Nor could it put furniture on the ceiling, Jake thought as he walked away. He was beginning to feel like a man clinging to straws, and the straws were slipping through his fingers.
“We need to hold a seance,” Roxy said over breakfast.
Rainbow nodded. She hadn’t slept well last night, though, for thinking about the kiss she and Jake had shared on the beach, and this morning she felt seriously cranky. Wisely she tried to keep her mouth shut and bury herself in the paper.
Roxy was clad in a lavender bathrobe and a lavender nightcap edged with lavender lace. At some point in her career as a trance channeler, one of her guides had told her that purple was a color that favored her. Since then, Roxy wore purple in its every hue and shade and never wore anything else. Rainbow kept waiting for the day Roxy would stop using that outrageous orange dye on her hair and start dying her thinning mop to match her wardrobe. At least it wouldn’t clash as outrageously as that orange did.
And Roxy’s hair really did look orange. As orange as the carrot juice in Rainbow’s glass. Long ago, her mother had been a natural redhead, but like most redheads, the color had started fading by the time she was in her thirties. By the time she was fifty, Roxy had become violently allergic to henna, and had started resorting to other dyes, with the current result.
“Carrot juice,” Roxy said with a sniff, failing to heed the warning signs about Rainbow’s mood. “Here we are in Florida! You could at least drink orange juice.”
“I do sometimes,” Rainbow said, as pleasantly as she could manage. “This morning I felt like something different.”
“You’re not turning into one of those health food freaks, are you? I’ve been eating steak and eggs and bacon my entire life, and I’m as healthy as a fifty-year-old.”
“No, Mother.”
“Good.” Roxy fell silent as she bit into one of the leftover chocolate doughnuts. Rainbow couldn’t bear to watch. The thought of all that sugar first thing in the morning made her stomach turn over.
“So when are we going to hold the seance?” Roxy asked.
“I’ll have to see what I can arrange.”
“Let’s not waste too much time! My clients will be expecting me back by the end of next week.”
“You could always drive up here, if necessary, Mother. It’s less than an hour from Sarasota.”
“But I shouldn’t have to,” Roxy pointed out.
Just then, Dawn entered the kitchen. Today she was wearing a relaxed outfit of dark slacks and a man’s button-down blue Oxford shirt. “Oh, God, Mother, not a doughnut for breakfast! You’ll be in a rotten mood before lunch when your blood sugar plunges!”
Roxy ignored her. “I’ve been feeding myself for seventy years,” she told Rainbow. “I’m still capable of fending for myself.”
“You don’t have to put up with you,” Dawn said, opening the refrigerator. “Is there any more carrot juice, Rainy?”
“It’s in the juicer by the stove.”
“Not you, too!” Roxy said, appalled.
Dawn shrugged. “One of us has to be sensible.”
“Appalling word, sensible.” Roxy sniffed disapprovingly. “You always had too much sense for your own good, Dawn.”
“Probably.” Dawn lived with their mother, and was so used to this kind of conversation that it hardly touched her.
“I’m trying to convince Rainbow that we need to have a seance.”
“Well, of course,” Dawn said equably, sitting at me island beside Rainbow. “It’s your stock in trade. Naturally you think it’s necessary.”
Roxy pursed her lips. “You’re becoming entirely too disrespectful, Dawn.”
Dawn shrugged one of her broad shoulders. “That’s a matter of opinion. And for what it’s worth, in my opinion you should let Rainy decide what needs to be done here. It’s her case, after all.”
Rainbow bit her lip, reluctant to admit she’d called her mother because she didn’t know what to do. But of course, Roxy had already figured that out.
“I second that,” Gene said, appearing in the doorway wearing a T-shirt that announced, “Snow is God’s way of telling the world to hush.” “Rainy makes the decisions, and when she decides she needs you to hold a. seance, she’ll say so. In the meantime … what does anyone know?”
“Well,” said Roxy, ready as always to leap to center stage, “we know that there’s a ghost called Joe and a ghost called Lucinda.” She favored Rainbow with a smile. “That’s what you said, isn’t it?” Rainbow nodded.
“Delusional?” Rainbow said, experiencing a strong urge to leap to Jake’s defense. “What in the world do you mean by that?”
Roxy waved a plump, beringed hand. “Why, science, of course! He’s deluded by science. He thinks science has all the answers. Now, I ask you, is that a rational attitude, considering how many things in this world are unexplained?”
No one answered her. No one really wanted the lecture.
Roxy looked disappointed but continued sans lecture. “Joe obviously wants his nephew to know that there’s more to this world. Why else would he put the furniture on the ceiling?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Gene. “Maybe he’s bored!”
Roxy sniffed at him. “The afterlife is never boring, Gene. My guides have said so.”
“Then why do they spend so much time talking through you? I’d think they’d have better things to do.”
Roxy looked down her nose at him, no mean feat, considering that she was seated while he was standing. “They choose to speak through me. It amuses them.”
“Then life on the other side must be as exciting as watching grass grow.”
Roxy sniffed again and turned her back on him. “Brothers. They can be so annoying!”
Gene shrugged, giving Rainbow a grin over the top of Roxy’s head. “The engineers are coming to inspect the building today,” he said. “I think we ought to be there.”
Roxy frowned over her shoulder at him. “Why ever would we want to do that? They’re not going to find anything useful.”
Maybe. Maybe not. But if they do, how foolish are you going to look if you don’t know about it and pursue this ghost thing.”
“Really, Gene, mother should have suffocated you at birth.”
He laughed. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, Roxy— you know that. I’ve had too many close encounters with your abilities to discount them. But… what if they find something? We should certainly know about it.”
“He’s right, Mother,” Dawn said.
Roxy sighed. “Very well. But I promise you, they’re going to find nothing at all. This is one of the most spectacular hauntings ever, and we’re going to be a part of it.” She suddenly looked rapturous again, contemplating the excitement of coming events.
But just as suddenly, she frowned at Rainbow. “You really shouldn’t wear black, Rainbow. It makes you look all washed out. Bold colors, my dear. How many times do I have to tell you?”
Rainbow lifted her juice glass to her mouth and drank, swallowing a dozen possible retorts in the process. She should never have called Roxy about this mess at the Towers, she thought. In fact, she should never have gotten involved at all.
Now her whole life was disordered. Her house was full of relatives, and Jake … well, she didn’t want to think about Jake. It was akin to contemplating suicide: nothing good could possibly come of it.
Dawn touched her arm. “What say we go for a swim, Rainy? Just the two of us.”
Rainbow seized the offered escape. “Absolutely. How about right now?”
“Not now!” Roxy said, appalled. “You just ate. You have to wait an hour—”
Rainbow smiled at her mother. “Sorry. That’s an old wives’ tale. Shall we go, Dawn?”
“Nobody ever listens to me!” Roxy wailed to Gene, as her daughters went to change.
“Maybe,” Rainbow heard Gene say, as she walked away, “that’s because you try to exert too much control. They’re grown up now, Roxy.”
“Of course they’re grown up now! But I’m still their mother!”
Shaking her head with a smile, Rainbow closed her bedroom door behind her.
Jake glanced at his watch and saw that there was plenty of time before the engineers were due, so he decided to take a swim. At least while he was in the water, at this time of day, there was little chance any of the building’s residents would collar him to complain about something. Most preferred to enjoy the beach either in the very early hours or in the late evening, when the sun wasn’t as strong.
Twenty minutes later, he was strolling along the water’s edge in his bathing suit and a T-shirt, carrying a towel. He was heading north, in the general direction of Rainbow’s house, and some part of him acknowledged a wistful hope that he might run into her.
It was unlikely, and he was uneasy with the wish because it reminded him of the days of his youth, when he hung around on the street corner near a girl’s house in the hope she might decide to take a walk. He’d wasted a lot of time that way over Betsy Miller and had finally reached the inescapable conclusion that Betsy never left the house unless she was in the company of her parents or her friends.
Now here he was, at the advanced age of thirty-eight, acting much as he had at sixteen. Scary. Funny but scary.
Then he caught his breath and froze as he saw the woman in the scarlet maillot. There was no mistaking that long black hair, even at this distance, nor the chunky figure of Dawn Moonglow beside her. The women were spreading out towels in the sand, talking and laughing.
For the longest time he couldn’t move. He had the insane feeling that his wish had brought Rainbow to the beach, and the even more insane feeling that this was destiny.
Hoo boy, he was losing it.
He told himself to turn around, to head the other way. Rainbow was off limits. Getting any closer to her would only mean they’d both eventually have regrets.
But his feet apparently had plans of their own, because even as his brain was ordering him to turn around, he found himself walking forward … and the closer he got to Rainbow, the faster his heart seemed to beat.
Dawn saw him coming and said something to Rainbow, her words lost in the sounds of the surf and the cries of the seagulls wheeling overhead. Rainbow turned and smiled, and Jake felt the world stand still.
She was gorgeous. Exquisite. A creation of beauty and light. Jake, who ordinarily waxed as poetic as the ordinary scientist, which was to say not at all, found himself having insane thoughts about scarlet against milky skin, about long, dark tresses blowing in the breeze.
The suit hugged her figure lovingly, leaving little to the imagination, but Jake’s imagination was suddenly running at top speed with what it had. Hers was a neat figure, the kind he had always thought of as perfect—gently curved, sweetly endowed but not exaggerated. Her hips were gently rounded, not the flat boyish hips women seemed to prize these days. Her legs seemed to go on forever, long, trim, and firm. Her breasts were not the overlarge melons in the dreams of puerile men, but instead, firm mounds that would just fill his hands. He could easily imagine how they would feel in his palms.
He paused, hoping his tongue wasn’t hanging out. It had been a lifetime since the simple sight of a woman had affected him this way.
Warning klaxons were sounding in his brain, cautioning him that with each step he took toward her he was walking ever deeper into quicksand. This woman was the stuff of his dreams and fantasies, a vision with as much mystery and beauty as a star-strewn night sky.
Help.
Then Dawn waved him over and he found himself walking toward the women again, feeling almost as if he were attached to a line they were reeling in. He didn’t like the helpless feeling and wondered wildly if Rainbow also practiced magic. Maybe she had cast some kind of spell that had deprived him of will and common sense.
And then he didn’t care, because he was standing just two feet away from her and she was smiling shyly, blushing faintly as his eyes devoured her.
“I think I’ll just go for a swim,” Dawn said drily, after a minute during which Rainbow and Jake had simply stared at one another and said nothing. Neither of them heard her, or noticed when she walked away.
“Hi,” Rainbow said finally. “
Hi,” he answered, his voice so husky it sounded strange.
Her blush deepened, and the sight caused his groin to throb. He felt a blush beginning to stain his own cheeks, as he wondered what his body was repealing. Thank goodness she kept her eyes on his face.
Rainbow’s color heightened even more. “We came down to take a swim,” she said inanely.
But it didn’t sound inane to him. In fact, it struck him as a brilliant conversational gambit. “So did I,” he said with equal brilliance, his gaze never wavering from her face.
“Will you—will you join us?”
“Sure.” God, he realized with a sudden sense of panic, he was being reduced to monosyllables, his brain having utterly disconnected itself from his tongue. He had to think of something to say, something that would keep her from turning her back and walking into the water—although he confessed an ardent desire to see how she looked when that maillot was wet and her nipples were puckered from the chill of the water. With a jerk he yanked his thoughts back from that looming precipice and tried to think of something—anything!—sensible to say.
“Urn… the engineers are coming in a couple of hours.”
She nodded. “I know.”
Why had he never before noticed what a pretty smile she had, and how beautiful her teeth were? “I, uh, don’t have a lot of hope, though.”
She shook her head. “Me neither.”
“The furniture,” he explained.
“Right. The furniture.”
Forcing himself to take a deep breath, he dragged his gaze from her and nailed it to the sparkling waters, letting the calming sight of the aquamarine waves cool his overheating brain. Rainbow in a bathing suit was lethal to his peace of mind. He had to stay away from this woman.
“We plan to come over when the engineers arrive,” Rainbow offered. “To hear what they have to say.”
His gaze snapped back to her like a rubber band stretched too tight. He was drowning in her nearness, and he didn’t give a damn. What he wanted— what he really wanted—was to drag her off to some private place and discover if she felt and tasted as tempting as she looked. Christ, it was the caveman response, and all of a sudden he was in sympathy with the hairy barbarians who’d carried clubs and dragged women off. It would be so easy to do right now.
Her cheeks were nearly as red as her maillot now, and he wondered wildly if she was reading his mind. She was psychic, after all. Maybe he was an open book to her. His face burned as he considered the primitive level of his current thinking.
He struggled for something safe to say. “Uh… they’re coming around one o’clock.”
She nodded. “I know. We’ll be there.”
Something else, he thought. There had to be something else he could say to keep this conversation going. “One of the residents complained to me this morning.”
“Really? About what? More ghost stuff?”
“I don’t know.” The sun was hot on his shoulders, almost as hot as his blood. Only with great effort did he keep his gaze from trailing downward over Rainbow’s luscious curves. “She said her neighbor was banging on the wall last night. And he said she was doing it.”
Rainbow suggested, “Probably the ghosts. Knocking on the walls is a common poltergeist phenomenon”.
She sounded so intelligent, he thought. No woman had ever sounded as intelligent. She was so sure, so intelligent of her knowledge in an area that—he admitted it to himself even in his current state of hazy passion—he was terrified of. Maybe … maybe you’d like to check it out?” he suggested.
“I’d love to. But af
ter my swim, okay?”
He nodded, dry of words and empty of conversation.
“Come on,” she said, giving him a brilliant smile. She reached out and took his hand. “Let’s get wet.”
He pulled off his T-shirt, dropped his towel on the sand, and followed her into the chilly water like a puppy on a leash.
Oh, God, he had it bad. It had come over him like a hurricane blowing in off the Gulf, swallowing him in the wild winds of a passion stronger than anything he had ever felt.
She must be a witch, he decided, as the water reached his hips and he began to bob with the movement of the waves. She was a witch and had put him under some spell.
And he was in no hurry to find a cure.
He watched as she lifted her arms and used a rubber band to put her hair into a ponytail, and then, as if she knew what he was waiting for, she sank —to the water, disappearing from sight, only to rise upward again like a mermaid, shedding silvery rivulets of water.
And nothing was left to his imagination any longer. Her nipples were hard, ripe as berries for plucking, and he had the worst urge to free them from the confines of the Spandex so he could take them into his mouth and taste their sweetness.
A sudden splash of cold salt water from the side startled him and dragged him back from the edge. He turned swiftly and found Dawn grinning at him.
“Down, boy,” she said, and splashed him again.
His face suddenly felt sunburned, and he dived quickly into the cool Gulf water, swimming away from Temptation and her annoying sister.
What he ought to do, he told himself as the salt water washed away his embarrassment and desire, was pack a suitcase and get the hell out of Dodge.
Before it was too late.
Twelve
Dawn said, “If you’d been out there alone, and it hadn’t been broad daylight, Jake would have grabbed you.”
Rainbow felt another blush stain her cheeks. She and her sister, wearing terrycloth cover ups over their suits, were walking back to the cottage. “Don’t exaggerate, Dawn.”