A Valentine Wish (Gates-Cameron 1)

ANNA STAMPED her foot as she glared at the man lying in the bed, pretending to be asleep. He didn’t hear her, just as he hadn’t heard anything she’d been trying to say to him since he’d lain back down.

“Give it up, Anna. He doesn’t even know you’re here,” her brother advised from her side.

She knew he was right, but it infuriated her that the man—Dean, she knew now—lay so close, yet so oblivious.

There had to be a reason he kept seeing her. She didn’t know what it was, but she was becoming more certain each time she tried to contact him that this man was special.

No one else had ever seen them more than once, no one else had seemed so affected by their appearance—even though Dean wouldn’t admit even to himself that he was seeing them. But she’d known from the first moment their eyes met that the key to her freedom was within this man’s grasp.

She’d been there in the dining room, heard the horrible lies that woman ... that bleached-blond scandal-monger... had told. She and Ian had heard the stories before, of course. Unseen, unheard, they had listened as others during the years had talked about the tragedy that had taken place here, reinforcing the lies that Stanley Tagert had apparently told that night.

Each time, Anna had reacted with fury and disbelief that no one had ever learned the truth. But tonight, hearing that woman telling her lies to Dean, Anna had been angrier than ever. Had she been able, she would have thrown the woman’s peach cobbler right into her overpainted face.

Somehow, she had to reach Dean. She had to convince him that none of the tales were true. That she and Ian had been murdered and their reputations maligned for all the years since.

If Dean could help them, if he could find some way to clear their names, identify their killer, then they could be free. It made such sense to her, despite her brother’s cynicism. It sounded exactly like something that would have happened in one of the novels Anna had so enjoyed reading in her youth.

If only she could make him understand.

Anna drifted closer to the bed, looking down at the bare-chested man beneath the covers. His eyes were closed, his breathing deep and even. He really was a very attractive man. His shoulders were broad, his chest solid, strong looking. He reminded her more of her brother than of her former fiancé, who had been fair-skinned and a bit soft. But Jeffrey had been very sweet and kind, she reminded herself quickly, feeling a little disloyal at her comparison. He would have made her an excellent husband.

That, too, had been denied her.

She reached out to the man in the bed. “Dean? Dean, can you hear me?”

Her fingertips brushed his face. An odd ripple of sensation went through her, reminding her of her childhood, when she and Ian had scuffed their shoes against the carpets and touched each other for the resulting static shock.

Dean frowned, brushed clumsily at his face, and rolled over onto his side without waking.

“He doesn’t know you’re here,” Ian repeated gently. “We have to go, Anna.”

She, too, felt the pull, the inexorable force that would take them away from the inn, to that silent, gray, empty place where they would drift with only each other for company until they could return again—whenever that might be.

She looked one last time at the man in the bed, wondering if he would still be here when she came back, or if he, too, would be part of the inn’s history by then.

Somehow, she thought he’d be here.

3

A spirit, yet a woman too!

—William Wordsworth

TO DEAN’S RELIEF, he didn’t see the ghostly woman again during the next few days. Work began in earnest on renovations, and the inn became a madhouse of activity, with carpenters, plumbers, electricians and decorators swarming through the place like hyperactive ants.

Amazing, Dean thought cynically, how the promise of a generous bonus could serve as an incentive for quick and efficient work.

He was using every penny of his life savings on this project. The financial risk he was taking would be staggering if he allowed himself to dwell on it—which he didn’t. Even bankruptcy would be better than the dull, grim, joyless routine he’d found himself living in Chicago.

The townspeople welcomed him quite warmly, on the whole. He was invited to join the chamber of commerce, the Rotarians, the Optimist Club, several local churches, and was even scouted out as a potential coach for Little League baseball, though he had to admit that he hadn’t had much experience with sports. Hunters and fishermen inquired about his prowess with a gun and a rod, but those sports had never appealed to him, either.

When asked what he did enjoy doing in his leisure time, he was sorely stumped for an answer. Truth was, he’d never had much leisure time, having spent most of his adult life determinedly working his way up the corporate ladder.

He was good-naturedly teased about his northern accent and mannerisms, indicating that the local residents liked a good joke. Well enough to have concocted his ghostly visitor lady? Dean couldn’t help wondering, though he still didn’t understand why no one had yet claimed credit for the gag.

Fortunately, his maternal grandparents had lived twenty miles south of Atlanta and Dean had visited them often during his youth, so he wasn’t totally ignorant of southern customs. He was a big fan of the “redneck” comedian, Jeff Foxworthy, and had been an avid Lewis Grizzard reader—he still mourned the loss of the late writer’s laconic, blunt, often startlingly insightful humor—so Dean could hold his own with the local jokesters. He thought he was going to fit in just fine here once he’d had a chance to get to know everyone, and vice versa.

He met more people each time he went into town for supplies or on other errands. He found himself scanning faces, surreptitiously studying the shoppers at Groceries-4-Less and the discount store, the customers in line at the Bank of Destiny and the post office and diners in the local fast-food restaurants. So far, he hadn’t caught a glimpse of a woman with dark hair, dark eyes and a face that had made his heart pound faster—and not from fear of ghosts.