The Ghost and Mr. Moore
A Ravenous Romance™ M/M Original Publication
Ryan Field
A Ravenous Romance™ Original Publication
www.ravenousromance.com
Copyright © 2009 by Ryan Field
Ravenous Romance™ 100 Cummings Center Suite 123A
Beverly, MA 01915
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.
ISBN-13: 978-1-60777-307-8
This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Chapter One
On a warm Friday afternoon in June, Dexter Moore pulled into the driveway of
his new home, Keel Cottage. The thick gravel crunched and cracked beneath the tires.
The car rolled to a stop. He parked the black BMW sedan in the middle of a long, narrow
driveway and switched off the engine. Then he unfastened his seat belt, ran his fingers
through his hair, and took a deep breath. “We’re finally here, Brighton. We made it.”
He turned to his six-year-old daughter in the back seat and smiled. The little girl
had already removed her seat belt and was leaning forward so she could look out the
window. She stared up at an old house with gray shingled turrets and bright white trim
and said, “It’s huge, Dad. And it’s nothing like our old house in Hollywood.” A small,
white Bichon Frise jumped onto her lap and barked a few times. “Calm down, Cleo,” she
said. “I can’t open the door or the window. Dad has them locked again.”
Dexter took a deep breath and raised his eyebrows. He felt like yawning; his
eyelids were heavy and his legs felt stiff. “Wait until I get out, Brighton,” he said. It had
been a long trip from New York. He’d stopped in Manhattan for the night, and traffic had
been heavy all the way up to the tip of the Cape. But that had been only part of the trip.
He was exhausted because he’d been driving for days—all the way from Hollywood,
California.
When he unlocked the doors and pulled the key from the ignition, Brighton
pointed to the house and shouted, “There’s Marion. She’s standing on the porch waiting for us.” Brighton opened her door, jumped out of the car, and ran toward the house. It
would have been futile for Dexter to try to stop her. She hadn’t seen Marion in two weeks.
Cleo followed her up the green lawn and past two large black urns filled with blood-red
geraniums. Cleo was the kind of dog that didn’t need to be on a leash all the time. He
never wandered, and he always listened to commands.
Dexter opened the car door and watched Brighton run to the house. He smiled and
shook his head. Marion had been their housekeeper for five years, and she’d practically
raised Brighton. They hadn’t seen Marion in a while because she had flown to Cape Cod
earlier to prepare the house for their arrival.
On his way to the front porch, Dexter thought he saw someone standing up on the
widow’s walk, beside the cupola. He looked down at the path for a second so he wouldn’t
trip on the unfamiliar lawn. But when he looked up again the widow’s walk was empty.
He chalked it up to his imagination and lack of sleep; he’d been driving too long.
When he reached the house, Brighton was already on the porch. She was jumping
up and down and Marion was laughing, trying to calm her. Marion’s hands were clasped
together and resting on her ample waist; her head was tipped to the side and her eyes
were gleaming. She was wearing a pale blue cotton dress with a thick, white apron. Her
shoes were black leather with large gold buckles and chunky three-inch heels. Dexter
smiled and lifted his hand to his mouth so she wouldn’t notice. Marion had been raised in
New England, but she’d lived in Southern California almost all her adult life and she’d
resisted moving to Cape Cod. Now she looked as if she’d never left New England and
California was on another planet. “It’s so good to see you, Marion,” Dexter said. “I don’t think I want to get into a
car for the next month.”
Marion smiled. “You just leave everything to me,” she said. “I’ll take care of the
car, and I’ll bring all the bags upstairs. You just go up to your room and take a good, long
nap, Mr. Moore. I’ll leave your bags outside your door in the upstairs hall.”
Marion had never called him or his ex-partner by their first names. She could
have and it wouldn’t have mattered, but she was old school in this respect. “I made a nice
Yankee pot roast for dinner and a Cape Cod cranberry pie for dessert.”
He reached for the banister and walked up four wooden steps to the porch. This
was the first time he’d actually seen his new house. He’d purchased it long distance from
a photo he’d seen online. The trim on the wide, wraparound porch was painted bright
white, the planked floor was dove gray, and the bead board ceiling was a traditional sky
blue. He looked at the white wicker furniture with apple green cushions and smiled. He
tilted his head and stared at the copper light fixtures hanging from chains on the porch
ceiling. The oversized front door was made out of thick walnut and it was supposedly
original to the house.
Above the door, a brass sign read,
Keel Cottage, 1897
. Dexter had been told by
his Realtor that Cape Cod had been called “Cape of Keel” by the original explorers, and
the sea captain who had built the house in the nineteenth century had named the house
Keel Cottage.
The white trim was glossy and smooth. He ran the tips of his fingers along the
front rail and said, “I think I made a good decision, Marion. I like what I see so far. I was worried the house wouldn’t look like it did in the photos. But now I see that it’s even
better than I imagined it would be.”
Marion frowned and smoothed the front of her apron.
When Dexter noticed the serious expression on her face, he asked, “What’s
wrong?” After five years, he knew how to read all her moods.
She forced a smile; she wouldn’t look him in the eye. “Nothing serious,” she said.
“It’s a fine old house, Mr. Moore. It’s just that I’ve noticed a few things, is all. Peculiar
things.” Her voice was low, almost apologetic.
Dexter took a deep breath and sighed. “Have you been listening to local gossip,
Marion?” Dexter knew what Marion was talking about and he didn’t want to discuss it in
front of Brighton. So he patted Brighton on the back and said, “Why don’t you go
upstairs and check out your new bedroom, sweetie? Turn right at the top of the stairs, and
it’s the last door on the right. Marion will be up there in a minute.” He’d studied the floor
plans of Keel Cottage on the Internet.
Brighton smiled and looked down at Cleo. “C’mon,” she said, “I’ll race you
upstairs.” Then she rushed through the wide doorway and headed for the staircase with
the little dog in tow.
When she was gone, Marion pressed her palm to her chest and said, “Each
morning when I go downstairs, there’s a cupboard door wide open. I know I close them
all at night, and yet one of them is wide open in the morning. And the butcher, Mr.
Klinger, asked me if I’d seen any ghosts yet. The things he told me about this house, Mr.
Moore.” She put her hands on his hips, pressed her lips together, and shook her head back
and forth. Dexter smiled. “Marion, I know all about the ghost stories. The real estate agent
who sold me this house said it was rumored to be haunted. It’s just urban legend and
folklore. There’s no basis to these stories. Every small town like Provincetown has at
least one haunted house.” He didn’t tell her he’d purchased the house at an extremely low
price because the previous owners also thought the house was haunted. The straight
couple, two interior decorators from Boston, had renovated the entire place and they’d
only been there a year. Dexter had fallen in love with the photos of the house, and then
when he compared the price of Keel Cottage to other properties in Provincetown that
weren’t even half as nice, he realized it was the buy of a lifetime. He didn’t believe in
ghosts, witches, or vampires. He only believed in what he could see. But he knew Marion
was extremely superstitious and he didn’t tell her about the ridiculous ghost stories
because he didn’t want to alarm her.
Marion forced a smile and said, “I’m sure you’re right, Mr. Moore. It’s probably
my imagination running away with me. Big old houses like this can be very quiet at night.
I’m glad you’re both here.”
“That’s more like it, Marion,” he said. “I think I’ll go upstairs now and check out
my room. And nice long nap sounds like a great idea. Will you be okay with Brighton?”
He didn’t have to ask; he knew she couldn’t wait to be with Brighton again. The two had
always been inseparable.
She smiled and waved her wide arm. “We’ll be just fine. Mr. Moore. You go on
up and rest, and I’ll call you when supper is ready.”
When Marion went back into the house to find Brighton, he crossed into the
entrance hall and looked around. The refinished hardwood floors gleamed, the white trim sparkled, and the walls were a pale shade of sage green. The dining room was to his left.
The house had been sold fully furnished and there was a long mahogany table with
Chippendale chairs, five on each side and two on the ends. The sideboard was
Hepplewhite and the breakfront was built into a wall. Even though the house was
Victorian, it was classic New England and very simple. The trim and the crown molding
were solid and straight, without swirls, ornate carvings, or gingerbread. He took a deep
breath and smiled. The whole place smelled like a combination of old wood, furniture
polish, and the salty sea air.
Dexter turned to his right and crossed into a huge double parlor. The walls were
painted light taupe and the trim was white like the rest of the house. There were two
elegant Chippendale sofas beside a walk-in fireplace. They were the most ornate pieces
of furniture in the room, with white cotton slipcovers and ball and clawed feet. The other
furniture was simple. Two club chairs with sage and white striped slipcovers balanced the
sofas, a black baby grand piano had been angled at the other end of the room, and the side
tables and accessories mixed periods. He liked the modern rectangular coffee table with a
two-inch-thick glass top that separated the sofas. The entire room was a balance of old
and new, but everything had neat, tailored lines and worked well together. It’s a good
thing the previous owners had been decorators, because he knew that he would never
have been able to pull this off on his own.
He put his hands in his pockets and walked toward the fireplace. Above the tall,
white mantle, there was a large oval portrait of a handsome man—one of the best-looking
men Dexter had ever seen. He couldn’t take his eyes off the painting. He leaned forward
so he could read a small bronze plaque at the bottom of the thick gold frame. “Captain Major Lang, 1899.” The real estate agent had told Dexter that Captain Lang had been the
original owner of the house. He’d designed Keel Cottage and had it built back when
Provincetown had still been an important fishing village and was filled with men whose
lives revolved around the sea.
Dexter looked up at the portrait and rubbed his chin a few times. The face in the
painting reminded Dexter of Hugh Jackman in the werewolf film. Captain Lang was
sitting on a dark, hand-carved chair with his muscular hands folded on his lap. He had
wide, square shoulders and what looked like a hard, lean body. His dark blue uniform and
