“So there is a ghost.”
“Yeah…there’s a ghost.”
“Can you help him move on?”
“I’m—yeah—I’ll try.”
“Why is your face turning red?” he asked, giving me a look like he’d caught me at something. “Is the ghost handsome?”
“He’s okay.”
“I see.”
“He kinda looks like you,” I tossed out casually, and now it was his turn to look a tiny bit embarrassed. I wondered if he’d be jealous if he had any idea what incubus ghosts could do…
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Graham
ANYONE WHO KNEW ME, from high school (or even junior high) until today, would not have said I was inexperienced with women. I’d always been a magnet for girls. I hoped that I made a lot of women happy, but I tried to make it clear upfront that I wasn’t looking for commitment. I wasn’t trying to be a womanizing asshole, but when I tallied up how many women I’d slept with, it was…a number I would no longer care to share.
And sometimes I suspected I was a womanizing asshole in denial.
When I saw a woman I wanted, I always got what I wanted. And no matter how much I tried to act the gentleman, I could feel a part of me wanting Helena.
Knowing I’d get her.
Because when had I ever lost?
Despite all that? I felt like women were a mystery to me. After my dad left, I was raised by a single mom who worked two jobs and was strict as hell, pushing me to focus on school and coming down on me hard when my attention strayed. She was just taking up where my dad left off, anyway—he was even more strict than she was. He committed suicide when I was little, so young that I barely remembered him, but it was just another reason I was determined to make something of my life.
Women were the forbidden fruit. Endlessly enticing and seductive, but also bad news. When I took a woman on a date, I always went all out to make it a special night for her so I could get laid at the end. We might have a month’s worth of those dates at best and then I would back off before it got serious.
It was more complicated since I’d gone into politics, so I had a strict policy never to date a staff member. I was downright cold to the women I worked with and I tried not to hire them if we had even a whiff of chemistry, but they were loyal to me anyway, hopefully because I was fair. There no short supply of Capello supporters who were clamoring for my attention, even when I spoke at the funeral of a fireman in my district. Actually, the hardest part of managing my career was all the fans who didn’t even seem to care about politics. I had to be extra-serious so I didn’t get too much of a reputation.
I never spent time with any woman that wasn’t either just about sex, or just about work. I never saw women in their own natural habitats, and watching Helena burst through the doors of a home furnishings showroom was…pretty refreshing. Kinda cute, even.
“Man, there are a lot of options,” I said. “Who knew there were so many shades of gray?”
She was already honing in on a large white tile veined with pale blue. “Ooh, this one is so perfect.” She looked at the price and I saw her smother a wince. She opened a notebook with measurements and did some calculations by hand in the margins.
“Don’t get caught up,” I said. “You already spent too much on the house.”
“I got this,” she said. “It’s not that bad.”
“I like these little ones.”
“You like white subway tiles?”
“Yes.”
She rolled her eyes.
“What? Aren’t they on trend?”
“This house is so special. I want something beautiful.”
“You’re going to out price me from buying it back.”
“Graham, you’re not buying that house back. Anyway, be quiet. I need to focus.” One minute she seemed interested, the next she brushed me off like she didn’t even think I was worth her time, which just made me feel competitive. She was doing more calculations for a similar but more grayish tile. I backed off but now the temptation to check her out was unbearable. I took a few steps back and noticed that she had the best posture of any modern girl I’d ever seen. Did she go to some fancy witch finishing school where she had to walk with a book on her head?
Despite the plain black dress she was wearing over knit tights with a run in the back and her grubby boots, plus the blond braids that were messy enough that she probably hadn’t redone them in at least twenty-four hours, there was something undefinably glamorous about her. Poised. She reminded me of the young women from those old school, big donor families who showed up at fundraisers.
But here she was, driving around in that beat up truck with bags of laundry in the tiny back seat. And other stuff. Suspiciously important stuff. If she was on the road all the time, maybe there was no point in having a home at all.
“Hmm…” She had littered several pages of her notebook with math problems.
“Are you aware that most phones have a calculator built-in these days?” I asked.
“I like doing it myself,” she said stubbornly. “Hmm. If I can go really cheap on the downstairs bathroom I could get the white and blue upstairs. And that is the bathroom. Just imagine soaking in an old tub with this gorgeous tile, like a mermaid…”
“Subway tile is cheap,” I said. “Look, it’s even on sale.”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay. Subway tile for the floor. This basic slate gray for the downstairs shower.”
“What kind of carpet are you putting in—“
She cut me off with a hand. “Carpet? No carpet! No one likes carpet anymore.”
“I have carpet in my place. It’s nice in the winter.”
“But not in your living room.”
“Yeah, there too,” I said.
She made a face
