Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Isla

I was thrilled to see the goats were still in the same pasture. The herd was even bigger. Most of them had plopped down into self-dug dirt holes, casually chewing their cud as they soaked up the early afternoon sun. The park was a bright green patch of grass with two shade-tossing maple trees, a swing set and slide and a drinking fountain that had seen better days. A gentle breeze vibrated the air. It wasn’t the usual briny breeze I was used to. This one carried the more earthy smells of grass and grazing animals. And Luke’s soap. It was a good scent—one part spice, one part man—a fragrance that I would forever equate with the person wearing it.

I dropped the canvas bag on the most shaded picnic table and hurried over to the low wooden fence that kept the goats from wandering into the public park. A few goats popped their heads up from grazing, but most went right on with their morning. Two perky-looking babies decided to check out the new stranger. They trotted in my direction, adding in a few sidekicks and head shakes as they made their way across.

“They look excited to see you,” Luke said from behind. I glanced back. His sunglasses were perched in his short dark hair. The sunlight made his hazel eyes look green. I’d only seen him before in a dress shirt, but today he was wearing a T-shirt. His arms were thick with muscles. Everything about him was breathtaking. I pulled my gaze from him.

“Feet firmly on the ground, Isla,” I muttered to myself.

“What’s that?” he asked. Even his voice had those rich, smooth overtones that could make a girl swoon.

“I was just saying that I wish I had goats.” The two young goats had reached the fence. Curiosity pushed them to stand on their back feet, their small front hooves clacking against the wood railing.

“Look back so I can get a picture of you with your friends,” Luke said.

I turned my face back over my shoulder and smiled. He held up his phone. “Beautiful.” It seemed he took a few shots, and I tried not to read too much into it.

“It will lend credence to our story if I have photos of you on my phone,” he explained.

My posture deflated, and my smile vanished with it. I turned back to the goats, and their sweet faces helped me kick the disappointment that he wasn’t taking pictures to remember me after this was all over.

The goats allowed us to pet them for a few seconds before dancing off to the herd.

We walked back to the table, and I pulled out the croissants and raspberry jam. Luke went to the car and returned with the water bottles he’d filled for both of us.

I handed him a jam-filled croissant on a linen napkin. He took a bite. “Better than the ones I’ve tasted in France. Where did you learn to bake?”

“You’ve been to France?” I sighed. “Of course you have. You’ve probably been all over the world.”

“I’ve traveled. But you haven’t answered my question. Culinary school?”

“Too expensive. My grandmother, Maeve. I used to spend a lot of time in the kitchen with her. She knew how to make everything, even croissants. She’d been to Paris a few times as a girl because she lived right across the water in Ireland.”

“Well, you need to start that bakery. These are delicious.”

“What about you?” I took a bite. The croissant melted in my mouth, leaving behind the sugary acidity of the jam. “You know my dream. Have you already achieved yours? With the business? Or will you have to shift gears to your father’s business once he hands it over?”

He raised a brow at me. “Your sister Ella has been busy.”

“She has.” I added jam to another croissant. “It’s all right. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“No, I don’t mind talking about it. It’s certainly no secret to my family.” I realized, randomly, that two creased lines appeared on each side of his mouth when he smiled. “I don’t want anything to do with my dad’s shipping company. I’ve got my own company, a company that works toward a goal of a better planet.” He shook his head. “Nope, not going to get up on that soapbox today. I’m sitting at a park, for the first time since—since I can remember, which sounds pathetic, I know. The food is delicious. The weather is perfect and so is the company.” He lifted his bottle, and I lifted mine to tap for a toast. “It’s the proverbial calm before the storm. Hurricane Greyson, as I’m naming it.”

I put down the croissant I was holding. “Maybe I should just catch a bus back home.”

He laughed. “I’m exaggerating. Sort of. My family can be a lot. But there’ll be so much activity and so many people sweeping in and out of the house, you can just sit back and watch the circus unfold.”

“Great.” The word squeezed out of my throat. And here I was thinking this would be an easy seven grand. My phone beeped with a text. I’d told my sisters that I would keep them posted on the weekend’s events and not to text or call unless it was an emergency. I needed to keep my head in the whole acting thing. It was a text from Kelly, my boss. I opened it. “Shoot. The boss fired me for taking the days off.” I sighed as I put the phone back in my pocket. “It’s all right. She was a miserable person to work for. One of the girls couldn’t make it to her assignment because her baby was sick, sick enough to go to the E.R. She even showed Kelly the receipt from the hospital visit. The baby was fine, thankfully, but Kelly fired the woman anyway.”

As I spoke, Luke pulled out his phone. I was slightly hurt that he wasn’t listening to my complaint or feeling the least bit guilty that he’d cost me a job. A woman answered. “Hey. Are you already at your parents’ place?”

“Not yet. Hey, Rosie, I need you to fire the cleaning company and then find a new one for the office building. Tell her it’s a reflection on her management style and has nothing to do with the service.” He hung up.

I smiled at him. “Well, that was unexpected.”

“I hate unjust employers. I suppose we should get back on the road. Although, something tells me that the road trip to the wedding is going to be the best part of the weekend.” His smile knocked me senseless for a second. Apparently, my feet weren’t entirely on the ground yet.

“You blush easily,” he said, which only made my cheeks warm more.

“Yes, it’s a curse.”

“No … it’s not.” There was a silent moment as our gazes locked. A nosy sparrow broke the spell when he landed on the picnic bench looking for crumbs.

Slightly flustered by the whole thing, we both reached for the canvas bag, and our fingers tangled, his long-tanned ones between my thin pale ones. I pulled my hand away fast, almost as if his touch had burned me. I silently chastised myself for such a silly reaction.

Another awkward silence followed, which I decided to mute with a suggestion as we walked back to the car. “Since you’re enjoying the road trip, how about stopping along the way at a point of interest?” I asked.

“Point of interest? I’ve driven this route many times, and I can’t remember any monuments or vistas.”

I lifted my chin. “Well then, you’re in for a big surprise, sir. Do we have time to stop?”

“Sure. Not in any hurry to face my parents.”

I clapped once. “This should be fun .”

T he museum was tucked, appropriately enough, in its own shadowy corner of a small town. The town was basically just a gas station, convenience store, a dog park … and a museum filled with oddities.

“Morbid Curiosity.” Luke read the hand-painted sign that had been propped on top of the loosely shingled roof of a square, one-story building. The unassuming building was wrapped in cracked, pewter gray stucco. The front windows were tinted, I assumed to keep people from looking in and seeing the treasures without paying admission.

Luke looked over at me. I shrugged. “I saw it on Instagram. Everyone says it’s extremely creepy and not to be missed.”

“There’s something inconsistent about that statement, but you know what? I’m game. Nothing could be scarier or more hair-raising than a weekend with the Greysons.”

I’d figured out all the minimalist nuances in his electric car and managed to open the door myself. He still hurried around to offer his gentlemanly hand and shut the door behind me. I liked being independent, but I had to admit, I didn’t mind the chivalry.

“We’re in luck. It’s open,” I said.

“Sure, we’ll call it luck,” he said.

We stepped inside and were both taken aback by the musty smell inside the museum. An aroma that seemed to be a mix of dust, damp and decay surrounded us. “You’re sure about this?” Luke asked.

Right then, a door opened and a man walked out. “Welcome.” His tone was more ominous than welcoming. I expected a goth-looking man or woman with coal black hair, a deathly pallor and a giant red rose tattooed in some obtrusive place. The man who now shuffled behind the ticket counter was short with a ruddy complexion and deep-set, beady eyes. It was ninety degrees outside the door and possibly even inside the mildewy shop, but he had a tweed hat with ear flaps pulled down over his head. A scarf with a skeleton hand design was tossed casually around his neck. His lips were thin, and he licked them entirely too often for my comfort. “Two tickets will be forty dollars.”

It had been my idea, so I reached for my pocket.

Luke already had the forty dollars out.

The man’s nails were black, but it wasn’t fingernail polish. He handed us two raffle-style tickets, which we stared at and then awkwardly handed back to him so he could rip them in half, like in a theater. He passed a printed map over the gritty counter. “Follow the arrows for the best tour,” he said, adding in a small tongue flick. Suddenly, he pulled something out from under the counter, and we both startled as the object smacked down on the counter. “Boris accepts donations.” A human skull’s vacant gaze stared up at us from the counter. The man tipped the top of the head back to open the jaw. There were a few coins inside.

I stopped Luke from reaching for his wallet and pulled a quarter out of my pocket. I didn’t dare get too close, worried the jaw might snap shut, so I tossed it from a foot away and managed to land it between the teeth. Boris’s jaw clacked shut.

We stepped hesitantly toward the door that was adorned with a shrunken head mounted like an animal trophy. Hand-painted letters beneath said “Enter if you dare.”

Luke peered down at me through dark lashes. “Do we dare?”

“I couldn’t face my Instragram followers if I said I visited the Morbid Curiosity Museum but never made it past the first door.”

“Well then, I guess we dare.”

The smell was stronger once we opened the door. I pressed my hand to my nose. “No one on Instagram mentioned the odor.” I peered up at him cautiously. “Proceed or chicken out?”

“Well, if you put it that way—proceed.”

The first thing we noticed was that the floor was littered with pale ivory crunchy gravel, like in a bar where they throw peanut shells on the ground. We both stared down at the floor. “Shells?” I asked hopefully.

“I say we go with that,” Luke said.

Shelves cut across the gritty floor like the stacks in a dingy, haunted library. Two yellow light bulbs were gripped by skeleton hand sconces jutting from the walls. “Cheesy,” I muttered.

Luke pressed a hand against my shoulder. “Uh, have you taken a closer look at these jars?”

I turned from the skeleton sconces and came face-to-face with a small, weird face. It was staring at me through a glass jar filled with amber liquid. The little creature had claws for hands, webbed feet and a humanish face. I sidled behind Luke and glanced at it again from behind the safety of his broad back. “That’s seriously the creepiest thing. Do you think it’s real?” I asked.

Luke shook his head. “I’d say a movie prop or something.”

“I say we go with that,” I repeated his earlier sentiment. The rest of the shelf was filled with more of the same pieced together creatures, the stuff of nightmares and certainly the stuff of someone’s wild imagination. Still, I stayed tucked safely behind Luke’s back and peered past his shoulder at the jars on the shelf as if the creatures might, at any moment, hop out of their containers.

When an old speaker overhead crackled to life, I pushed right up against him, grabbing the back of his T-shirt for safety. Low, eerie music that reminded me of wind howling through a dark forest floated down from the speaker.

Luke turned his head to the side to talk to the woman crouched behind him with her small fist balled in his shirt. “Ah, we must have paid for the deluxe experience, complete with crypt-like music.”

I pressed my face into that same bunch of fabric to stifle a laugh. Something about the place didn’t invite an uninhibited giggle.

Luke had no choice but to lead the way because I tailed behind him. “Oh, wow.” He stopped suddenly enough that I bumped into his hard back. I stumbled back on my heels.

His handsome profile appeared over his shoulder again. “You all right back there?”

“I am, but do I want to see what triggered the ‘oh, wow’ comment?”

“Well, are you going to tell your Instagram followers that you missed the mermaid skeleton?”

“No way.” My feet crunched the little shards of gravel as I left my hiding spot. The skeleton was human from neck to hips where it abruptly turned into a skeletal tail. It was the head that was disconcerting enough for me to gasp. It was a monstrous skull with giant eyes and teeth that looked as if they could chew through granite. “That’s ridiculous. Everyone knows mermaids are beautiful, and they have great singing voices.”

Luke chuckled. “Oh, Walt Disney, what have you wrought on our generation? You do realize that mermaids are fictional, right?”

I shrugged. “No proof either way.”

“Can’t argue with that. Looks like we’re heading around the corner, and the sign says ‘Not for people with weak hearts.’”

I glanced up at him and temporarily forgetting our location, a silly detail hit me. Luke had a single dimple on his right cheek. “I don’t know about you, but if we skip it, I’m going to spend the rest of the day, week even, wondering what was past that sign.”

“Then we forge ahead,” he said. I promptly tucked myself behind his broad back.

We turned past a shelf that was filled with dusty taxidermy trophies, mostly ravens and even a few snakes. “Hmm,” Luke said. I still hadn’t braved a look around his shoulder. “Copies of medieval torture devices.”

“Not copies.”

We both startled and turned around. The odd-little museum curator had come out of a side door. He was standing right beneath an iron gibbet hanging from the ceiling.

“Everything is authentic.” He had one extra-long tooth on the bottom that stuck out as he spoke.

“Everything?” Luke asked, wryly.

His earflaps moved as he lifted and lowered his head in what was possibly the creepiest nod I’d ever seen. I stepped back, suddenly wanting to put more distance between me and the museum curator. My ankle twisted slightly as I stepped on what felt like a large chunk of something hard. His beady eyes dropped to my feet.

“Be careful of the bones. Some of them haven’t been ground down enough yet.”

I laughed nervously. “Bones? Like chicken bones?”

His long tooth stuck out like a razor from his grin. “Human bones.”

My arms flew up, and I hopped onto Luke’s back. My feet dangled, so he reached down and wrapped his hands around my legs to hold me in place, piggyback style.

The man grinned again and looked at us with eyes that matched those of the taxidermy ravens around the corner. “For an extra ten dollars each, I can show you a lampshade made out of human skin.”

I leaned forward, my mouth close to Luke’s ear. “Go,” I said calmly at first until the man moved closer. “Go! Go!”

Luke held my legs tightly, and I kept my arms around his neck like a winter scarf. He spun around, raced past the mermaid skeleton and the creepy, preserved creatures and out the shrunken head door. I squealed with adrenaline-filled laughter as he fumbled with and finally managed to open the front door. He trotted to the car with me on his back. I hopped off and we climbed inside, laughing so hard we could barely breathe.

“Man, oh man, I feel like I have to take a shower just to get those last few minutes off of me,” Luke said. He started the silent car engine with a push of a button, and we were off, traveling as fast and far away from the Morbid Curiosity Museum as his sleek, electric car could carry us. “I’m picking the next pit stop.”

“No arguments here.” I rested my head back and rolled my face in his direction without lifting my head from the headrest. “Do not tell your family about this. They’re going to think I’m nuts.”

“I say we both take this experience to the grave.”

“Thank you for letting me hide behind your back, and double thank you for carrying me out of the place.”

“It was my pleasure.”

As he said it, a feeling washed over me, it brought with it a touch of sadness. Amazingly, Luke seemed to notice.

“Everything all right?” he asked. How had his deep voice already become so entrenched in my soul?

I turned my head to stare out the side window. There were only two dogs in the dog park, and they were both having the time of their lives, barking and jumping on each other as they chased a ball. “I’m fine,” I said weakly. “It’s silly of me to worry about your family thinking of me as nuts.” I nearly stopped there, but Nonna had always taught us never to hold in sadness, even when it meant putting your most vulnerable self out there. I took a deep breath and turned back to him. “They don’t have to like me. I’m just a decoy—a live barrier put in place to keep your mom from steamrolling you with a blind wedding date.”

As I said it, his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He had a great throat, too. “Isla,” he said quietly.

I forced a smile. “No, I know it, and I was just reminding myself of that. How about some banana chips?” I reached into the canvas bag. Another awkward silence followed, and I wondered if, for once in my life, I should have ignored Nonna’s advice.