Poppy didn’t hesitate to throw it open. Then she froze. “Speaking of ghosts...”
It was a young man’s room. Ratty sports equipment on a bookshelf along with tattered copies of mystery novels. A fishing pole propped in a nearby corner. A king-size bed covered with a navy blue duvet. On the bedside table...
Pain ripped through Mac’s chest as her heart gave a vicious twist.
“Didn’t you give him that photo?” Poppy asked.
Speech was beyond Mac. She nodded. It was taken the last summer he’d been in the mountains. They were sunburned and barefoot, her back to his chest. How young they looked. Her neck was twisted so she could smile up at him. His eyes were on her face and alight with...
Whatever feelings he’d had for her that had allowed him to walk away—and leave the keepsake behind.
Swallowing hard, she drew her sister away and shut the bedroom door, dismissing the sharp jab of disappointment. It was silly of her to have even for a second imagined he would have carried it—her, them—with him on his travels. He’d moved on.
And so had she.
Poppy was staring at her, her expression concerned. “Do you want me to take over nursemaid duties?”
Mac moved toward the stairs. “Of course not. I can do this.”
“But—”
She glanced back at her sister. “I’m over him. I have been since the minute he left here and drove down the hill.”
“Um...I remember it differently.”
Squeezing shut her eyes, Mac stopped. The truth was, she’d been a lovelorn mess after he’d gone. For the first weeks she’d wandered around aimlessly like one of the ghosts they’d expected to find at the Elliott estate, causing everyone around her to wring their hands and utter helpless noises. But then she’d realized the sympathy they offered only served to make her softer—powerless and weak.
Not to mention that her family had also been suffering, not only from their own loss of Zan, but also because their dad had died less than two years before. Her unhappiness, she’d realized, was only doubling down their own.
So she’d straightened her spine and elected to stop her wallowing. Tossing out the used tissues cluttering her room, she’d decided to get on with her life—which became the impetus to begin building a business instead of drowning in the misery of lost love.
“But I did get over him eventually,” she said, striding for the stairs again. “You know I did.”
“Okay.” Poppy followed on her heels as she sped down the steps. “Still, it might bother—”
“Nothing bothers me,” Mac declared, wanting the discussion to end. “Now, don’t you have to go home and make Mason an after-school snack or something?”
Poppy sighed. “If you’re sure...”
“I’m sure. Thanks for the offer, but I’ve got it.” Her nod was decisive. “Absolutely.”
Once she heard her sister motor off, she breathed a little easier. Poppy was so damn sentimental, thinking it might hurt Mac to see Zan through this sickness.
She didn’t need to shirk this task she’d taken on—especially when doing so would only underscore her sister’s mistaken idea that she’d never gotten the man out of her heart. Sure, walking away from him now might have proved her indifference, too, but there was more to Zan than the man who’d left her.
Being able to remember that was part of the proof that she was over the guy.
Before that time as her lover, he’d been the boy who’d fixed the chain on her bike innumerable times. The guy who’d helped her with her Spanish homework in middle school—he was aces with languages. The very same person who’d jollied her out of her doldrums when the boy she’d liked between eighth grade and high school had left her for some summer girl.
She could safely perform a favor for someone who was no longer anything more to her than an old family friend, right?
With that still at the forefront of her mind, she made her way back into the master bedroom as evening darkened the sky. Upon a little exploring, she figured out how to start the gas fireplace across from the bed. Then she managed to get Zan under the covers...keeping her gaze trained away from anyplace intimate.
Soup and crackers didn’t interest him, but though he at first batted away her hands she was able to get some water and pain relievers down his throat. His eyes were half-open and dull through the process. If he knew who tended to him, or had an opinion about it, he didn’t comment.
When she tired of watching TV downstairs, she headed back to his room. The gas fireplace was simple enough to turn on and made her spot on the couch beneath the windows even more cozy. She was plenty comfortable with the blanket and pillow she’d spied on a shelf in the closet and wearing a flannel shirt she’d found hanging there as a nightgown.
With light from the flames in the fireplace flickering against the plaster walls, she snuggled into the cushions. Unused to a day without much physical activity, she thought she might have trouble finding sleep, but with Zan’s breathing as her lullaby, she drifted off.
To jerk awake at the sound of his strangled voice.
“No. God, no.” Zan thrashed, fighting with the covers.
Mac jackknifed up and struggled out of the blanket wrapped around her legs. The wool rug was soft against her bare feet as she made for the bed.
“Simone,” he said, stopping Mac’s headlong rush. “Please, baby. Simone.”
Simone? She ignored the new twist of her heart. “Zan,” she said, keeping her voice soft. “You’re having a dream.”
“Don’t leave me,” he begged.
Licking her lips, she crept closer to the bed. “It’s me, Mac,” she said. “You’re at the lake house. In the mountains.”
“Noo,” he moaned again.
In the light from the fireplace, she could see that his eyes were pinched tightly shut. “Zan.” She reached out a tentative hand, brushed his hair from his warm forehead. “It’s all right.”
“Simone.” He sounded urgent, anxious, and his head turned in her direction. His eyes opened, but they stared at Mac, unseeing. “Come back, baby. You’ve got to come back.”
“Shh.” She stroked his hair again. “You’re having a dream.”
“Didn’t happen?” His eyes closed again and his body seemed to relax.
“Didn’t happen,” she whispered.
When he seemed to slip back into slumber, she leaned over the bed to straighten the sheets and duvet around him. In a quick movement, he snatched her off her feet and yanked her into his body.
“Zan—”
“Shh,” he said, echoing her from moments before. Tucking himself around her, he pinned her to him with a heavy arm across her waist. “Sleep now,” he muttered. “Go to sleep.”
Wriggling away was futile. Every time she tried to move, he mumbled into her hair and tightened his grip. Just a few minutes, she told herself, relaxing into his hold, even as she registered the dangerous sense of rightness she felt with his body curled around hers. Once he returned to deep sleep, she’d slide away.
Leave him alone with his memories of Simone.
Simone, baby. Had Mac stiffened? Because he nuzzled her hair now. “Shh, shh, shh,” he said, his voice low, slumberous.
The sound of it