"I'll bet her fella didn't make her install a man cave." She sent a fake pout toward Dick. I wasn't sure what was going on there, and I didn't have the heart to tell Andrea that the whole valley was basically one big man cave.
"A bet is a bet, woman," Dick grumbled.
I giggled, closing the door, mentally estimating how long it would take Caleb to run here to meet our new friends. Friends. Family. Home. Three words I hadn't thought I would ever be able to attach to my life again, before I'd come here, to this valley full of werewolves. And now I had all three.
Life, for the moment, was very, very good.
Turn the page to read the next sexy, spooky, laugh-out-loud paranormal romance from Molly Harper . . .
Better Homes and Hauntings
Coming in summer 2014 from Pocket Books
Nina had been through much worse than seasickness in the past year. Near-bankruptcy. Identity theft. Stolen garden tools. This was going to be an adventure, she promised herself. Nina knew she should walk over and say hello to the others. They were going to be working and living together on the Crane's Nest property for the next few months, until the renovations were over. But at the moment, she could only concentrate on keeping her breakfast down.
The boat hit a particularly rough wave, pitching Nina back against the cabin. She moaned, bending at the knees and propping her arms against her thighs.
A smooth, tanned hand appeared at the corner of Nina's vision, bearing brightly wrapped candies. She startled, drawing up to her full height, and swayed. The other hand steadied her at the elbow. "Whoa, there," a male voice said, a laughing lilt to his soothing tone.
"Sorry about that," Nina groaned, squinting up at the owner of the outstretched hand.
"Seasick, huh?" he said, eyeing her sympathetically over the rims of his mirrored aviators.
"Ever since I was a kid," she said, and glared at the water glittering in the distance. "I ruined every family fishing trip. My brother always told me it would help to keep my eye on the horizon. But I think my brother is a dirty liar."
"Try these," he said, pressing a few foiled candies into her clammy palm. "Ginger drops. They'll help your stomach. And as far as the horizon goes, I think it's better to concentrate on more immediate surroundings.
"Jake Rumson," he said, offering his hand. "I'm the architect who's supposed to be undoing the mess we're getting into."
"Nina," she said. "Linden."
"Like the tree," he said, smiling. "You're with Demeter Designs."
"Like the tree, exactly," she said, a genuine grin breaking through her uneasy expression. She tamped it down quickly. "Not everybody catches that."
"I cheated," Jake whispered, the smooth façade melting a bit to reveal a naughty schoolboy smile. "I got a look at the staff list ahead of time. You're the landscape architect and you're named after a tree and bam-instant mnemonic device."
"Do you use little tricks like that often?" she asked, sipping the water.
"Well, those two made it easy," Jake said, nodding toward Ben and Cindy, the blond bombshell sunning on the deck. "I didn't need a device to remember Ben Grandy. I was a big fan of his when he played at UConn. Damn shame what happened to his knee-his scholarship, future career, and all that."
Nina nodded. "But he's done well. Even without a degree, he's built a good business for himself. He has a really solid reputation around town. You hired the right person."
"Well, what do you know about Cindy Ellis over there?" Jake asked. "She owns the Cinderella Cleaning Service."
"Never heard of her." Nina lifted her brow. "She's a maid?"
Deacon Whitney, the insanely rich twenty-eight-year-old who'd hired all of them, had never mentioned anything about a maid.
"Not exactly. Ms. Ellis-as she insists I call her-runs a sort of maid-slash-organizational guru service. She cleans and installs these crazy storage systems in some of the swankiest family-owned estates in Rhode Island. Ms. Ellis can organize, store, and reset those furnishings on a seasonal system that even the dumbest millionaire could figure out."
"Are you saying we're working for a dumb millionaire?" Nina asked, the corners of her lush mouth tilting up.
Jake snorted, grinning at her over the rims of his aviators. "First of all, Whit's a billionaire. And second, it wasn't his idea to hire her. The Crane's Nest has been virtually looted by various generations of Whitneys over the years, but there are bound to be a few valuables tucked away where the relatives' enterprising little paws couldn't reach. The family is demanding that Whit catalogue every item of historical or monetary value and save it so that they can do battle over them later."
"So is that why Mr. Whitney wants us to stay on the island full-time? So his relatives can't interfere or influence us?"
Jake carefully considered his response to the question. There were a lot of factors in Deacon Whitney's decision, many of which he had discussed at length with Jake. Whit wanted to be each contractor's first priority until the job was completed. He wanted to prevent the contractors from being distracted by other clients' demands. But his chief concern was the fact that there had already been several false starts to the renovations: he'd lost several contractors and workmen to "frayed nerves," to put it politely. Deacon's theory was that if he could keep the contractors from returning home from the island every night, he wouldn't have to worry about whether they'd lose the nerve to come back in the morning.
A lifelong friend of Deacon's family, Jake had spent the occasional afternoon on Whitney Island over the years and could have listed the strange occurrences, even without the paper-pale vendors stuttering out their tales of terror: Angry thumping footsteps on the stairway between the second and third floors, strange shifting shadows that darted around at the corners of one's eyes. The overwhelming sense that someone was watching you. The smell of rosewater in upstairs bedrooms where no one had sprayed perfume in decades. And of course, the sound of a woman's weeping coming from the widow's walk. He'd experienced all of this and more as Deacon's guest on Whitney Island. And he hated every minute he spent there. But if his best friend in the world wanted him to lie through his teeth so he could resurrect that beautiful, cursed shell of a house, Jake would do it with a smile on his face.
"No, but that's just one more pro for the list," he said, offering her his most charming grin. "Whit wants to finish the project as quickly as possible, and the best way to do that is have your full attention and have the team stay within shouting distance in case there are problems."
Nina chanced a look out at the waves and caught a glimpse of the house they'd come to restore. The Crane's Nest rose out of the water like a drowned debutante, her fine lines eroded and obscured, tangling into the overgrown green expanse of Whitney Island. Nina could see evidence of what had once been an exacting geometric landscaping plan leading up to the rounded porte cochere that hid the massive front doors in a dark cavernous maw. The gardens were long past feral, dry withered grass strangling the remains of statuary and rosebushes. The façade of the house consisted of three levels, a loggia flanked by two-story wings leading into the main structure. The stories were marked by rows of windows, their dark surfaces reminding Nina of the blank stare of dolls' eyes. A ring of tall chimneys crowned a flat slate roof, echoing the pattern of blunt cornices extending from the porte cochere.
Squinting in the glaring afternoon light, Nina traced the line of the roof with her eyes, admiring the wrought iron railing that enclosed the widow's walk. There was potential for a terrace garden there, from what she'd seen of the pictures. She was trying to estimate the roof's square footage when a feminine figure stepped to the wrought iron boundary. Nina gasped. A cold wave of nausea washed through her as the dark shape stared down at the approaching boat. For a moment, Nina thought she could make out the lines of an old-fashioned gown, a slim waist, long, dark twists of hair blowing in the wind. But there was no detail to the face or form, only shadow. Nina shivered and braced herself against the bow, taking deep breaths. When she looked up at the roof again, the figure was gone.
Everybody knew the story of the Crane's Nest and the tragic death of its mistress. It was an urban legend among the local kids who grew up on the outskirts of Newport. Townies like Nina, who spent her time on the less picturesque stretches of beach trying to avoid the summer people, grew up hearing tales of the wailing ghost of Catherine Whitney who wandered the halls of the Crane's Nest, searching for her killer, her lost treasure, a hidden illegitimate baby . . . The details varied depending on who was telling the story. It was a common dare among the high schoolers to go to the island and spend the night at the house. Very few kids managed to make it as far as Whitney Island without getting spooked and speeding back to the mainland. This led to a belief that the island was cursed, and no boat would moor on it.
Nina had lived in Newport for most of her life and this was the first time she'd ever laid eyes on the place. So it was only natural that her fertile imagination would bring the tortured ghost of Catherine Whitney to life after growing up on those stories. Right?