She flipped through the photographs he’d pulled into an album, noting the happy couples and their beautiful wedding attire. All were on the balcony, all were above everyone else and waving or looking down at them from the railing. The clock face was above them, and in each of the photos, it was just before midnight.
“The other strange thing is,” he said, mopping a crust of bread through the rich brown broth, “there were other events that took place on the balcony over the years. Not many, but there were some…and no one died.”
“Hmm. Any weddings?” Callie asked. “I mean, where no one died?”
He shook his head. “No. So they all have that in common.”
“And they all took place on New Year’s Eve, right around midnight—which is when the first incident took place. So it seems as if the so-called curse only applies to weddings that take place at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Great.”
“Well, you could always do the wedding earlier than midnight,” he said with a sort of pained smile. “Then you might avoid whatever it is that is annoying Brenda Tremaine.”
Callie laughed. “That’s an option. But, hey, you’re a relative of hers—maybe you could talk to her!”
“That would assume I actually know how to talk to ghosts, much less female ghosts,” he said, and chuckled. “Which, unless they’re clients and talking about deductions and write-offs, I find myself at a loss talking to women. They’re just not very interested in fly fishing.”
“You’ve never had trouble talking to me,” she said teasingly. “But then the topics of our discussion were all around Dungeons and Dragons and arguing about which Star Trek series is the best.” Callie sobered. “Seriously, Ben, whyhasn’tsome awesome gal snagged you? Or…is there someone?”
He looked down at his bowl and shrugged. “Not really. There was someone I—uh—had a thing for for a while, but it never went anywhere. But I’m pretty happy with the way things are in my life right now. Though it would be nice to have someone to share this kind of an evening with once in a while.” He looked around the room: the fire blazing, the Christmas tree with its perfectly aligned rows of clear, sparkling lights, the comfort food, the overstuffed sofa.
Callie nodded. “This is pretty cozy.”
She sighed, tamping back her own twinge of emptiness. She, too, had a fulfilling life with her own exciting business that probably kept her too busy for a relationship anyway. Still, helping so many couples plan their weddings did sometimes make her feel lonely.
She shook herself out of the melancholy and turned a bright—if somewhat forced—smile toward Ben. “Well, I’d better get to that printer if you don’t mind. I need to print off a schematic for the florist, and I was going to stick it in her mailbox on my way out of town so they’d have it first thing tomorrow. Margie’s not very good with opening email attachments,” she added ruefully.
“Oh, yes, I know Margie,” Ben replied with a grin. “She gives me a box with her receipts in it every year and refuses to do anything with QuickBooks because it’s online.”
Callie gave a weak laugh—she was really feeling down in the dumps—and said, “I bet that’s a lot of fun! So, where’s the printer? I can connect via wifi, right?”
Yes, of course she could connect wirelessly—she was at Ben’s house. Callie smiled to herself, but she still felt like crap. It was becoming clearer and clearer to her what she needed to do.
And in doing so, she was going to be letting a lot of people down.
But it was the right thing to do.
Six
While Callie was printingthings off in his home office, Ben took the opportunity to stoke up the fire. He added several logs and by the time she came back into the living room, it was blazing merrily.
He’d turned off the overhead light and the one that beamed in from the kitchen because it seemed so harsh when there was a Christmas tree and a dancing fire to give off a softer light,notbecause he was setting a seduction scene. After all, he’d left the side table lamp on.
But when Callie came out of his office—her hat drooping even more off the back of her head—he took one look at her and knew something was wrong.
“Callie? Is everything all right? Did you have a problem with the printer? It can be temperamental—”
He didn’t even get to finish the sentence before she burst into tears. The next thing he knew, she was in his arms, sobbing into his shoulder—and he wasn’t sure whether she’d moved into him, or if he’d moved into her.
But it didn’t matter in the least.
He was holding Callie—a damp, soggy Callie, but Callie nonetheless.
“Shhh…it’s all right,” he said, allowing himself to stroke the length of her back, forcing himself to stop just above her ass—and not at all sure what he was soothing her about…and whether itwouldbe okay. “Shhhh…shhh…”
She was warm and soft and curvy and smelled so sweet and delicious that he didn’t care that she was getting tears and snot all over his sweater—which didn’t happen to be one of his favorites, but it had been recently dry-cleaned.
“I’ve decided I’m…going to have to…call off the…wedding.” She gulped when she pulled away a little bit, sobbed a little more. “I…it’s the only…right…thing to do…”
You are not going to be excited about this, he told himself firmly, even as his heart gave a little leap.Just because she’s canceling the wedding because she doesn’t want todieduring it doesn’t mean anything.
