Chasing Rainbow, Page 24

  As he spoke, the wind whistled and the glass in the doors bent visibly.

  “You’d better get away from there,” Rainbow said. “If that glass shatters …”

  “You’re right.” He stepped away. “Actually, if glass is going to fly, we’d be better off in the bathroom. Or the hall.”

  “I don’t think I want to go into the hall wearing your robe.”

  “Of course not.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Maybe you’d better call your family and let them know you’re safe?”

  Rainbow had thought of the same thing, but she really, really didn’t want to talk to her mother right now. Hi, Mother. I’m sitting in Jake’s apartment wearing nothing but his bathrobe. Yeah, right. No matter what she said, Roxy was probably going to give her an earful. “They know I’d have taken shelter somewhere.”

  “I’m not so sure of that.” In the gloom his face was unreadable. “When I saw you, you were planning to jog home.”

  “That was before it got this bad. I could have gone into any store or restaurant on the street.”

  “True.”

  Well, for once he wasn’t disagreeing with her. ‘Besides,” she said as thunder rolled again, “it’s not safe to use the phone in an electrical storm.”

  The lights flickered briefly, and the refrigerator clicked and whined as it tried to start, but then the power went off again. There was a thud from outside, as Jake’s cast-iron patio furniture moved a few inches in the wind, and a planter tipped over.

  “That poor ficus,” said Rainbow.

  “Well, I’m not going out to rescue it until this lets up a little.”

  “Of course not.”

  Another tense silence. They might have been two strangers meeting for the first time.

  After a bit, while the wind continued to whine and the thunder continued to roar, Jake came to sit at the other end of the couch.

  “About last night…” he said.

  She looked away, reluctant to discuss it. “Forget it”

  “I can’t forget it. I spent all night thinking about it when I should have been sleeping. I got up this morning and tried to work, but it was all I could think about. Actually, having to fix that faucet was a welcome relief from obsessing about you.”

  “I don’t want you to obsess about me” she said, feeling strangely irritated by the word.

  “Too bad. I seem to be doing it anyway.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that.

  Just then there was a knock at the door. Jake looked at her, and she looked at him.

  “I’ll just go into the bathroom,” she said.

  “I don’t have to answer it.”

  “It might be important. Maybe somebody’s had some storm damage.” She rose and darted into the bathroom before he could contradict her again. He was the most contradictory man she had ever met. If she said the sky was blue, he’d probably claim it was green.

  She left the door open a crack, but could hear only the murmur of voices, Jake’s and a woman’s. A couple of minutes later, she heard the door close.

  “You can come out now,” Jake said.

  She came back to the darkened living room. “Storm trouble?”

  “Actually, no. Trixie Martins says Harvey Little was banging on her wall again last night, so she called the cops. By the time they arrived, the banging had stopped, but they spoke to Harvey anyway, and he claimed she was doing it.”

  “Fun.”

  “Anyway, Trixie wanted me to know the cops can’t do anything about it anyway, at least not unless they hear the banging.”

  “So what now?”

  “God knows. The guy owns the unit. It’s not like I can throw him out.”

  “Violating the rules . ..”

  “Would undoubtedly be cause to start legal action, but first you have to prove he’s doing it, then you have to get a lawyer and file suit, and God knows what else. Something tells me this is going to be a royal pain in the butt.”

  “It sounds like it.” Feeling sympathetic, she sat on the couch again. “Maybe it’s just the ghosts.”

  “Maybe it’s just the ghosts?” He repeated the words disbelievingly, then sat beside her and laughed. “Just the ghosts.”

  She started to take umbrage at his response, but before she could work up a full head of steam, he stopped laughing and spoke.

  “I’d rather it was Harvey doing the banging,” he told her seriously. “At least I can get rid of him, convoluted and painful though the process might be. But I don’t seem to be able to do anything about these damn ghosts!”

  “So you believe they’re really here?” Hope lightened her heart.

  “I don’t want to,” he admitted, “but I’m running out of excuses for that furniture on my ceiling.”

  “Do you know Christine Morgan?” He nodded. “I think so. She hangs around with Nellie Blair.”

  “I did a reading for her this morning, and I gave her a warning. Every time I warn somebody like that, I get left with this uneasy feeling. Maybe I made a mistake, for one thing. Or maybe by warning them, all I’ve done is postpone something. Or what if I’ve changed the future somehow, and the disaster I foresaw never materializes? How can I ever be sure I was right?”

  He nodded. “I can see that. But what does this have to do with the haunting here?”

  “Sometimes,” she said, “you just have to believe.” He nodded slowly. “Maybe,” he said slowly. “Maybe.”

  She didn’t say anything more, just gave him the space to think about it.

  He turned to her suddenly. “Rainy, about last night…”

  She braced herself, and refrained from telling him not to call her Rainy. Somehow, on Jake’s lips the pet name didn’t sound like a transgression.

  “Did you really see the man in the photograph at the restaurant?”

  Remembering what Gene had said about misunderstandings, she refrained from getting annoyed. “Yes.”

  “You’re sure it was the same man?”

  “Of course I’m sure.” She couldn’t quite control her irritation at being asked to repeat herself.

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “Of course not. I asked you about him, remember? Although I did have the feeling there was something familiar about him. I’ve probably seen him around town before. Why? Is he a friend of yours?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Well, how very rude of him not to stop and talk to you!”

  “I don’t think he could.”

  “Why not? It’s merely common courtesy.”

  “I know.” He shrugged. “Last night when you stormed out of here, I very nearly had myself convinced that you were scamming me.”

  She drew a deep breath, ready to tell him to take his butt to hell and park it on some brimstone, but before she could explode, he continued.

  “I know you’re not,” he said almost gently. “I know you wouldn’t do that. That’s what I realized at four this morning. I keep toying with the idea because it’s easier than giving up the things I’ve believed in all my life. It’s safer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Rainy, the man in that picture is my Uncle Joe.”

  Sixteen

  The lights suddenly went on, but Rainbow hardly noticed. She stared at Jake, not disbelieving him, but thoroughly stunned. She had never before seen an apparition, and she had always assumed they would look like patches of fog. At the very least, they ought to be translucent. The man she had seen at the restaurant had looked every bit as solid and real as Jake.

  “Maybe,” she said hoarsely, “maybe your uncle has a twin. I’ve heard we all have twins somewhere.”

  Jake shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s possible, I guess. But you’re the one who believes in ghosts. Are you telling me you can’t accept this?”

  “He didn’t look like a ghost.”

  “I gathered that. I mean, if he had, you’d have said you saw a ghost.”

  Thunder boomed, sounding as if it were
right over head. Rainbow jumped, feeling surprisingly edgy. “Silly as it sounds,” she said, “while I’m comfortable with the idea of premonitions and psychic intuition, and while I believe that my mother really does channel messages from beyond, and while I can readily believe that ghosts put your furniture on the ceiling … I’m not happy about seeing a ghost that looks as solid as you or I.”

  “Believe me, I can identify with that.”

  “I mean, when my mother channels, it’s so … removed. If you know what I mean.”

  He nodded. “This was up close and personal.”

  “Too personal. That ghost was looking right at me. He smiled at me and nodded. I’ve heard of such things—in fact, my mother worked on a haunting a couple of years ago that involved her ex-husband— but I never expected to see it myself.”

  “Some things are easier to accept in theory than in actuality.”

  “Exactly. The only ghostly manifestation I ever saw was a basketball.”

  “A what?”

  “Oh, one of my mother’s guides got a little peeved and materialized a basketball and dribbled it down the table, scaring everyone half to death.”

  “Man!” said Jake. “Remind me not to annoy your mother’s guides.”

  “You don’t have to try very hard. They get peevish all on their own.” She sighed. “It’s silly. I know it is. I hear voices, I feel premonitions, I get intuitions and feelings from beyond, but I freak out just because I actually see what I’ve been talking about and believing in my entire life. Stupid.”

  “Not stupid,” he said. “Hey, look. I’ve been living with furniture on my ceiling, and it’s taken me all this time to admit something paranormal must be going on here. But it struck me last night that I was fighting it to the point of being ridiculous. I mean, I’ve got furniture on my ceiling! Why the hell should it be so impossible for me to believe that you saw Joe? If he can levitate the furniture, he can certainly materialize himself.”

  As one, they looked at the chair, table, and lamp on the ceiling in the corner.

  “I wonder,” Rainbow said, “how long he’s going to leave it there.”

  “I wish I had a clue.” He turned to her. “What I’m saying is, I don’t have any trouble believing you saw Joe last night.”

  “I do.”

  “And isn’t that weird?” He gave her a rueful smile. “Our positions seem to have reversed.”

  “Yeah.” She looked at the furniture, then reached for the photo of Joe that was lying face-down on the coffee table. She turned it over and felt again that electric sense of shock. There was no doubt in her mind that this was the man she’d seen in the restaurant.

  “This is a very powerful manifestation,” she said finally. “The furniture, and now this. It’s extraordinary.”

  “You won’t get any argument from me.”

  “There has to be a reason for it… Perhaps something he’s trying to tell us.”

  “Maybe it’s just a wake-up call to me,” Jake suggested.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well… toward the end of his life, Joe’s letters to me started to change. He always wrote once a week, but usually he talked about the things he’d been doing and what he was planning to do. The last few months he started to talk about all the mistakes he’d made with me.”

  “Mistakes?”

  Jake shrugged. “I couldn’t really understand what he was trying to get at. Except that once he said he’d taught me to value logic above feeling, and that he’d been wrong.”

  Rainbow felt an ache of sympathy. “Did he?”

  “I don’t know. Yeah, he used to say things like, ‘Boy, use your head. It’s the best tool you’ve got.’ And he used to preach that a real man is in control of himself at all times. But I don’t see what’s wrong with that.”

  “Me either. Not really. Except… if you go too far?” She said the last tentatively, not wanting to offend him.

  Jake sighed and looked at the upside-down furnishings. “Yeah,” he said after a while. “Maybe.”

  “Well, I don’t see anything wrong with you,” she told him firmly. “You were a little pigheaded about paranormal stuff, but that’s not unusual or even wrong. It’s not wrong to want proof, Jake.”

  “But it’s wrong to ignore the proof when it’s right before your eyes.” He shook his head.

  “It just took you a little while to accept it. You had to be sure there wasn’t any other explanation.”

  He smiled at her. “Are you defending my asininity?”

  “Is that a word?”

  “Damned if I know.” His smile deepened, and something seemed to leap and sparkle in his eyes. Thunder rumbled loudly, and lightning flashed so brightly that it seemed to flare in his eyes.

  Suddenly nervous, and reminding herself of all her vows to stay away from men, Rainbow jumped to her feet and walked over to the balcony doors. “I guess I ought to put my clothes in the dryer, now that the power’s on.”

  “Sure. I’ll do it.”

  She kept her back to the room as she listened to him get her sodden clothing from the kitchen and dump it into the dryer. She heard the dryer door slam closed, heard it turn on.

  And then she felt his hands on her shoulders and his heat right behind her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Fine. The storm doesn’t seem to be letting up.” She was looking out the window at sheets of rain and the tops of palm trees swaying in the violent wind, but she hardly saw them. All she was aware of, suddenly, was how close he was. How heavy his hands felt on her shoulders, and how welcome.

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  His hands tightened a little, and her heart leaped in response. She felt a growing heaviness deep inside her, a softness that made her feel like she was melting. She had to put a stop to this now, before she got hurt.

  But she was torn, utterly at war with herself, because she wanted Jake so very much she almost felt that walking away would hurt as much as staying eventually would. Truly, she thought with a moment of wry insight, she was on the horns of a dilemma, and no choice seemed good.

  But then, gently and slowly, he turned her to face him, and need triumphed over caution. Indeed, caution vanished, vanquished by the hungry way he looked at her. That hunger was like a balm to her battered soul, assuring her of something she had long ago lost: the realization that she was a desirable woman.

  His hands moved, sliding down slowly from her shoulders, grazing across the peaks of her terrycloth-covered breasts. The sensation, light as the whisper of a moth’s wing, caused her to draw a sharp breath as lightning streaked through her in a jagged bolt of aching passion.

  Before she could draw another breath, he tugged at the belt and the robe fell open, revealing her to him.

  “Rainy?” he said, his voice husky and thick.

  “Oh, yes,” she whispered, giving in to the glorious need that pulsed within her. “Oh, yes!”

  “Joe,” Lucy said, “mind your own business. I never took you for a voyeur!”

  “I’m not looking, I swear,” Joe said, his expression hurt. “I’m watching you-know-who. The wall-banging doesn’t seem to be having the desired effect, Lucy.”

  “Then we’ll have to think of something else. But you keep your eyes on me, you hear?”

  He gave her a sheepish grin and moved away from the edge of the cloud. “At least Jake seems to be coming to his senses.”

  Lucy suddenly smiled. “That part is working, dear. I’ll grant you that. So now, what can we do about him?”

  Jake drew Rainbow into his arms, holding her snugly against him and feeling a deep-seated tension easing away. Oh, Lord, it felt so good to have her in his arms again. So good!

  “Tell me,” he whispered. “Tell me we’re alone. Please…”

  Rainbow struggled against the tidal wave of desire that was sweeping over her, and lifted her head just long enough to test the psychic ether. “We’re alone,” she said, then, with a strangled sigh, leaned int
o Jake, giving herself over to his care.

  “This ghost thing has unexpected complications,” he muttered, as he bent and lifted her high into his arms. Her robe gaped, exposing one rosy breast, and he had to force himself to concentrate on first things first. Like getting her to his bed immediately.

  “Your uncle wouldn’t…”

  “I don’t put anything past Joe,” he said, almost grimly. “After all, he put the damn furniture on my ceiling!”

  Turning, he eased them sideways through the bedroom door, then kicked it closed behind them, as if that would make any difference. Outside the storm continued to rage, windows rattling and thunder roaring.

  The bedroom was dim, dark enough to feel like a warm cave safe from the furies without, but with enough light to let him see his way to the bed. As he laid Rainbow down on the sheet, lightning flared, showing him her beauty in stark relief.

  The image of her was branded on his retinas, and on his soul as well. He was never going to forget this woman, he realized. No matter where he went, no matter who he loved after her, he was going to remember Rainbow Moonglow lying on his navy blue sheets as lightning forked through the sky outside.

  Standing beside her, he stripped away his sweatshirt and pants. Another flare of lightning brightened the room, and he saw the smile curve her lips as she looked at him.

  Then he stretched out beside her and helped her ease her arms out of the robe. He tossed it somewhere, not caring where it might land, feeling suddenly like a sailor in a storm-tossed ship who needed to find safe harbor.

  He needed to be inside her with every fiber of his being, but he also wanted this to be as good for her as he could make it. Whether this was the only time they’d be together, or just the first of many times, he wanted her to leave him with a smile and only good memories.

  So he restrained himself, holding his own desires in abeyance until he had satisfied all of hers. Reaching out, he ran a gentle hand along her length, from shoulder to upper thigh. She was so smooth and satiny, so delicate compared to him, and it seemed almost wrong that anything as large and rough as his hands should touch her.