Page 41 of Ghost Business (Boneyard Key #2)

Twenty-Eight

Over the past few months, Tristan Martin had invaded every part of Sophie’s life. Her town. Her business. Even her friends.

Now he was in her home. She shouldn’t want him here.

There’d never been many men around here.

Growing up here with her aunt Alice, this condo had always been a purely feminine space, full of flowers and music, framed photographs and scented candles.

Handmade quilts and an outdated, overstuffed floral sofa.

Aunt Alice had spent most of her evenings on one end of that sofa, wrapped in her fringed shawl no matter the temperature, watching Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!

and knitting yet another pair of socks. Sophie had enough socks to last the rest of her life, and so did most of the residents of Boneyard Key.

This place was bursting with feminine energy, so Tristan shouldn’t belong here.

But he did.

She couldn’t explain it, but when he stepped out of his flip-flops and bent to line them up neatly next to her shoes by the front door, it looked…normal. Like she’d seen him do it a million times before.

“I love your place.”

That was the last thing she’d expected him to say.

She’d never been inside his condo, but she’d caught a glimpse just now when she’d knocked on his door.

Calling it minimalist was an understatement; despite the dark and gloomy day outside, everything in his place practically gleamed.

The living room was a symphony of white and chrome, like the most expensive and least personal hotel room. He lived like that?

Now her eyes narrowed as she turned to him, waiting for the punch line to whatever joke he was making. Waiting for him to make fun of Aunt Alice’s quilts, or maybe the record player. But everything in his face was open, honest. He really did like her place.

“Thanks.” The word landed flat between them, and she almost cringed. That sounded sarcastic, and she wasn’t trying to be.

Outside, the storm started picking up again, reminding Sophie why Tristan was there in her living room. She motioned toward the couch. “Please, sit. I can’t offer you a whole lot. You know, power’s out and all, and I can’t…”

“Open the fridge. I know. I remembered that much.” Tristan gave a small smile as he took a seat on her sofa.

He perched on the edge, either not yet comfortable enough to relax or judging the shabbiness of her sofa.

Aunt Alice had bought that sofa, back before Sophie had started college, and it was super dated.

But it was comfortable, and there was no reason to replace it.

The image of the white leather couch in Tristan’s apartment persisted. Along with that weird sense of déjà vu, of feeling like he belonged there even though this was the first time he’d set foot past her front door. It was unsettling.

She shook off the feeling and turned toward the kitchen. “I’ve got an open bottle of merlot, and a few bottles of room-temperature water. I’ve also—”

“Already started breaking into the good hurricane supplies, huh?”

“At least I waited till the rain started.” Sophie snagged the bottle of wine and an extra glass, bringing them back into the living room.

“The picture of restraint.” He grinned, taking the proffered glass and holding it out while she filled it.

“That’s me.” His grin was infectious, and she sat beside him, reaching for her own glass on the end table and holding it up in a toast. “To Flynn.”

He toasted her back. “To hurricane shutters. I see the point of them now.”

“Once this storm is over you should really look into getting them. We get plenty of storms coming through here, and I always feel a lot safer with them up.” A voice in the back of her head objected. He won’t be here that long, remember? She told that voice to hush.

“You’re absolutely right.” He took a thoughtful sip. “Tell me about the dirty side of a hurricane. How’s it any different than a clean side?”

Sophie swallowed carefully before answering. “Okay, first of all, Libby is the local hurricane expert, so I won’t explain this nearly as well as she does. That said, you know how Flynn is coming up the coast?”

Tristan nodded, shifting in his seat to take his phone out of his back pocket.

“I’ve been watching the radar.” He set his glass down on the end table to pull it up—the same weather app Sophie had been using.

Now he sat back on the sofa, getting comfortable as he angled the phone toward her, and she leaned in over his shoulder to watch.

“Every hurricane has a dirty side, with higher wind speeds and more potential for things like tornados. The dirty side causes more damage overall. And when you’re talking about storms that hit the Gulf and go north, that’s the east side.

Look…” She pointed at Flynn on the weather map, tracing its path with her fingertip.

“See how he made landfall here, near Tarpon Springs, and then it’s basically riding up the coast? ”

He nodded, a movement she could barely see out of the corner of her eye since she was sitting so close. “And Boneyard Key is here, in the clear section.” This close, his voice was a murmur in her ear, his breath stirring a lock of her hair.

“Yep. That’s the eye. That’s why the rain slowed down for a bit. But as it continues up the coast and past us, we’re still on its east side. It’s a big storm; it’s got a big dirty side.”

Tristan’s gaze went to her windows, where the rain pattered again, the wind driving the drops like bullets toward her shutters. “And it’s picking up again. So the eye’s almost past?” He looked down at his phone again to confirm.

“Exactly.” She took another sip of wine. “Time for round two.”

“Fabulous.” Even in the candlelight, she could see the apprehension in his eyes. Her heart swelled; she’d done the right thing, bringing him over. He shouldn’t be riding through this alone.

Sophie nodded toward his phone. “You should turn that off for a bit. Save the battery.”

“Good call.” He clicked it off and laid it on the end table, trading it for his wineglass. “How long does the power usually stay out during these things?”

“Hard to tell. A couple days? Maybe more? It all depends on how much damage there is. Not to mention the flooding. The water has to recede before the linemen can come in to get the power restored. We’ll see how things look tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? That long?” Tristan looked stricken. “It’s barely afternoon.”

Sophie nodded. “And by the time the storm’s over it’ll be almost sunset. Believe me, no one’s going out tonight.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Is there a curfew? I saw that on the news. Some cities down toward Key West have curfews in effect.”

Sophie shook her head. “Nothing that formal. I mean, the mayor could declare one. It’s mostly to keep people home, so everyone can stay safe. But we’re a little more casual around here. We just choose to not go out at night after a storm.”

“That sounds like Boneyard Key.” A small smile came to his face as he sipped at his glass of wine.

Sophie wanted to bristle at the way he was so casually familiar with her town, but somehow the bristle didn’t come.

She could call him a stranger and a newcomer all she wanted, but he’d been here for months now.

He’d become part of the scenery, part of the town , the way Cassie had when she’d arrived last year.

To her consternation, Sophie realized she’d grown comfortable with Tristan, the way he’d grown comfortable here on her couch over the last few minutes.

Outside, the wind had picked up again, and so had the rain, but now the storm had become background noise. The grouping of candles around her living room contributed to the cozy scene, but the lack of air conditioning made things a little too cozy.

Warm.

Stuffy. The word she was looking for was “stuffy.” It was getting hard to breathe in here.

Sophie drew in a long, slow breath, staving off the panic that always threatened when she was cooped up like this.

But it wasn’t easy. Her living room felt like a bank vault.

The candles on the table were using up precious oxygen, and the man sitting next to her…

Well, he was making it hard to breathe too.

Everything in her chest was a jumble when it came to Tristan.

Looking at him now in the darkness of her living room, candlelight throwing his cheekbones into sharp relief, she remembered the first night that their tours had collided on the street.

When she’d heard him telling that stupid pirate story and had absolutely unloaded on him. She’d hated him so much that night.

Tristan felt her gaze and turned his head, blue eyes meeting hers, and now she remembered kissing him for the first time, after he’d joined them at Poltergeist Pizza. That was the night everything had started to change, wasn’t it? When she’d stopped seeing him as the enemy.

No, he hadn’t been the enemy for a while now. Now he was the guy who kissed her good night on her front step. The guy who never pushed for any more from her than she was willing to give. At least when it came to kissing.

It was so easy to forget that when it came to her business, he was here to take it all.

And he was about to. The sudden thought made tears spring to her eyes, and Tristan noticed right away. His face softened with concern.

“Hey.” He reached for her, his fingertips tracing the back of her hand. “What is it?”

She shook her head and tilted her head back, blinking hard and willing the tears to go back into her eyes. “This town…” she finally said. “It means everything to me.”

“Don’t worry.” His hand covered hers, sitting in her lap.

He gave her a quick squeeze before suddenly withdrawing, as though remembering that familiar touches like this wasn’t something the two of them did.

(She kind of hated that it wasn’t something the two of them did.) “Everyone’s going to be fine.

” His words were a verbal hand squeeze, and if that was all she could get, she’d take it.

“Hopefully there won’t be too much damage once the storm is over.

We’ll go out as soon as we can, check and see how everything is. ”

“Oh.” She shook her head. “No, I don’t mean that.

” A smile came to her face then, a watery one, but still a smile.

“Boneyard Key’s been through so many hurricanes.

Honestly, this place should be wiped off the map, just like the original town was out on Cemetery Island.

” She waved that thought away, because speaking that kind of thing out loud during an active hurricane felt like tempting fate.

“No, I’m talking about the ghost tour.” She struggled now to put her heart into words.

She’d never talked about this to anyone.

And now, here in the dark while a storm raged outside, she was confessing her heart to someone she barely knew, and barely even liked.

“It was my contribution to Boneyard Key. My way of being part of things. Aunt Alice was still around when I wrote it, when I first started giving the tour. She was there the first night.” Lost in memory, she gave a small laugh.

“I was so nervous, stumbling over my words. My throat was all dry, but my hands were all slippery…”

“Flop sweat?” Tristan raised his eyebrows as she nodded.

“I know it well, believe me.” The smile on his face became a smirk, but a self-conscious one, his attention focused inward.

“No matter how many times I’ve rehearsed, there are always nights when a show is an absolute disaster.

Every joke lands wrong, I suddenly forget what I’m supposed to say.

I’m a wreck afterward. I always need a super long shower after a night like that. ”

It helped a little, knowing that Tristan wasn’t perfect.

“But she was so proud. She said I’d made a mark on this town.

” There was maybe one more mouthful of wine in her glass, and she swirled it around, tilting her glass so the deep red liquid caught the candlelight. “I’m really going to miss doing it.”

“You don’t have to worry about that.” His voice was so soft that she barely heard the words over the storm outside.

She wanted to scoff, but this hurt too much.

“Of course I do. I know we’re barely into August, but I’m not stupid.

I don’t just enter my stats on the spreadsheet, you know.

I study them too. You’re beating me on every single metric.

” She tossed back the rest of her wine and set the glass down with a thud.

This confession was painful. But once she started talking, she couldn’t stop.

It was like lancing a wound; get all the poison out, and maybe then she could move on with her life. Whatever that life was going to be.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters!” She was choking on her words now; that poison was strong.

“Isn’t that the point of all this? Proving which ghost tour is better, makes more money, brings in more people?

And it’s you. It’s all you.” God, the words tasted so bitter on her tongue.

“I worked for years on this tour. I still work on this tour—I’ve added new stops this year.

It’s not just for me; I want to represent the ghosts of Boneyard Key the best way I can.

They mean something to me. And then you show up with your top hat and your pirate stories and you blow me out of the water.

” Wineglass abandoned, she tossed her glasses to the coffee table and buried her face in her hands.

“I’m going to lose everything because of this stupid bet. ”

“No, you’re not.” His voice was loud now, drowning out hers. “You’re not going to lose anything. Because I’m not going to let you. I’m canceling this whole bet.”

What?