said. It struck him as odd that he hadn’t really thought about what had happened to Rose after the flowers had been planted. She’d probably ended up back at Oak Hall because Thomas Howland, the son of a pirate, had founded the family empire.
Which meant little Jackie was Captain Teal’s great-something-grandson. It was enough to make Topher smile as he thumbed through the rest of the letters, scanning them.
“I’m not sure we’re going to find any maps to a buried treasure here,” he said.
“It’s okay,” the kid said. “Just take a picture of this one.” He pointed to the letter he’d pulled from the stack of pages.
“Sure, why?”
“’Cause it’s proof that the ghost exists.”
“Um, I’m not sure it exact—”
“It does. She says she doesn’t want to leave the island ’cause she’s close to him here. I don’t think the ghost can go much farther than the oak tree. I mean, he was here a minute ago, but kind of thin and transparent.”
Topher bit his tongue before he said the word “invisible.” “Um, Jackie, it doesn’t exactly say that. It—”
“Just take the picture.”
Oh, great. Ashley wasn’t going to be happy about this sudden turn. But Topher took out his cell phone and snapped a photo of the letter anyway.
* * *
Friday found Jessica sitting at her desk working on Topher’s house as she tried, somewhat futilely, to keep her mind from rewinding to that moment last night when he’d touched her cheek.
And ignited a totally unwanted fire within her. She did not want to find Topher Martin attractive. She was not even the slightest bit curious about what it might be like to kiss him. She did not want to have a fling with him.
He was her client. She needed to focus on what he wanted in a house design, and nothing else. So she edited that moment out of her thoughts and focused exclusively on what he’d talked about last night: a large house in a Carolina Coastal style.
She drew inspiration from MeeMaw’s house, and that was enough to kick-start her creativity.
The first question was whether Topher could manage an elevated house. He’d certainly made it up the stairs to her door. Twice. So she jettisoned her concerns about that, along with Ashley’s warnings, and started her plans with a house up on stilts, with a backup elevator that would run on emergency generator power in a pinch.
Once Topher got up into his house, all the living space would be on one level. It would have a wraparound veranda with a portion screened off that could be used for a parlor or a sleeping porch, which would give him plenty of guest bedroom space in the summers without trying to build a house with a gigantic footprint or even the five bedrooms he wanted. Three would be enough, and one of them would have two built-in bunk beds and could sleep four.
She planned to use Southern cypress, a hardwood that was locally grown and sustainable, and the design would incorporate passive solar heating and cooling, a rainwater collection system, and special windows and hurricane shutters to withstand storms.
She was deep into the details, consulting local flood plain, beach, and residential building codes, when her telephone rang, jolting her back to the real world. She snatched up the phone, hoping that it might be Topher. She was filled with enthusiasm for the project and couldn’t wait to share her ideas.
But it was Hillary.
“Hey,” she said, connecting the line.
“Hi. I was just checking up on you. I haven’t heard from you in a couple of days, and the last time we talked, you were kind of freaked out.”
“I’m less freaked out now. But it has been a crazy few days.”
“So? What happened?”
Jessica got up from her desk and stretched her legs, moving to the front windows, which provided a view of Harbor Drive. The business district was busy today and would get busier tomorrow, what with all the sailors in town for the boat races.
“For starters, I went back to talk to Topher, and I ended up saving his life.”
“What?”
Jessica filled her friend in on Topher’s narrowly averted swimming disaster, followed by Ashley’s attempted intervention, and then her confrontation with Topher the day he’d dropped by her house unannounced.
“He thought I’d been sent away to have a baby,” Jessica said.
“What?”
“I gather that’s what everyone thinks.”
Hillary laughed.
“You think it’s funny?”
“Yeah, sort of, seeing as you were probably the only virgin at Longwood Academy.”
Jessica’s face heated. “Well, I certainly got an education there.”