The Rescuer. Ellen James

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ go back, I’d realize Beth and I weren’t suited for each other. Except Sean came out of the marriage. Maybe that means it wasn’t such a mistake.”

      “Kids make a difference,” Alex said, and she couldn’t keep the wistfulness from her voice. “When you’re getting divorced, people tell you to be grateful you don’t have children. But if Jonathan and I had had a family...” She trailed off, not wanting to say the rest.

      Colin, however, wouldn’t let the subject go. “I take it you wanted kids, and he didn’t.”

      “No,” she said with an odd calm. “It was the other way around. He wanted children. He thought it would save the marriage. When he was feeling good, he could make it sound so wonderful...how it would be once we had a family. But I kept saying no. You see, Jonathan was becoming so moody and angry with me... why would he be any different with a child?” She stopped. She feared that if she said anything more, all the sorrow and pain and regret inside her would come tumbling out. And Colin, sitting there contemplatively, would see it all.

      But then, to her relief, he was the one who broke the moment.

      “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

      Only a short time later, they were in the Jeep again, headlights penetrating the deep Idaho night. They drove along the mountain summit and eventually turned onto a steep dirt road. The Jeep bounced along, then came to a halt in front of a wooden fence.

      “I give up,” Colin said wryly. “This used to be Make-out Lane. Now there’s a No Trespassing sign.”

      “Everything changes, I guess.”

      “Funny, the whole time I was growing up I couldn’t wait to get out of Idaho. All I wanted was something different—something more exciting. But in the back of my mind, seems I wanted everything here to stay the same.”

      She could understand that. You needed a constant in your life, something you could count on somehow. “Colin...relax. I think we’re having a good time almost in spite of ourselves. And maybe things haven’t changed all that much. You’re up here with a girl....”

      “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 СКАЧАТЬ