The Ghost of Christmas Present (2 page)

He sharpened his night vision, which,
after two hundred years of honing, could spot a praying mantis in
the middle of a garden at a hundred paces.

She stood as he'd left her, her dark
eyes an incongruous contrast against the wisps of cornsilk-colored
hair escaping from beneath her hood. She looked back at the house,
then into the darkness. She wrung her hands and glanced back and
forth again, obviously weighing the risks involved in either
direction.

Damn. He shouldn't have revealed
himself the way he had. But for the first time in nearly two
hundred years he hadn't thought before he acted.

Finally she turned back to the house,
yanking her hood tighter and ducking her head as she waded back to
the house in near knee deep snow.

He sat, perched on a step of the tiny
staircase, his body cloaked in transparency as she stomped her way
across the porch. He heard the twang of the old screendoor opening,
then she pushed the front door inward. Only her head appeared as
she scanned the room. When she saw no sign of his presence she
inched her way in, looking back at the open door as if deciding
whether or not to close it.

With exaggerated stealth, she tiptoed
to the door and closed it without so much as a click. Jared grinned
at her caution and noted that she didn't lock the door behind
her.

After standing for a few indecisive
seconds, she virtually dove toward the fireplace. With clumsy
fingers she produced a match from its box - several matches,
actually, which now littered the floor at her feet. After two
unsuccessful attempts to light the match, the tip finally flared to
life. She held it to the firestarter and kindling, and within
seconds a nice, hungry fire roared in the grate.

She huddled by the fireplace and looked
around, as if she expected the flames and heat to keep him away as
it would a wild animal. He grinned again.

How naive of her.

He settled back and watched, dipping
every now and then into her thoughts, becoming more intrigued with
every passing moment.

*******

Alane cowered against the fireplace
until her legs went numb and she had a crick in her neck. Frozen
food sat thawing on the table while she starved and waited for some
ghost to come along, carrying his head under his arm, no doubt,
with intentions of scaring the life out of her.

Her rational voice told her he would
have done that by now if he was going to. Her irrational voice told
her if she didn't move a muscle then maybe he wouldn't see her and
she could run to safety in the morning.

Yeah, right.

Straightening her painfully cramped
legs out one at a time, she got to her feet and pulled herself
upright. While she stayed close to the fire, she fought to gather
enough courage to go to the kitchen. Maybe she’d imagined him.
Maybe, as Dickens suggested, he was the result of a bit of
undigested beef.

From the corner of her eye she caught a
movement near the stairs. The air shimmered for a moment then
formed the shape of a body sitting on the steps.

"I figured it was harder on
you
not
knowing
where I am. This way you can keep an eye on me," the translucent
ghost said in a conversational tone. Alane shook her head and
backed up until the stone of the fireplace bit into her back. Why
hadn't she listened to her mother and gone on a cruise?

"How...," she cleared her throat and
tried not to croak again, "...how long have you been
there?"

"Oh," he tilted his head to the ceiling
and rubbed the back of his neck, "couple of hours, I
guess."

Anger replaced fear at his words. The
whole time! He'd been there the whole time she'd huddled by that
fire, baking on one side, freezing on the other, starving to death,
trying not to draw attention to herself while he no doubt had a
good laugh at her expense.

Exhausted, her adrenaline now on a
downward spiral, she stepped away from the jabbing stones of the
fireplace and rammed her hands on her hips.

"Look, you...you ectoplasmic peeping
Tom. I don't appreciate being scared out of my wits, watched like a
bug under a microscope or sharing a cabin I paid for with the likes
of you. So vacate the premises, Casper. Spare me the boyish smiles
and let me concentrate on my work!"

"Boyish smile? Really?" His grin
brightened by at least a hundred and fifty watts.

Alane growled part of a curse before
she caught herself, then marched into the kitchen to put the
thawing groceries away, the ghost be damned.

As her temper faded, so did her
bravado, and she found herself watching the door to the living room
while she stocked the refrigerator. Maybe if she made a run for it
out the back door. But one look out the window at the thick,
horizontal snowfall changed her mind. Why couldn't her car have
broken down before she got to the cabin?

He appeared in the doorway, then leaned
against the counter and crossed one foot over the other.

"Now you won't be wondering when I'll
appear." With his last word he widened his eyes and fluttered his
hands, like the melodramatic, theatrical ghost he probably was. Her
initial reaction was to narrow her eyes and glare at
him.

"Oh, well, excuse me for over-reacting.
Coming face to face with a walking, talking dead man shouldn't have
upset me so much!" Had those words really just come out of her
mouth?

She slammed the refrigerator door shut
then started putting things in cabinets. When she used up what
little storage space she had on her side of the kitchen she
realized she would either have to leave the rest of her things on
the table or start using the cabinets he was propped against.
Sucking in a deep breath, she balanced a half dozen cans of soup in
her arms, marched up to him and threw open the cabinet door next to
his head. The handle slipped from her fingers. The door flew back
through his head, bounced off the cabinet and banged shut. All six
cans of soup hit the floor when Alane cringed at the thought of the
door hitting his head.

When she opened her eyes he hadn't
moved. His eyes - not quite brown, not quite green - very nearly
twinkled with amusement when he smiled.

"Missed me." 

CHAPTER TWO

Alane dropped to her knees and chased
rolling soup cans across the ancient, uneven floor of the cabin.
She used that time to desperately try to get her heart pumping
again. The door had bounced right through his head! His smile had
sent her heart to her feet!

She scavenged three cans from under the
table, one from behind the stove and one from the farthest corner
of the kitchen. The sixth lay innocently at the feet - make that in
the feet - of her ghost. A ghost in cowboy boots.

"Oh. I would help, but...," he bent and
scooped his hand right through the can, "...I have this problem."
He smiled with all the charm of a mischievous six year
old.

Alane swallowed hard and chewed on her
lower lip.

"W-Would...ahh...you mind stepping to
your right?"

He continued that bone-melting smile as
he slid down the counter a few inches. She snatched the can from
the floor, then dumped them all in the nearest cabinet.

"Am I making you nervous?"

She merely cocked a brow at him in
answer.

"I'm not so bad when you get to know
me. Really. Why don't you pour yourself a glass of wine and we'll
talk by the fire."

Her first impulse was a rude snort and
a "Yeah, right," but she stifled them both. Instead, she found her
nail cuticles infinitely interesting while she chewed on her lip
again and wished fervently that he'd just disappear.

"All right. I'll tell you what. I'll go
wait by the fire and if you want to talk you can join
me."

He didn't wait for an answer. But at
least he used the doorway when he left the kitchen.

Alane stood in the center of
the floor, wringing her hands, her stomach churning. If she talked
to him for a while, would he go away and leave her in peace?
Could
she talk to him or
would she just stammer incoherently? And would it be because he was
a ghost or because looking at him was like looking into the face of
Michelangelo's David?

Whether she joined him or not, a glass
of wine was a good idea. Good for the nerves. Strictly
medicinal.

She pulled her favorite white zinfandel
from the fridge with a mental tweak to all the wine snobs who would
look down on her choice. It took four tries before her shaking
hands managed to center the corkscrew, and by the time she
separated the cork from the neck, she was ready to forego the glass
and do a bottoms-up with the bottle.

She stifled that urge...after the first
long gulp.

Rummaging in the cupboards, she
unearthed a wine glass and poured the accepted amount. When she
started to stopper the bottle she flicked a glance at the glass,
shrugged, filled it to the rim, then jammed the cork back into the
mouth.

With a few more sips she felt mellow
enough to confront the lion in his den, so to speak. Or was she a
Christian to the lions? Virgin sacrifice to the gods?

All three?

She eyed the glass of wine with
suspicion, wondering if she should quit while she was behind and
dump what was left down the drain.

*******

Jared watched her peer around the door
then try to nonchalantly amble into the living room. She took a
nervous sip of wine when she glanced at him and caught him looking
at her.

Damn, she looked even more beautiful,
now that she had that over-stuffed parka off. Silky spun-gold hair
kissed her shoulders; the kind of hair that falls perfectly back
into place, even after a windstorm.

She started to lower herself into the
leather recliner, then glanced at him and moved over by the fire
onto the floor, a good three feet farther from him. She took
another sip of wine and looked at the ceiling, then at the wall,
then at the fire, then finally at him. He let the silence stretch a
minute.

"How's the wine?"

"Good. Good." She nodded. "Would you
like...I mean, can you drink...?"

"No, thanks. The stuff goes right
through me."

She grinned at that and took another
sip.

"So what do you do for a
living?"

"I paint." She swirled the wine in the
glass and watched the liquid climb to the rim. "Dad was an artist.
I hope to be as good as him someday."

"A name I might recognize?" He was
pulling teeth here.

"Xavier Travis."

Jared did recognize the name. During
his wandering years he'd seen more than one of the man's
paintings.

"So, do you go by Travis? Are you here
on sabbatical? Is someone joining you? Do you like dogs?" He tossed
that last one in to see if she was paying attention.

She blinked at him, then leaned back
against a footstool, drew her legs up, and propped her wine atop
her knee.

"Ummm...yes, no, no, and only big
ones."

Good. A sense of humor.

"So, what's your first name, or should
I keep thinking of you as that gorgeous mortal?"

He shouldn't have waited until mid-sip
to ask that one. But she only choked for a second, then her eyes
watered.

"I'm Alane. Travis. Alane Travis," she
clarified for any idiots who might be in the room.

"Jared Elliott, at your service. I'd
offer you my hand but I don't have much of a grip."

She smiled and bowed her head as she
shook it.

"So, Alane Travis, you're here to work,
you're working alone, and you have a soft spot for large dogs. Got
a husband? Kids?"

She cringed and took another
sip.

"Can't find a man who understands the
artist in me. And my only child is a mutt named vanGogh. He lost an
ear in a dog fight before he landed in the pound. I rescued him
from death row."

Ah! A sense of humor
and
a soft
heart.

"What about you?" She took
him by complete surprise until he realized the wine had loosened
her tongue enough to ask. "Your story's
got
to be more interesting than
mine."

Now it was his turn to
cringe.

"Well, my name's Jared Elliott, as I
said."

"Yeah...," she said leadingly, but he
remained silent. "How long have you been...," she waved the hand
holding the wine glass at him, sloshing some onto her fingers,
"...like this? Let's see. What would be the politically correct
term? Bodily deprived? Pulse impaired? Heartbeat
challenged?"

Definitely mellowing. He'd have to
encourage her to imbibe more if she clammed up on him
again.

"Two hundred years."

"Huh?"

"I've been like this," he gestured from
head to toe, "for two hundred years."