“I overheard.”
“Maybe if I help her sort this out, she’ll get over the idea that she’s cursed. She dates somebody new every week,” he added, just in case Carrie misunderstood his intentions. “So, it’s clear she’s not interested in me, except as a friend. Maybe one of those guys will work out for her, and she’ll learn to be less reliant on me.”
Carrie headed toward the front door. Once there, she turned. “You actually seem to believe what you’re saying.”
“What’s not to believe?”
When she rolled her eyes, his heart hardened. He really was sick of this. Carrie Masterson was hardly the first woman to object to his relationship with Bridget. Every woman he’d dated expected to find him in bed with her—and never had. Funny, he thought now, most were less threatened by the idea of him and Bridge hitting the sheets than by their twenty-year friendship. That’s what should have unsettled them. But he was tired of playing the best friend. He was ready to give her up.
He eyed Carrie. She was the kind of woman who could have anyone she wanted—and she’d chosen him. She could make a nice home for a man, she was talented and sexy as hell. Once more, Bridget was helping him blow it. “Bridget and I have been close for years,” he found himself saying. “So, I need time.”
“To end the friendship, so you can move on?” Carrie kept her eyes on his. More softly, she said, “She’s getting in your way, Dermott.” As she opened the door, she added, “I almost believe you. Okay. One week. I’ll call your cell while you two are gone.” She flashed a smile, her dark eyes holding the promise of a future if he let go of Bridget. “You know, monitor your trip, Dermott.” Her eyes hardened. “But you need to put an end to this. It’s at a stalemate for you. No sex. No progression. Just her being a buddy, when other women want to give you so much more, Dermott.”
With that, Carrie swept across the threshold; the click of the door seemed to resound in the silence. Alone, Dermott pushed away a recollection of the shocked look on Bridget’s face when she’d caught him with his pants down. She’d actually fumbled in her bag, looking for her glasses to get a better look at Carrie before she realized they’d already met. Yeah, Bridget’s behavior had communicated sexual interest, but then, he’d seen that look at the Tiffany’s Christmas party, too, and on a thousand other occasions.
Carrie was right. Bridget would never allow that part of the relationship to progress. And the way he held on to the friendship made him look like a fool, not that he really cared what other people thought. Still, Carrie had underestimated his frustration. Bridget hadn’t been good for him. While most women treated him like a sexy male—Carrie was hardly the first he’d found naked—Bridget made him feel like a ghost, and while her clear blue eyes might haunt him, he wasn’t going to let her ruin any more of his chances.
Yeah, he was blowing out this torch. No matter what Bridget said or did, and no matter how much she tempted him, he wasn’t going to let her ignite any false hopes again. Yeah. Bridget Benning could rub her thin, sexy body all over him…she could even pull down his zipper, slip a warm hand inside and…
He sucked in a breath. Anyway, the point was, he wouldn’t give in to temptation. When they parted company a final time, he’d miss her like hell. He’d love her forever. But he had to move on. So, he was going to the Sunshine State, and by the time he returned, he and Bridget, just like the supposed ghosts of Hartley House, would be a closed chapter belonging to history.
2
Hartley House,
a dark and stormy night forty-eight hours later…
GETTING Dermott into bed wasn’t as easy as Bridget anticipated, but ever since she’d seen Carrie naked in his apartment, she’d decided she and her best buddy should at least try sex together. If they didn’t, they’d always wonder about it. Hadn’t they voiced attraction before, as Dermott had at the Christmas party? What if he got serious about Carrie, got married and never spent a night exploring the attraction forbidden in his friendship with Bridget?
Last night, when they’d stopped at a hotel in North Carolina, Bridget had planned to make her move, but Dermott had quickly retired to the private room he’d insisted on having to call Carrie. Not that it was necessary. Carrie called every five minutes. So had Bridget’s sisters. Edie was worried, since she was losing business at Big Apple Brides, and Marley kept teasing Bridget, asking if she’d resolved the curse yet, saying she didn’t want to lose the man she was dating, Cash Champagne. Other than that, Dermott had taped sounds at most of their stops, concentrating on those indigenous to the South. It was almost as if he was using work as an excuse not to talk.
“That’s weird,” Dermott said now, just as they turned off the main road onto the shell driveway leading to Hartley House. He’d hunched over the steering wheel to spin the radio dial. “All I’m getting is static.”
“Definitely an omen.” She peered into the darkness as the last finger of twilight glimmered, hardly caring about finding music on the radio since the house was bound to materialize soon. As she dug into a pocket for her glasses and put them on, Mug leaped from Dermott’s lap to hers. “Isn’t this exciting Muggy Puggy?” she cooed. “We’re almost at the haunted house. Do you think we’re going to see Dracula? Or Frankenstein? What do you think of this awful thunderstorm? Is it an omen?”
Wagging his tawny tail furiously, Mug spun in circles on her lap. Along with fishnet stockings and black, pointy-toed “witch shoes,” which she’d worn specifically for the occasion, she’d put on a sunny yellow jumper; because it was made of vinyl, she figured she could wash off Mug’s muddy paw prints once they got inside. “I’m beat,” she offered, rolling her head on her shoulders to work out the kinks.
Peering through the deluge battering the windshield, Dermott said, “Me, too.”
They’d gotten a start later than the appointed 7:00 a.m. time on the previous day, which left Bridget wondering just what Dermott and Carrie had been doing all that night, especially since Dermott had been driving like a bat out of hell—as if he couldn’t wait to get back to New York and Carrie. A couple of hours ago, when they’d finally hit the two-block town of Big Swamp, Florida, they’d picked up groceries and eaten at a greasy spoon diner next to a motel that looked eerily similar to Norman Bates’s place in the movie Psycho. Just thinking of the motel, Bridget felt a sudden chill, as if a cool draft had swept through the SUV’s interior.
“Everybody at Nancy’s Diner said Granny Ginny’s place is really haunted,” she found herself saying conversationally.
Dermott approximated a Transylvanian accent, announcing, “I’m going to suck your blood.”
She hummed sexily. “Sounds promising.”
He shot her a quick, startled glance, then stared through the windshield again, unwilling to acknowledge the flirtation. She sighed. Dermott had never been less fun, and she just didn’t understand it. It was as if he’d decided to put up some impenetrable guard, to protect himself from her, almost as if he’d guessed she had sex on her mind.
At least he’d been talking with a Transylvanian accent, which was amusing. In fact, he’d been doing so when they’d entered the restaurant in Big Swamp, so she’d barely noticed the stir they created. Only after they were seated had Bridget realized she was the only woman wearing a dress, much less a micromini with fishnets. Here, denim and flannel ruled. And when she and Dermott had asked Nancy, the owner, who also doubled as a waitress, to further describe grits and red gravy, everybody had doubled over laughing. At least until they’d realized where the fish-out-of-water couple was heading. Then they’d wheeled around on orange stools to stare, shaking their heads as if to say Bridget and Dermott were out of their freaking minds.
“You can’t spend the night!” Nancy warned, concern in her eyes. “Didn’t Ginny mention the place is haunted?”
During