A Valentine Wish (Gates-Cameron 1)

“Aunt Mae, please. Don’t worry about me. You know how I am when I get interested in something. It consumes me for a while. That’s what made me such a workaholic before. We’ve even talked about how I’d probably do the same thing with the inn that I’ve done with my other jobs.”

She nodded against his shoulder. “It’s what makes you so successful at whatever you do,” she admitted. “You give it everything you have. But this ghost story—”

“Part of the inn’s history,” he reminded her. “A very notorious part. If there’s any chance the legend will affect my success, one way or another, I want to be prepared.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Mae conceded doubtfully.

“Sure it does. I just want to ask a few more questions, find out everything I can, and then I’ll forget all about it and concentrate on running the best inn and restaurant in all of central Arkansas,” he assured her.

Not that he expected to forget about Mary Anna Cameron. Ever. But he saw no need to mention that particular obsession.

His aunt was worried enough.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, setting her gently away from him, “I’m going to concentrate on nothing but the inn for the rest of the day. It’s time I start pulling down those decrepit outbuildings before someone gets hurt.”

“I wish you’d let the workers you hired take care of that,” Mae fretted. “You’re the one who could get hurt.”

“I’ll be careful. Remember how we discussed that the more work we do ourselves, the more we can save on the total cost of renovations?”

“You aren’t running low on funds, are you, Dean?”

He made a face. “It’s taking everything I have,” he admitted. “But there’s enough left to finish. Let’s just hope business is brisk enough to keep us in beans and rice for the first year of business.”

She smiled. “I’m sure you’re exaggerating, but I do hope business goes well. Do try not to antagonize all the locals, will you, dear?”

“I’ll try, Aunt Mae,” he agreed, though he couldn’t promise he wouldn’t further infuriate the Peavys. Not if it meant clearing the twins’ names.

LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Dean was working in a small, eight-by-ten shed that might once have been used for storing gardening equipment. Though not in as poor shape as the shack at the end of the garden path, this building, too, had been allowed to fall into disrepair. Dean and the building contractor had agreed that it would be easier to tear it down and build a new garden shed than to try to restore this one.

It wasn’t a difficult job. Basically, the building consisted of four wooden walls and a rough wooden floor. A window had been cut into one side wall, the glass long gone. A round vent hole, covered with a battered shutter, had been cut high into the back wall. The door was a simple, hinged sheet of plywood with a rusty padlock that no longer closed. Dean took that down first, and then started ripping off the rusted tin that covered the low, flat plywood roof.

He stopped only once during the next hour, when his aunt summoned him inside for a telephone call. The telephone discussion with a plumbing-supplies distributor took some twenty minutes. Afterward, Dean went into the kitchen for a drink of water, then returned to the shed, hoping to get at least halfway through the job that afternoon.

When the tin from the roof was stacked in a pile to be taken to a salvage yard, he moved inside the shed to decide where to start next. He sneezed as dust hovered in the air around him, disturbed by his work.

A hairy black spider scuttled across the toe of his work boot; he left it alone. His sister had an almost phobic fear of spiders, but Dean had never shared her aversion to them. Nor had he ever ridiculed her because of it.

The thought of Bailey made him wistful. He missed her. He wished she were here with him now.

Bailey was the only person he knew who might understand if he told her about Anna. It wasn’t that Bailey had ever expressed an interest in the supernatural, but she had always believed Dean. Always.

He was almost tempted to call her and tell her everything. But something held him back. Maybe he was afraid that this time, Bailey would be as skeptical as he knew everyone else would be should he reveal his relationship with the long-dead Mary Anna Cameron.

Letting out a long, frustrated breath, he glanced upward. He noticed that someone had laid planks halfway across the open rafters, creating a loft of sorts. Had someone stored bags of fertilizer or mulch there? It seemed a logical supposition.

Just then, he heard a rustling noise from one corner of the makeshift loft. Grimacing, he glanced at the retreating spider and wondered if mice had also made their winter home in this shed. He didn’t mind the bugs so much, but mice were a different story.

Once, while Dean was exploring a horse-loving friend’s barn as a teenager, a mouse had run up the leg of his jeans. Dean had come out of those jeans right in front of three teenage girls and two male school pals, catching the mouse just as it reached sensitive territory. Since that incident, Dean had fought an unmanly temptation to jump on a chair every t

ime someone even said the word mouse.

He turned his back to the loft. Maybe he’d go back to work outside. By the time he’d removed most of the walls, any creature residing in the shack should have taken the hint and departed.

A scraping sound from above him caught his attention just as Mary Anna appeared in front of him. “Dean!” she cried, her voice distant and frantic. “Move!”

Instinctively, he ducked and threw himself forward. Something hard and heavy hit him across the right shoulder. Something so heavy he collapsed beneath it. Had he not been moving forward, it would have hit him squarely on the head.

Pain exploded from his injured shoulder and radiated through the rest of him as he landed jarringly on the dirty wooden floor. Whatever it was that had hit him now held him pinned. He was dimly conscious of a creaking noise from above him, and then a heavy thud that sounded as though it had come from just outside the shed. He hurt too much to try to figure out what he’d heard.