Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

Connor blew dust off a bundle of sheet music and tried to pay attention to the items he was searching through, but every few minutes his eyes involuntarily sought out Holly, who was kneeling by a trunk and rifling through mildewed and moth-eaten clothing from God-knows-what century.

Unsurprisingly, he hadn’t slept well the night before. He’d tossed and turned well into the early morning hours, his thoughts bouncing from how soft and warm Holly had felt in his arms when he’d carried her upstairs, to questions about the councilman, and then wondering what the hell Holly had ever seen in that dickbag Jeremy.

He tried to focus on the task at hand, but moments later he was remembering the pretty flush on Holly’s cheeks as he’d unlaced her boots, and how her breathing had hitched slightly when he’d kneeled between her thighs. She wasn’t interested in him that way, he reminded himself as he flipped through the sheets of music. He had to respect that boundary, and the truth was he shouldn’t have been wanting to toe it anyway. Despite Holly’s dislike of him and the fact that she was keeping some serious secrets, Connor was beginning to admire her. She was tough and funny, and some day she would find a partner who’d actually stick around. With his lifestyle, what did Connor have to offer any woman other than a quick fling?

It was for the best that she wished he’d disappear along with the ghost.

He flipped to the last sheet of music. There weren’t any hidden letters or annotations—they were just plain sheets of music for a piano.

Holly wiggled her butt as she reached deeper into the trunk and Connor dropped his head to take three deep breaths. He’d never experienced this curious mixture of laughing with a woman one minute, being exasperated by her the next, and then wanting to slowly peel off her jeans for real five seconds later. It was an emotional roller coaster that was making him feel like a teenager. Connor was usually very good about separating his private life and his professional life, so this crush he was beginning to have on Holly—because a teenage word was the most appropriate—was starting to get under his skin.

Charlotte’s warning echoed in his ears: “You are a relationship no-go. Besides, we still don’t know what’s going on in those orchards, and you don’t want to mess that up by making questionable personal choices.”

Right. So it was time he reined in his wayward hormones and suffocated them under work. It was a foolproof plan.

Connor tossed the sheet music into the hatbox and closed the lid. Part of the cardboard disintegrated in his hand. The Celestes’ walk-in attic was large and roomy, which made it the perfect spot to stash generations of junk. There were trunks and sheet-draped furniture, coatracks and music stands, a tuba and a broken bicycle, apple crates upon apple crates, empty glass bottles, and more. The place was a veritable treasure trove of Celeste history, and his heart had beat excitedly in his chest the moment Holly had opened the door.

That had been an hour ago, and still he’d found absolutely nothing relevant. They’d stirred the dust so that motes floated in the morning sunlight slanting through the high half windows, and it was starting to grow hazy and warm in the attic as the morning wore on.

Holly sneezed and slammed the lid to the trunk shut. “Nothing here,” she said. “Although I had no idea my ancestors liked mink so much.”

Her hair was pulled into a bun, leaving the long length of her neck bare. Connor wondered if she liked to be kissed there, and if anyone had taken the time to explore all the secret spots that made her sigh. When he realized what he was thinking, he firmly pushed the inappropriate fantasy from his head and dragged his focus from the tight jeans that showcased her ass perfectly every time she bent over. Shit, it was going to be a long few weeks if he couldn’t stop salivating over Holly every time she wore a pair of jeans, which was every day.

Feeling like a jerk for even looking at her ass, he cleared his throat. “Nothing here either. We’re digging for Autumn’s belongings in particular. Would those be farther in the back?”

She wiped her hands on the thighs of her jeans and grimaced. “Maybe? There’s so much junk in here that we’d have to shift everything to make a path. It would take forever.”

“I can call Charlotte to help me. You’ve done enough.”

Holly checked the time on her phone. “I’ll give you another hour. We can at least get started on it.”

They assessed what lay between them and the rafters. She was right: the floor was so jammed tight with boxes and trunks and all sorts of discarded materials that it would take a full day’s work to reach whatever might be stashed in the back.

Fortunately Connor wasn’t afraid of a little hard work. He hefted a crumbling box of books on top of the junk beside it. Holly joined him, and together they began moving items out of the way.

They worked in silence for a while, each of them lost in their own thoughts. Holly struggled to move a doll cradle because one of the rockers was stuck beneath a heavy trunk, so Connor lifted the trunk while she pulled. They were both sweating and so tightly enclosed in the small path they were making that it was impossible not to bump into each other. Every time they accidentally brushed—a bare arm against another arm, a hip against a thigh, a shoulder grazing a belly, his blood heated until he wasn’t sure what was making him sweat more: the attic or all the little touches.

Holly studied the cradle for a minute before pushing it over the mound of junk toward the eaves. “Do you have children?”

Connor sneezed and reached for a crate of old-fashioned irons. “No.”

“Do you want them? Actually that’s kind of personal—you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

He’d always assumed he would have children, but he was in his thirties now and still single. “Maybe someday. You?”

“Same.” She swiped her arm across her brow, smearing grime by her eye.

He gestured to her face. “You have dirt on your temple.”

She rubbed her temple, but only succeeded in spreading the grime further. “Better?”

“Worse. May I?”

When she nodded, he lifted the hem of his shirt and carefully wiped the smudge away. When he lowered the fabric, he found her gaze glued to his abs, and suddenly every minute he’d spent in the gym sweating over weights while working through mysteries in his mind was worth it.

She cleared her throat. “Thanks.” She nudged aside a box of doll clothes, which were most likely moldy. After several minutes of moving items in thick silence, she returned to their previous vein of conversation. “Have you been married before?”

“No. You?”

“No, although I’m pretty sure Jeremy was thinking about proposing.”

That dick? Connor couldn’t imagine Holly kissing the guy, much less marrying him. The very thought of it made his skin crawl. “When did you two break up?” And did she know the wanker still thought he had a claim on her even though he was dating Amy?

“Six months ago.”

“Did he lock your wine away?”

“Oh my God, that was awful, right?” She stood from where she was crouching and shook her head. “He was stuffy when we were dating, but it’s a small town, and most of the guys my age are already married, so it’s either give a few odd relationships a chance or wait until everyone else starts getting divorced. He’s gotten worse since we broke up, though. That was too much last night.”

“I can’t imagine why it didn’t work out with him.”

She huffed. “Yeah, turns out ‘condescending pig’ isn’t my type after all.”

“And just when I thought I had a shot.”

Her lips curved. “You’re a lot of things, Grimm, but you’re not a condescending pig.”

Connor tried to sound casual when he shifted some records and said, “So what is your type then?”

“I guess I still don’t know. I’m in my late twenties, and all I’ve learned so far is what I don’t like.”

“That’s a start. What don’t you like?”

Holly propped her hip on the corner of an old dresser and started ticking things off on her fingers. “Misogynists, idiots, men who think they’re smarter than me when they’re not, men who try to tell me how to run the apple farm, men who hate hedgehogs, men in love with hotdogs, men who think—”

“Wait a minute—did you say ‘men in love with hotdogs’?”

Holly nodded sadly. “It was the date from hell. Missy set me up, and when I got to the restaurant, the guy had already ordered and eaten three hotdogs—the wrappers were sitting right in front of him. When the waitress came over, he ordered six more. I wanted a hamburger, but he insisted I have a hotdog. Then he went on to tell me all the disturbing ways a hotdog can be used … er … romantically .”

Connor gawked at her. “No way.”

“Way. Then it got worse.”

“How?”

“He slipped an uneaten hotdog in his pocket, and when we left, he touched my ear with it.”

Connor didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or cry. “That’s terrible.”

“You have no idea what it’s like for women out there. How about you? I imagine you don’t have any problem with the pool of available women.”

A bird chirped and they met each other’s eyes in surprise. There must’ve been a nest farther back in the rafters. “I date some,” he admitted, “but less than you might think.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

Too many strings. Too many expectations. Too much effort. He didn’t think any of those answers would endear him to her, but they were the truth. “I haven’t found anyone worth the effort. I’m busy and I have limited time. I move around a lot and I’m away more than I’m home. I’ve been in my apartment exactly twelve days this year.”

“Ah.” She nodded sagely as she stood and lifted a crate of empty bottles. “So you’re married to Grimm Reality .”

He’d never thought of it that way, but he supposed she was right. Grimm Reality was both his wife and his baby, and he’d never been the two-timing type.

“Which means you only have the time and energy for easy, no-strings flings,” she added, and blinked sweetly. “Must be tough for you.”

“I’ve tried relationships,” he said, not liking how she was making him sound. “I’m willing to put in the effort if it’s worth it.”

She arched a brow and shoved the crate between the bones of an old ironing board and a box. “But no one has been worth it?” Before he could respond, she changed the topic. “How did you get started in this line of work, anyway? Did you wake up one morning and say, ‘Hey, Mom, I’m going to study ghosts’?”

He plastered on the smile he reserved for this exact question. “How did you know? Actually, I think it’s just in my blood. My father was a journalist, my grandfather was an author, and my great-grandfather wrote down other people’s stories. When it was time to decide what to do with my life, I figured I couldn’t go wrong doing the thing I loved. Erikson and I actually started out as a YouTube channel before we got picked up by a major network.”

She studied him with hazel eyes that seemed to pierce straight through the fake smile. Dust motes danced around her head, and in their small space he could smell the dust and mold mixing with her sweet Christmas scent. “No,” she said finally, “that’s not the whole story.”

“You can look online. That’s the story.”

“Our blood legacy can guide us, but we have to choose it too. I should know. This apple farm has been in my family for two hundred years, and yet I would have walked away and left it to my sisters if I hadn’t had a personal connection to it. What’s your personal connection?”

Connor wiped his brow with his shirt and sat down on one of the boxes. He’d never had anyone question his story before. His standard bio gave the whole spiel about his grandfather, and it was half the truth, but not the most important half. After all this time, how was Holly the first person to want to dig deeper?

Holly followed his lead and perched on a half-caved-in dollhouse across from him, a bead of sweat sliding from her neck to between her breasts. Her green tank top was dampened with perspiration, and for the fortieth time Connor found his thoughts wandering toward forbidden territory. Well, if work wasn’t suppressing his wayward thoughts, maybe telling her the truth would. If she looked at him with even half the wariness he thought she would after hearing his origin story, he’d finally be able to put his unwelcome attraction to her to rest. He could close himself off completely. Connor never exposed this particular vulnerability—not to anyone—and the fact that he was planning to do so now in the hopes that it would push her away and extinguish his desire was kind of desperate.

And still he found his mouth opening and the words spilling out. “It’s hard to talk about it with someone who doesn’t believe in the supernatural.” Her gaze darted away. Connor leaned forward, his eyebrows lifting. “Wait a second, you don’t believe in the supernatural, right ?”

“I don’t think I ever said that.”

“You said the first day I met you, and I quote, ‘The supernatural isn’t real, and these orchards aren’t haunted.’”

“Well, I didn’t want you here.”

His pulse kicked up a notch, and his instincts whispered to him. “So then you knew there was a ghost? Have you seen it?”

“No, I haven’t. Until Amy’s story, I honestly didn’t believe the ghost sightings were real. But I may have fibbed about not believing in the supernatural.” She polished her thumbnail on the hem of her tank top. “I suppose there are things out there that other people don’t know about.”

She lifted her hazel eyes and met his. They held each other’s gaze for a moment, and every one of those whispering instincts began to scream. “Are you supernatural, Holly?”

She didn’t laugh. “Are you avoiding my question about your origin as a ghost hunter, Connor?”

Someone was avoiding questions, and it wasn’t him. His suspicions about the Celeste family had continued to crystalize over the past few days. Although he still hadn’t seen actual proof beyond the photograph, which still could have been staged, his ancient storyteller blood was stirring, and he knew he was walking parallel to the truth. He had circumstantial evidence, and if he bided his time, he was certain he’d get what he’d come for. Either someone would slip and say something they shouldn’t, or he’d witness the impossible.

When he’d arrived, he’d been operating under the assumption that Aunt Daisy would be his main focus, but the moment he’d walked into the Celeste kitchen, the hair on his arms had lifted, and he’d known there were more secrets to be revealed than he’d first thought.

Holly Celeste was a witch, and he was going to prove it.