From the corner of my eye, I detect movement. “I can’t believe you guys!” I hiss. The two young women in white are in a corner, whispering to each other. Noah glances at them. “Oh, they’re harmless,” he says. “The one you want to watch out for is Elsbeth.”
I lean closer to him and whisper, “The one who hanged herself?”
Giggles sound from the corner of the room, while Noah takes a healthy bite from his flank steak. He moves the food in his mouth and answers, circling his fork around to make the point. “That’s the thing. That’s what she wants people to believe. In reality, Elsbeth died of pneumonia—still sad.”
“Okay,” I say, relieved that the story of the hanging bride isn’t true, but a little disappointed at the same time that the most gruesome ghost story in Emerald Creek turned out to be fake.
“However,” he says, “Elsbeth’s widower remarried. And Elsbeth turned out to be the jealous kind.”
“Okay?”
“She appeared to each of his new wives as… you guessed it, hanging from the bathroom ceiling on the night of their nuptials. Before the wedding could be consummated.”
“You said wives? As in several?”
He nods, forks another healthy serving of food into his mouth, and continues. “First wife ran straight back to her parents’ home. Got the marriage annulled. The next two, ditto. That was the end of the wedding adventures of the first Noah.”
“Wait—his name was Noah?”
“Yeah, we’re all called Noah. Every first born.”
“Holy shit. So Elsbeth is—”
“My great-great-great grandmother. Seven generations back.”
Seven generations? Wow. “Why don’t you guys set the record straight? Tell the true story?”
He laughs. “Yeah, like people are going to believe we’re perfectly okay people if we come out and explain it was just a ghost playing a prank?”
I shrug. “I guess. People are silly.” I glance to the corner of the room, now empty.
“Who were those two?” I ask.
“No idea. We sort of have an agreement. We let them be, they let us be. We start asking them questions, they might get social with us. I don’t mind them, but I prefer live people.”
“Depends which live people,” I answer.
“Fair enough.” He drops a kiss on my head. “Mmm… Fuck,” he says, a slow smile spreading on his face.
“What?”
He twirls a strand of my hair between his fingers. “We’re gonna be sleeping in the same bed.” He leans in for a soft kiss, then pulls me tighter to him with one hand on my nape. A low growl comes from deep inside him. “You get the puppies, I’ll get the food?’
“Uh-huh.”
thirty-six
Willow
We don’t get much sleep, and it’s the best night of my life. Noah wraps me in his fold, holding me against his chest, peppering kisses on my forehead until we doze off.
The next day, he wakes me with a coffee on my nightstand, but this time, instead of scampering out of the bedroom, he sits on the bed, nursing his own cup. He’s quite a sight with his messy hair, his glasses on, his morning stubble, and his ripped bare chest with just the right amount of hair. “What you got going today?” he asks, dimples forming on his cheeks as his eyes dance on me.
My center tingles alarmingly, so I pull the sheet up to cover my breasts and take a grounding sip of coffee. “New window displays. I’m switching out the Father’s Day stuff and going full summer mode.”
He pulls the sheet off my breasts, runs the pad of his thumb on my perk nipples. “You’re going to paper the windows again first?” A crease appears between his eyebrows.
I bristle under his touch and his gaze. “Didn’t you like it last time?”
