Page 23 of Halloween Town

It was a sobering thought and one that didn’t paint her in the best light.

Thom started the truck and placed his broad hands on the wheel. And suddenly, just like she did as a child, she felt safe, protected, and comforted by his solid presence beside her. Yes, she knew he’d probably demand his pound of renovation flesh, but it didn’t change the fact that, like back then, the world felt a little less harsh when Thom Sheffield was close.

Poppy fixed her gaze out of her passenger window, wondering if she was simply regressing—swept up in memories of how Thom had made her feel and in being back in H-Town, the place she loved best and where she felt most at home? Was she latching on to the past in an effort to make the present more bearable?

Maybe.

Couldn’t she take the feeling of being safe and protected and nourish it for a while? After all the drama and chaos of the last two days, wasn’t that allowed?

Ruby

Ruby hovered behind the bench that Thom and Poppy sat on, pacing in a way that had the other ghosts worried. She didn’t care; all her energy was on these two humans who were playing with fire. Lila and Naomi stood a few paces from her, both looking confused. And amused.

The moment Thom shifted closer to Poppy, something inside her snapped. Please tell me this isn’t happening.

Lila glanced at her. “What’s the problem?”

Ruby couldn’t answer her friend. All her attention was on the way Poppy leaned—just a fraction—toward him, her soft eyes when they dropped to his mouth. Shit, shit, shit…

“She’s already slipping,” Ruby said.

And that was how it started. A look, a touch, a hey, this is interesting. And then, before you knew it, your whole world spun around someone who could, and normally did, walk away.

Naomi frowned. “Slipping how?”

Ruby pointed at Poppy. “She came here to find herself. And what does she do? She moves in with a man.”

“She wants to stay at the inn.”

“In a few days, a few weeks, she’ll be desperate to belong in his life. That’s where she went wrong with Benji!”

Lila and Naomi exchanged confused looks. “You’re imagining this, Ruby,” Lila said.

Ruby sent her an impatient look. “I’m protecting her. That’s what Grandma M. wanted me to do.”

“Hold on, you said she wanted you to get her away from the wedding,” Naomi said. “Grandma M. didn’t say anything about stopping her from living at the inn.”

“It was implied,” Ruby shot back.

“You’re manipulating facts to suit the story you are telling yourself, Ruby,” Lila told her, shooting from the hip as she always did. Ruby rather liked that about her, except when she herself was in the firing line.

Ruby looked at the couple, oblivious to the outside world. A connection like theirs, visceral and primal, was dangerous. Her friends might not be able to see it, but she could.

Now she had to figure out what she was going to do. If anything.

Chapter Five

Thom

Two days later, in what used to be Grandpa M.’s study, Thom brushed his hair off his forehead with the back of his wrist. Ripping the old-fashioned wood paneling off the walls should be a quick, simple job—crowbar under the wood, pull it loose—but his rhythm was off and his movements were disjointed. Maybe it was because he was used to working alone, having the house to himself. Having Poppy around was, at best, distracting.

He looked over at her, sitting in front of the massive wooden desk that had been too heavy to move out of the study and had been left where it had stood for probably a hundred years or more. It was filled with papers and junk, and he’d given Poppy the task of clearing it out as he was too scared to hand her a crowbar. Poppy and tools—power or otherwise—were not a good combination.

She sat cross-legged on the intricate parquet flooring—a snoring Felony spread out on the floor next to her—flipping through what looked to be an old ledger. Late afternoon sunlight streamed in from the bow windows and hit the side of her face, turning her skin golden.

His eyes dropped from her profile to the swell of her breasts under a simple button-down shirt. Unlike thirteen years ago, he could now appreciate the curve of her high breasts, the dip of her waist, the flare of her hips. She was now all woman, curvy and feminine and luscious. Noticing those curves on a teenager, reacting to them, had sent him running from H-Town back then, but they were adults now…

Thom walked over to the trestle table and lifted his water bottle to his lips. If they were adults, then why did he feel slightly guilty, off-balance, and … yeah, weird? Was it because she was a gorgeous-looking woman and he would have to be dead not to notice? Was it because of their history? Or because she’d been engaged to Benji? Or because he now owned the house she adored? Maybe it was a chaotic combination of all the above?