Page 7 of All I Want for Christmas… Is You
Had he not been dead, he might have expired from the length of time he held his breath.
Restless, aroused, John drifted in circles around the tub as she washed, humming an unfamiliar tune softly as the firelight danced across her skin.
He found himself behind her as she ran a lathered hand over her shoulders and did her best to reach her back. She was about to get suds on a dark velvet curl that had escaped her coiffure and reflexively, John’s hand made to brush it aside.
Knowing he couldn’t. Understanding that his hand would pass through her before it actually did.
Even so, his body was helpless but to reach for her.
Which was why her muffled shriek startled them both.
CHAPTER3
As gracefully as a gazelle, the woman surged to her feet, snatched the towel, and leapt from the bath to retreat as far away from him as possible.
John was almost too shocked to much lament the fact that she wrapped her torso in the towel and clutched it to her clavicles, protecting most of her lovely figure from view.
He looked down at his hand, pleased to note that it had become visible, or at least the transparent shadow of it, a flesh-colored outline through which he could see the floor beneath, interrupted only by the cuff of his crimson regimental jacket.
“Holy Moses,” she gasped, breathing as if she’d run apace. Enough of her skin was still visible to notice that she rippled with tiny goosebumps. “You’re a—shade. A man. A…”
“A ghost?” he politely finished for her.
She blanched unbelievably whiter, pressing a hand to her forehead as if to check for a fever. Apparently not finding one, she lowered her palm, unveiling a wrinkle of bemusement.
“You’re not Carrie,” she accused, her diction slow and uncertain.
“An astute observation,” he answered wryly.
“Did you know her?”
“Know her?” He found the question odd and out of place.
“You’re in her bedroom. Did you haunt her?” Brows lifting impossibly higher, her gaze shifted to the cobalt coverlet on the bed, and the spider-web thin lace of the curtains, no doubt making certain scandalized assumptions.
He opened his mouth to dispel them, but what came out was, “What year is it?”
She blinked back at him in mute confusion. Her eyes all but crossed and uncrossed as she looked at him, and then through him, and then at him again. “You’re English,” she said rather distantly. “But here…haunting the Highlands. Why?”
John drifted around the basin toward her. “Pay attention, woman, what bloody year is it?”
She swallowed, retreating from the bed and inching around the basin to keep it between them. “It’s eighteen ninety-one.”
He froze as his calculations astonished him. “I’ve been asleep for thirty-five years this time.”
“My,” she breathed, bending down to retrieve her undergarments from the edge of the tub as she backed toward the fire. “You must have been awfully knackered.”
He scowled at her, not understanding the word. “You’re quite calm for a woman being haunted. Why are you not running out of here, screaming for help at the top of your lungs?”
She seemed to consider his question carefully, letting go of one side of the towel as she tapped her chin in a contemplative posture. The towel slipped down her chest a little, and John felt his composure slip right along with it.
“For one, I’m not dressed. And for another, Bess warned me I’d spend the night with a ghost. I suppose it was my erroneous assumption that apparition would be female.”
He allowed her to keep the basin between them, even though he could have passed right through it and not even disturbed the water.
Not yet.
“I do apologize if I frightened you, miss,” he felt compelled to say. “Let me assure you I am a mostly harmless ghost.”
