The Rescuer

“Not just any girl.” He turned toward her.

The bucket seats of the Jeep made things awkward, but Alex found herself leaning into the curve of his arm. She stayed like that for what seemed a long moment, and it felt good...too good. Until now, she’d been able to control the way Colin made her feel. She’d managed to dismiss any stirrings of attraction, any hints of desire. But with his arm around her like this, she could no longer dismiss the craving she felt.

His fingers brushed over her cheek in a slow caress...and then another caress. She remained motionless, almost breathless, as his touch awakened all her senses. At last he tilted her face toward his.

“Colin,” she whispered. He didn’t answer, not in words. Instead, he brought his lips to hers.

This was no tentative first kiss, no tepid exploration. It was raw need, powerful and overwhelming. Alex felt as if she had been swept off the mountaintop. She clung to Colin, and molded herself closer to him, and opened her mouth willingly to him.

But all the while she knew what a mistake it was.

SOBRIETY’S SMALL MINING museum hardly seemed a place to be haunted. Tucked away on one of the side streets off Main, it housed a modest collection of pickaxes, shovels, water canteens, rusty pocketknives and other paraphernalia left behind by long-ago miners. It had a friendly, unimposing, somewhat dusty atmosphere. Colin figured that any self-respecting ghost would pick a more evocative locale—one of the town’s old saloons, for example. If Herb wanted to stage more hauntings, he should consider that. Then again, Colin didn’t intend to put any ideas in his grandfather’s head.

He pushed open the door of the museum and went inside. Lillian Prescott, his grandfather’s fifty-nine-year-old girlfriend, glanced up from behind the souvenir counter.

“Colin, I’m so glad you’re here.” She went to the door, put up the Closed sign and came back again. Lillian had an air of mystery about her, which Colin suspected she deliberately cultivated. Rumor had it that when she’d gone away to college back in the late fifties, she’d had a couple of affairs and become, in Sobriety terms, a woman of the world. That she’d returned home eventually and settled down hadn’t quelled the rumors any. Every six months or so when she went off to Boise for a couple of days without telling anyone why, people liked to speculate that she was going to rendezvous with her married lover. Lillian fueled the speculation by saying nothing at all. For all Colin knew, Herb had some serious competition in Boise.

“Colin,” she said now in a distressed tone, “you have to stop your grandfather. I just found out he’s planning to bring a parapsychologist to town—a ghost expert.”

“He’s really getting into the spirit of this thing,” Colin remarked. “No pun intended.”

Lillian gave him a withering glance. “You’re not taking this seriously enough. I mean, he’s actually advertising to get someone out here. He says somebody trying to verify the town haunting will increase its authenticity.” She groaned and sank onto the stool behind the counter. “Forgive me for telling you this, Colin, but your grandfather is nuts.”

“That’s some way to talk about your significant other.”

Lillian’s expression became guarded. “Please don’t get in the habit of saying that. I took you into my confidence only as a last resort.”

“Why not just admit to the world that you’re seeing Herb?” Colin asked. “What’s so bad about it?”

“Nothing,” she said, looking uncomfortable. “I just don’t think the entire town needs to know about my personal life. What I do is my own business.”

“Do you think people would care—”

“In this town they’d care, all right,” she said. “Folks don’t have enough to do, so they sit around talking about one another...and I refuse to be anybody’s topic of conversation.”

Colin figured something else was at stake here, but Lillian was already changing the subject.

“You and I have more important things to discuss,” she said. “Such as what will happen when the town finds out Herbie is bringing in an expert to document his bogus ghost.”

It was an interesting twist, Colin had to admit. “Okay, I’ll try talking to him again. But you know what my chances are.”

Now Lillian looked worried. “Somebody’s got to stop him before it’s too late. He’ll ruin everything—his reputation, his political career...”

Colin didn’t think being mayor of Sobriety qualified as a political career, but he didn’t want to tamper with Lillian’s illusions.

“What’s he doing it for?” she went on. “All this nonsense about a ghost being good for the town—I don’t buy that for a second.”

“Maybe he just wants to prove he can shake up the place,” Colin said. “Nobody else has tried that in a long time.”

“Nobody but your father. All those years ago... he was a bit wild, Colin, but so talented. So full of life and energy and charm. The way everyone used to turn out for those high school basketball games just because your dad was playing.”

Colin had long since grown accustomed to how people in Sobriety spoke of his father. They always had some story about Thomas McIntyre...high school basketball star, war hero, town golden boy. But none of the stories ever seemed quite real to Colin. They were too much the stuff of legend, too easily recounted, as if people had forgotten about the flesh-and-blood Thomas behind the glorious achievements. Colin had been ten when his father died, old enough to have memories of his own, yet he’d heard the stories so many times they’d taken over.

Lillian was rearranging the pieces of quartz and silver ore on display behind the glass counter. “Something’s just occurred to me,” she said.

“What we really need is a psychologist—not a parapsychologist. What about that shrink of yours, Colin? Is she trustworthy?”

Colin observed Lillian dourly. “Who says I have a shrink?”

“For crying out loud,” Lillian said, “have you forgotten what this town is like? Everyone knows you took her out to dinner last night. Ben Morris saw you at The Pub, and you know what a gossip he is. Why else do you figure I have to work so hard to keep my life private?”

Colin thought about last evening with Alex. He’d been thinking about it a lot...how it had felt to hold her in his arms those few moments. He’d wanted to go on holding her, but for her that hadn’t been an option. He’d never known anyone who tried so hard to stay in control. The soon-to-be ex-husband must have really damaged her somehow. Or maybe something else was to blame.

“Colin,” said Lillian, “I’m just asking if this Dr. Alex Robbins is discreet.”

“She’s not about to go gossiping with Ben Morris.”

“You don’t need to tell her any details about me, Colin. Just ask her to talk to your grandpa. Ask her to set him straight about this ghost nonsense.”

“Psychologists aren’t like auto mechanics,” Colin said. “They can’t just schedule an appointment to fix somebody’s transmission.”

“Well, we’d better do something, or we’ll have a parapsychologist on our hands. Is that what you want?”

He didn’t know what he wanted, it seemed. In the past, when he’d started to feel the old restlessness, he’d simply moved on, changed his life. But now things were more complicated. He had a grandfather who wasn’t getting any younger. And he had a son who’d grown up too quickly. Colin couldn’t just walk away from all that.

CHAPTER FOUR

THAT EVENING, ALEX SHOWED up at the McIntyre house with a sackful of groceries. She was breathless, and her cheeks were becomingly flushed again. As she shifted the bag from one arm to another, she gazed at Colin almost defensively.

“Okay, so maybe I’ve gone too far,” she said. “But when you called and invited me over for dinner... then said it was your turn to cook so you were sending out for pizza...well, I couldn’t resist taking matters into my own hands.”

He leaned against the doorjamb, appreciating the sight of her. She was wearing something sleeveless, her blond hair falling over her shoulders.

The flush in her cheeks deepened. “Kissing you was a big mistake,” she muttered. “So if you’re thinking about last night, please stop.”

“I’m thinking about right now.”

“Dammit, Colin. Just...don’t.”

He took the groceries from her but remained on the porch. “Are you here to give me a cooking lesson?”

“Not exactly. I’m hardly the domestic type myself. But a family dinner calls for something.”

Lettuce was poking out of the bag, and he caught the pleasing aroma of ripened tomatoes. When he went to the grocery store, he usually confined himself to microwavable selections.

“Too bad we have to make it a family dinner,” he said.

She gave him a keen glance. “We already tried the one-on-one thing, and it didn’t work out.”