag now gone, and the Audi currently parked at the end of the row. It’d been easier to focus on the advertisements and vetting buyers one at a time.

When that last one sold, I wasn’t sure how Rose would handle the garage staff. She’d only have the Buick she preferred to drive, the other guys’ vehicles, and my Triumph around. I’d already taken over as the garage manager for the estate late last year, but there were still a couple of assistants who came around part time because Rose hadn’t wanted to leave all the work to me. There wouldn’t be anywhere near enough work for even one guy once most of the classic cars with their specialized needs were gone.

I turned around to head back to my apartment, and my feet stalled against the asphalt. A tall, angular figure was standing by the port that held Jin’s Honda, wiping his oil-stained hands on a rag, his jaw shadowed with a familiar hint of a ruddy beard.

Dad.

My heart lurched, and the image vanished. I swiped my hand over my eyes, but no one was standing there at all. The assistants weren’t on the property today anyway. My mind was pulling tricks on me.

I hesitated there for a moment longer as if he might reappear, might actually be here. As if I didn’t know with every particle of my being how impossible that was. When nothing came but a waft of warm wind with the scent of freshly mown grass, I propelled myself into motion.

By the time I’d climbed the narrow steps to the garage-top apartment, my pulse had just about evened out from the strange vision. I stepped into the living room—and the rich smell of dark roast coffee flooded my nose. A spoon clinked in a mug. Black with one sugar; can’t get better than that.

The voice seeped up distantly from my memory, but there was nothing distant about that smell or the sound or the form ambling into the doorway, eyes crinkling with the fond smile I’d only ever seen aimed at me. My heart stuttered all over again. Dad gave me an encouraging nod as he raised his mug to his lips, and with the next blink of my eyes, he and every trace of him wisped away as if they’d never existed.

Fuck. Was this what the other guys had been talking about—the overwhelming memories that had hit them out of nowhere? They hadn’t mentioned seeing just a single person, but I’d definitely never experienced an echo of the past anywhere near that vivid.

I yanked my eyes away, only to have my gaze jar on Dad, yet again, sitting on the black-and-green striped sofa bent over an engine schematic he’d laid out on the birch coffee table. My mind was reeling now. I took a step toward him, my voice coming out in a croak. “Dad?”

My voice broke the illusion. That version of him snuffed out, and all at once the room around me blurred. Blurred into the dingy wallpaper and shabby furnishings of the living room in the apartment we’d moved to in town, after Mr. Hallowell’s abrupt firing. To my dad sprawled at the edge of the rug, the pool of blood around his head soaking into the thin yellow fabric—

My breath shot from my lungs as if I’d been kicked in the chest, the same way it had when I’d been faced with this scene in reality over ten years ago. I closed my eyes, clamping my mouth shut before more of the metallic bloody odor could lace my tongue, and willed the whole mess away.

None of it was real now. I didn’t want to see Dad—not like that, not like when we’d lived here, not at all. I’d accepted a long time ago that I was moving on without him.

When I looked again, the room had reverted back to the same old apartment. I prowled through the space, tentatively and then more briskly, checking the kitchen and the two bedrooms, braced for another apparition.

No more sign of Dad. Apparently he was finished haunting me for the moment.

I stopped in the