Page 36 of Crazy Spooky Love

He holds my gaze for a long moment, and once again I have that intimate feeling, that unexpected zing of connection with him.

It’s probably because he’s not all that different in age from me and—and I cannot stress this enough —he is ridiculously handsome.

I mean, if he were alive right now, he’d be snapped up by a modeling agency in a heartbeat to front designer aftershave campaigns, looking moody on horseback or floating on his back in a sunlit lagoon.

Or maybe he’d be in a boy band, even though Isaac said he can’t hold a note.

Anyway, the point is that he is incredible to look at and, to me at least, he appears flesh-and-blood real.

Throw in the fact that I am literally the only girl in the world he can talk to and you have the breeding ground for an entirely inappropriate crush on both sides.

I’m pulled back into the here and now by the almighty racket coming from upstairs. It does actually sound as if Isaac has indeed gone crazy, so I cross to the bottom of the stairs to listen to what’s goingon.

“Mr. Scarborough,” I hear Leo say, and then I hear him yelp. “Mr. Scarborough, please! Throwing books around isn’t going to help anyone, is it? Be a good chap.” A second later he yelps again, only a lot louder, and Douglas laughs just ahead of me on the staircase.

“Isaac always did have a good bowler’s arm,” he says carelessly.

I can hear banging around and I step halfway up to listen. Judging by the fact that Donovan Scarborough is hovering nervously outside the master bedroom at the far end of the landing, Leo must be in there trying to reason with Isaac.

“Why is he behaving like this?” I ask Douglas in hushed tones.

“They were talking about completion dates, I think they said?” Douglas says. “And I think they might have mentioned demolition.”

“Ah,” I say. I can see why that might have caused a stir.

“You need to let these people leave. Hostage-taking is a completely unacceptable way to behave,” Leo warns Isaac, assuming the tone of a police negotiator. “Now, I’m going to ask them to walk slowly toward the door, and I’m advising you very strongly not to throw anything else.”

Everything goes quiet for a moment, and I tiptoe up to the top of the stairs because it’s frustrating not being close enough to see and hear everything for myself.

“Okay, guys,” Leo says, low and authoritative. “Come toward me.”

I hear the creak of floorboards, and then a great flurry of bangs and squawks and a fair bit of violent, sweary shouting.

Leo’s voice is loudest, and it doesn’t sound as if his cool, calm commands have been met.

No one exits the room, but I can hear a woman sobbing now.

It’s no good. I can’t just stand here any longer. I’m goingin.

Donovan Scarborough is as white as a sheet when I pass him by, and I pause in the doorway to get the measure of the situation.

The last time I came in here with Isaac, I admired the cool retro furniture and funky wallpaper.

It’s a very different scene today. The first thing to note is that the previously tidy master bedroom is an almighty mess.

The blond wood nightstands have been hurled on their sides, drawers have been yanked out at odd angles, and vintage clothing strewn haphazardly around the room, and there are books everywhere.

There’s a sizable bookcase to one side of the chimney breast and I’d say it was fully stocked before Isaac started hurling hardcovers every time anyone tried to leave the room.

In the far corner, cowering, are two men and a woman, all in business dress, all terrified out of their wits by the entity trying to cause them physical harm.

They daren’t leave their huddle, and the woman is sobbing like a five-year-old who’s lost her balloon.

Leo’s sporting a fresh, bloody cut just above his eyebrow, and Isaac himself looks absolutely wild with fury.

I’ll be honest, I’m shocked to see him in such an unkempt state.

His rage has strengthened him, and right now he’s a pretty powerful ghost.

“Don’t come in, Melody,” Leo murmurs, putting his arm out to the side to shield me.

It’s an instinctive, protective gesture, and I’m momentarily thrown straight back into the fantasy where our babies are rolling around on the green-striped lawn and he’s sitting behind me on a swing-seat braiding my hair.

I shake my head to clear out the rose-tinted image and step inside the bedroom.

“Isaac,” I say, even as he reaches for another book. Leo moves in front of me, but I lean around him and look calmly, steadily, at the furious ghost.

“Isaac, please. It’s me, Melody.”

Isaac pauses with the book still raised, his eyes finally fixed onme.

“I read your mother’s diary, Isaac,” I say. “I need to talk to you about Charles.”

The change in the room is electric. Isaac stiffens as if we’re playing statues, then lowers his arm and stares at me slack-jawed, his face a slow study of turbulent emotion.

He cycles through rage to shock and finally to grief, so raw and heartsore that I almost have to look away.

I don’t though. I stare at him, my heart racing, and just when it seems that he might be about to speak, he disappears in a blink, like a light being abruptly switched off.

My shoulders sag and I drop down on the bed because I feel like my knees might go from underme.

“Clear the room,” Leo says softly. “You’re all safe to leave now.”

Donovan Scarborough charges in and helps his buyers to their feet, shooting Leo a filthy look.

“You’re fired,” he jabs his finger almost in Leo’s chest. Then he swings and points toward me. “You. Sort this out. You’ve got one more week.”

“What was that all about?” Leo asks when we’re alone in the bedroom a few minutes later.

He’s sitting next to me on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.

He held my dreams in those hands for a while, and he didn’t take good enough care of them.

“Who’s Charles?” he asks. “The old boy won’t tell me a thing, just stares at me as if he’s taken the Fifth Amendment every time I ask him anything. ”

“I’m not sure yet,” I say, aware I’m being evasive, but at the end of the day we are not on the same team anymore. For a couple of moments back there it felt as if we were, but the reality is that he’d trample me into the dust when it comes to business, and that’s what thisis.

“Maybe…we could pool resources on this one?” he says. “For old time’s sake?”

Oh, he so very nearly had me. Nostalgia had kicked in hard, a weird mix of seeing him wearing a shirt I gave him, adrenaline coursing like quicksilver through my blood, and the way he’d automatically covered me when he thought I was in danger.

There is undeniable history between us, and we might always care enough to instinctively defend each other from the odd flying book, but for old time’s sake ?

Really? What else would he like to do for old time’s sake, I wonder?

Get a drink? A quick tumble on the bedroom rug after we’ve straightened up?

He’s trying to charm success out of my fingertips any way he can, and I’m afraid this lady’s not for fleecing.

“I think you just got fired from the job,” I point out, but he shakes his head.

“Scarborough loves being on TV too much to fire me. He’ll come around, he’s due on the show himself next week. He won’t blow it off.”

I sigh heavily. It takes one vain man to understand another. The scales are falling quickly from my eyes again as far as Leo is concerned. I don’t know quite what came overme.

A thought strikes me. “No twins today?”

He looks evasive. “They’re busy on the weekend.”

I’d almost forgotten it’s Saturday. “Community service?” I’m joking, of course, but Marina will enjoy it when I tell her. She’s still sore that we didn’t tell Leo about the weird incident in the cellar.

He shoots me a sideways glance like he’s checking if I know something I shouldn’t. “Something like that.”

I don’t know what to make of that. “Are they local?”

He shakes his head, and I hear him swallow in the quiet room. “They moved here from up north to work for me.”

“Wow,” I say, surprised. It seems like a huge commitment. “How did that come about?”

“Socials.”

I can’t help but feel he’s being deliberately vague. “You met them on social media and they moved here to work for you?”

“They’re Darklings One and Two.”

I gulp-swallow my laugh because his expression has turned unusually vulnerable, a rare glimpse behind the scenes.

“They chose those names, not me. They founded the group, and then they moved here to work with me.”

I process this. “You mean they started your fan club then turned up on your doorstep?”

Leo scrubs his hands over his face and grins. “I can’t help it if women find me irresistible, Mels.”

No one else has ever called me that. He coined it, and I kind of liked it when I was his girl.

I’m not his girl anymore though, and I’m not sure I like how it makes me feel to hear him say it now.

It infers intimacy, and it establishes that the closeness that used to exist between us is still there, to some degree at least. I don’t have many exes, and Leo is definitely the only man I ever reached the stage of thinking forever-thoughts about.

It’s quite cosmopolitan to remain friends afterward, isn’t it?

All the celebs do it, boff each other, ditch each other, and then get snapped months later sharing a sandwich in Regent’s Park or a mocha chocca coconut oat-milk frappuccino in a café in Camden.

Granted, Shropshire is a long way from Camden and our coffee is more likely to be instant, but the intention is the same.

I’m not hotheaded enough to tear photos in half or burn his clothes, and given the fact that Leo’s wearing a T-shirt I gave him, he isn’t either.

I’m through wasting my energy hating him for choosing the bright lights of London over me; it hurt me hugely at the time but was probably sweetened by the fact that he was back within the year because one fifteen-minute spot a week wasn’t enough to cover his exorbitant rent.

What we’re left as now is uneasy friends who’ve seen each other naked, and every now and then he says or does something that makes me think he regrets us breaking up.

If I had to put a number on it, I’d say I’m ninety percent over Leo Dark, and the ten percent that feels nostalgically romantic toward him will never be big enough to let him anywhere near my heart again.

“I should probably go and find Lestat,” I say, standing up. “This was…” I search for the most appropriate way to describe the morning. “Eventful.”

On the landing I change my mind about finding Lestat and head up the slim staircase to the attic, expecting to find Isaac, but his favorite chair is vacant. The whole room is empty, and even though I widen my search around the house, there’s no trace of him anywhere.

Maybe he found this morning just as stressful as I did and needs some time to lick his wounds.

Or maybe he’s actively avoiding me because he doesn’t want to talk.

Either way, there’s little point in hanging around, so I extract Lestat from the sitting room sofa and head back to Babs, frustrated.

That really didn’t go to plan at all. As I reach the garden gate, I hear Donovan Scarborough yelling from inside the house.

“Who put a bloody TV in here?”

I break into a run.