“You must be the new home health aide. I think this makes number five.” His voice was deep and rich. Another quality that most women must find irresistible.
Tara had no idea her grandmother had gone through so many. They probably hadn’t liked working in such a dark, creepy house. She held out her hand. “No, I’m the granddaughter.” He raised a brow at her, but accepted her handshake. She had to pull away suddenly, though, when a gust of wind blew her dress up to the top of her thighs. She yanked it down, but not before he’d gotten a good look at her legs. Red-faced, she quickly added, “I’m Tara. I saw you when I first arrived doing some work out front for Mr. Douglas.”
“You mean washing the car.”
“Yes. I was wondering if you’d be interested in doing some work for my grandmother. Yard work, though. That is, if Mr. Douglas doesn’t mind.” She spun around to look at the back of the house, making sure to hold the hem of her dress down. “As you can see, the yard is completely overgrown.”
“Are you going to watch me do it?” His voice was like velvet now.
She spun back around. “Excuse me?”
“If I agree to clean up the place, are you going to watch me do it, like you watched me wash the car?” He grinned.
Her cheeks burned hotter, and she was at a loss for words.
“I take it your silence is a no.” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his faded jeans. “I’ll let Tony know your grandmother needs yard work done. He’s the gardener. I’m the son—Easton Douglas. Pleasure to meet you.” He pushed past her, then looked back over his shoulder. “And that Mercedes is mine.”
She heard him chuckle as he walked away. She’d pegged him right from the start. He was trouble, no doubt about it.
When Easton entered the house, he was still smiling, until he spotted Bennett seated at the kitchen table.
“I see you met the hottie next door. Who is she, another aide?”
“And I see you’ve been spying on me. Aren’t you ever going to go home?”
“I could ask you the same thing.”
Easton bit his tongue, not wanting to get into another argument with his cousin. They’d never gotten along. Not even as children. And the older they got, the more their animosity grew. Easton might be the family black sheep, but Bennett was the family ass.
He grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and, before heading up to his room, answered Bennett’s question about Tara. “She’s not an aide. She’s Emily’s granddaughter.” It gave him great satisfaction to see the look of horror on Bennett’s face. “What’s wrong, cat got your tongue?” he taunted.
“Is she here for just the summer?”
Easton shrugged. “I don’t know, but she’s cleaning up the place.” He laughed. “She tried to hire me to do yard work.”
Bennett’s gaze scanned him from head to toe. “I’m not surprised that she’d mistake you for the help.” When Easton didn’t answer, Bennett went on. “Ah, so now you’ve got nothing to say.”
“Why bother? There’s no sense talking to you.” He left the kitchen and had almost reached his bedroom door, when his father spotted him in the upstairs hall.
“You’ll be at work on time tomorrow.” It was more of a statement than a question.
“Yep.” Easton stepped into his room and closed the door before his father could expound on the importance of punctuality. Instead of turning on the lamp, he flopped onto the bed and lay in the semi-dark. He flipped open the beer, then took a good, long drink before setting it on his nightstand. After folding his hands behind his head, he stared up at the ceiling and watched the shadows shift as the wind blew in from his open window, ruffling the curtains.
Another summer at Breakers Island. The difference with this one from all the others was that he’d promised his grandfather he’d consider staying on at the brewery and not go back to Boston in the fall. It was no secret that his grandfather hoped he’d take over managing it. He was certainly qualified enough to do that, having just gotten his graduate’s degree in business. That wasn’t the problem. It was his dad…and Bennett. You’d think they were father and son the way their minds were in sync—plotting and scheming how to cut corners. That was what led to the argument earlier. They wanted to use inferior ingredients to the ones that had put Spencer Douglas on the map.
Easton might have been wild growing up. Ironic how his dad had been worried that his son’s partying and womanizing would give the family a bad name, but he wasn’t concerned about the brewery producing a lower-quality beer. Nope. It was all about the money. As if he didn’t already have enough.
Easton was more like his grandfather. They were both honest men and disliked weasels. Being that Bennett was a huge one, that made working with him on a daily basis something Easton didn’t enjoy. To make matters worse, his cousin was practically staying at their house. The guy only lived about thirty minutes away and could easily make the commute from the mainland to the island each day, but he preferred to stay in the Douglas mansion. And why not? He had the beach for a backyard, people to wait on him, and most importantly, it gave him more time to try to drive Easton away. Bennett just might succeed too, if things continued the way they were going.
Maybe things would improve, though, now that a pretty girl had moved in next door. He closed his eyes, visualizing her long, shapely legs and how he’d gotten to see a lot more of them when her dress blew up in the wind. He smiled as he remembered how embarrassed she’d been. Her cheeks had turned the color of a ripe tomato and her eyes—those gorgeous slate-blue eyes—had deepened to the color of the sea. Yeah, she was hot all right, but what intrigued him even more was that she didn’t seem to know it. That could make her a prime target of Bennett’s, though, and not just because of her innocence and beauty, but because she was Addison Spencer’s granddaughter.
So not only did Easton have to look out for the brewery, but he now had to keep watch over Tara too.
~*~
Tara turned onto her side, then onto her back. It’s not that the bed was uncomfortable. Quite the opposite. It was nicer than her bed at home. Maybe it was because she was in a strange place that she couldn’t sleep. She glanced at the clock on her phone and groaned. Two a.m. She flipped onto her other side and closed her eyes. Instead of drifting off, though, the day’s events ran through her mind, lingering on her encounter on the pier with Easton. She felt like such a fool to have asked if she could hire him to clean up her grandmother’s yard. But her embarrassment had quickly turned to irritation when he mocked her, and her anger lingered still. How could she have known he was Boyd Douglas’s son? He certainly didn’t look the part. And compared to Bennett, who had the air of a millionaire, well, Easton looked like a maintenance guy.
Wide awake now and hungry too, she decided to go downstairs and get something to eat. She found a jar of peanut butter in the pantry, along with a box of crackers that she hoped wasn’t stale. Just as she was about to pop one into her mouth to find out, she heard a noise in the other room. It sounded like a footstep and then a muffled voice. She froze. Her heart thundered against her chest. Who would be in the house?
Her gaze scanned the pantry for a weapon. The only thing she saw that she could use was the broom in the corner. She tiptoed into the kitchen, prepared to strike, if need be, and was glad she’d left the light on over the sink before she’d gone up to bed so she wasn’t in the dark now. She made her way into the hall, but stopped suddenly when she heard the muffled voice again and the creak of another footstep, and then the sound of breaking glass. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She tightened her grip on the broom handle as she crept toward the library. When she reached the doorway, she raised the broom high, ready to clobber the intruder over the head if he came at her.
A second later, there was a shriek. “Tara, what are you doing?” Her grandmother appeared from out of the darkness.
Tara lowered the broom, careful not to hit her. “What are you doing? You nearly scared me to death. Why are you creeping around in the dark, and who were you talking to?”
Her grandmother stepped into the hall to stand beside her. “Addison.”
Tara swallowed hard. “Grandfather?”
“He goes away if I turn on the lights.”
Tara stared at her, trying to grasp what she meant. Was the old woman losing her mind? “I’m not sure I know what you’re saying.”
“Addison’s not ready to leave here yet.”
“As in he’s a ghost?”
“I don’t like to think of him that way. To me, he’s still just my husband, clumsy as ever.” Her grandmother took the broom from Tara’s hand. “This’ll work well for sweeping up the glass. He knocked a vase off the bookcase.”
Tara wondered if the codeine in her grandmother’s cough medicine was making her delirious. She followed her into the library and quickly turned on the fringed lamp on the desk before one of them stepped on broken glass or tripped over something. The last thing she wanted was to have to take a trip to the emergency room.
Once the glass was cleaned up, and before getting her grandmother settled back in bed, she checked to make sure the doors were locked. After that scare, Tara was still uneasy. To her shock, the dead bolt on the front door was unlocked.
“I never bother to lock the door,” her grandmother said with a swish of her hand. “No one here does. The island’s very safe.”
Tara chewed her bottom lip and decided enough was enough. She turned the bolt. “Since I’m from New Hampshire and everyone locks their doors there, I’d feel better if we kept them locked here too.”
“If that’s what you want.” She could tell by her grandmother’s expression, though, that she thought Tara was being foolish. However, she didn’t care. This world was very different from the one her grandmother grew up in.
Later, after Tara was sure the old woman was asleep, she went up to her own room. There were a million thoughts swirling around in her head, like was her grandmother’s bizarre behavior the reason why all those aides left, and was the reason she was given the third floor really for her privacy or so her grandmother could sneak around the house in the middle of the night undetected? Tara was pretty sure she knew the answer to both questions, and that left her more than a little disturbed.
~*~
When Tara woke the next morning, she wasn’t surprised that she didn’t want to get out of bed. She wasn’t used to going to sleep so late, but she was used to getting up early. She’d spent the last four years working on getting her bachelor’s degree in English, and some of her classes began at six thirty a.m. Now that she was through with school, however, there was no reason to get up quite that early. Seven seemed a reasonable time. But glancing at the clock told her it was quite a bit later than that.
She dragged herself out of bed and rifled through her suitcase, looking for a pair of shorts and a tee. After she dressed, she ran a brush through her hair, then pulled it back into a high ponytail.
Tara raced down to the second floor and poked her head into her grandmother’s room, but she wasn’t there. Great. What was she up to now? She hurried downstairs and found her in the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea.
“Good morning, darling. Hope you slept well.”
Tara raised her brows as she sat down next to her at the table. Ha. Fat chance of that after all the craziness she’d experienced last night. Did her grandmother really think talking to a ghost was normal behavior? Apparently, she did, since the old woman seemed perfectly happy and relaxed. “I guess as well as could be expected for my first night here,” she said in answer to the question.
“I suppose being in a strange house, especially one as large as this, can be a little unsettling.”
That was putting it mildly. Tara had thought she might have a heart attack when she stood outside the library, waiting for an intruder to attack her. How could she possibly sleep well after that? She slid the notepad with her grocery list that she’d left in the center of the table toward her grandmother. “These are the things that I’m going to order from the market today. Is there anything you’d like to add to it?”
She took another sip of tea. “My glasses are up in my room, and I can’t read without them.”
“I’ll go get them.” Tara stood up, but her grandmother reached over and grabbed her arm.
“No, no, dear. That’s not necessary. There’s no use going up and down those stairs when you don’t have to. I’m not a picky eater. Whatever you fix is fine with me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. The water in the kettle’s still hot, if you’d like some tea.”
“I would. Thank you.” She walked over to the stove and was just about to make herself a cup, when there was a knock on the door. She looked over at her grandmother. “Are you expecting someone?”
She shook her head. “No. Who’d come see an old woman?”
Tara set the kettle down. “I’ll be right back.”
She opened the front door to a thin, middle-aged man with a receding hairline. He had on old jeans with grass-stained knees and a gray shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
“I’m Tony. Easton said you were looking for someone to do yard work.”