Ever After (Nantucket Brides 3)

“Me too,” Jamie said and they started back to enter the house through the sunporch. Hallie picked up the unfinished embroidery she’d seen the first day. “I could swear that more of this has been completed.”

Reaching into his pocket, Jamie pulled out his cell phone and took a photo of the embroidery. “If it changes again, we’ll have a record of it.” As Hallie put the hoop back on the sofa, he quickly snapped a couple of photos of her.

“What was that for?”

“To send home to the relatives. You’re the woman who keeps begging me to take my clothes off.”

“You aren’t really going to say that, are you? Your mother will think I’m—”

“Trying to help me recover and she’ll thank you.” He was smiling.

As they went into the kitchen, she said, “Why didn’t you stay at home with your family and do your therapy there?”

“What can I say? They wanted to get rid of me.”

Hallie started to ask more, but he strode ahead of her, opened the fridge, and began to talk rapidly. “How about giant sandwiches and four kinds of salad? You know how to make lemonade? I like mine with less sugar and maybe we can find some club soda to add. Ah! Here’s—”

She didn’t listen to the rest of what he said because she knew he was just filling the air with words. Obviously, he didn’t want to answer her question, so she backed off.

While they made the sandwiches they chatted easily, laughing at themselves for believing there were ghosts living in the house.

“If they were here, they wouldn’t need locked doors,” Hallie said. “They could float through the walls.”

“So what do you think ol’ Henry Bell has locked away in that room that he didn’t want anyone to see?” Jamie bit into his sandwich.

“Oh, please, I hope it’s not porn.”

“What’s secret about that? It’s all over the Internet. Any kind you can imagine, it’s all there. I’ve seen—” He broke off. “Not that I know for sure, but my brother Todd—he’s a law enforcement officer—told me about it.”

Hallie laughed. “Todd the Educator and Jamie the Pure. But maybe Henry was old school and thought porn was something to be hidden away. I haven’t checked if there’s Wi-Fi in the house.”

“What about cross-dressing?” Jamie said. “The room could be full of his dress-up clothes.”

Hallie frowned. “When we get the doors open, I really hope we don’t find anything hideous and especially not illegal in there. Why do you sleep downstairs?”

Because Jamie was still thinking of the possible contents of the locked room, he almost blurted out the truth. But he caught himself. “It seemed the right thing to do. I was going to be alone in the house with a young lady. It wouldn’t be good for her reputation for us to be so close.”

“Reputation. I haven’t heard that word since I last saw my grandparents. In this world of one-night stands, who worries about a woman’s reputation?”

“All those girls who get nude photos of themselves posted on the Internet. I think they’re starting to make laws about that. I read that…”

Hallie blinked at him. And are you changing the subject again? she thought. It looked like she’d hit on yet another one of his secrets. How many was that? About a hundred? She reminded herself that he was her patient, not her boyfriend.

She picked up her empty plate and carried it to the sink. If he kept secrets, so could she. For one thing, she wasn’t going to tell him what went on between them during the night. Nor was she going to mention that she knew his sleep was drug-induced. What she wanted to do was try to stop both the drugs and the night terrors. “I want you to move upstairs,” she said.

“And why would you want that?” He was still sitting at the table.

She’d expected him to do more sexual teasing, but he didn’t. Instead, he sounded as though he was about to refuse—and she could guess why. He knew about his nightmares, but he didn’t want her to know. He wanted to keep his male ego intact and make her think there was nothing wrong with him.

She wanted to be near him so she could soothe him during the night, then get back to her own bed. There would be no more sleeping on the couch or with him. And the bigger bed upstairs would eliminate the danger of his falling onto the floor.

But Hallie was sure that if she told him the truth, he might…What? Leave? That was possible. Any man who had nightmares like his needed help and Hallie planned to give it to him.

She turned back to him. “I, uh, well…I, uh…”

He looked at her. “What are you trying to say?”

“This ghost thing kind of…Well, it scares me. Earlier you said that my lack of fear made you like me more, so now I’m worried that you’ll like me less.”