5. Daphne

5

DAPHNE

"You feeling all right? You look a little flushed." Aunt Rhonda asked from the driver's seat in her F150 pickup truck.

"I'm fine…it's just warm."

It was a balmy seventy-two degrees with a perfect summer breeze, but thankfully my aunt didn't press the issue.

I pulled down the mirror and checked my reflection only to find my cheeks were tinted with a deep blush thanks to the image that was permanently (I hoped) burned into my retinas.

My earlier question had been answered. There is something sexier than a man in gray sweatpants, or even a naked man under an outdoor shower; it was a man in gray sweatpants holding a kitty.

I couldn't get the visual of Harlan Mitchell, shirtless, with his gray sweatpants riding low on his waist as he cradled Dini, out of my head. My response to it though—I wanted to erase from my memory. I'd gotten flustered.

Me. Daphne Estelle Moore. Flustered.

That never happened. I was the epitome of calm, cool, and collected. Nothing ruffled my feathers. It was a survival skill I'd picked up at a young age and was part of what made me good at my job. When I'd started at Pulse as an intern, ninety percent of my duties were talent coordination, which meant dealing directly with celebrities.

I didn't get starstruck or have butterflies when I met Brad Pitt, Michael B. Jordan, Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, the Hemsworth brothers, or even my personal celeb crush Ryan Gosling.

Those men all have the "it" factor. They possess inordinate amounts of charm, charisma, and sex appeal. That was not an opinion. That was a certifiable fact. But when I met them, there was no spark, no—as the Brits say—fanny flutters, no physical response to seeing them or being in their presence.

I was sure that I was immune to that sort of thing. But I was wrong. So wrong. Because the moment Harlan answered the door, my entire body lit up like a float in Disneyland's Main Street Electrical Parade. Tingles and jingles spread through me like a wildfire in dry brush. I had a first-class ticket on a bullet train to Swoon City. My ovaries exploded. I'd never wanted to have babies, but I wanted that man to impregnate me.

I was dumbstruck. Literally. I forgot where I was, what I was doing, even how to speak. It wasn't just his near-perfect physique that left me speechless; it was something that I couldn't quite put into words.

Hours later, I was still rattled by the encounter.

"Did everything go okay over at the Mitchell's? You've seemed…off…since you got back."

I was hoping she hadn't noticed. When I returned from next door, kittyless, Nadia was in my aunt's living room picking up her mask. She'd answered the SOS call and arrived with four dresses for me to choose from. After a mini-fashion show, the decision had been unanimous that I wear her How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days iconic yellow dress dupe. It was an exact replica of Kate Hudson's gown in the movie, complete with a low neckline and open back with crisscross satin straps. I'd never worn the color before, but somehow, it worked. And I made myself a custom mask that complemented it perfectly.

Between the fashion show, the mask assembly, and getting ready for the ball, I thought I'd been able to slip under my aunt's matchmaker radar.

Hoping to throw her off the scent of my Elvis-mania-sized-teenage-crush, I asked, "Did you know Mr. Mitchell had a thing for Grammy Moore?"

Aunt Rhonda's drawn-on eyebrows pulled into a low V as her eyes cut to me. "Who told you that?"

"He did."

"Old Man Mitchell told you that he had a thing for Grammy Moore?"

It worked. She was off the scent.

I nodded. "When he saw me, he said that I was the spitting image of Estelle and that he had a thing for her long before my grandfather was in the picture."

Aunt Rhonda let out a howl of laughter and slapped the steering wheel. "Well, I'll be damned!" She leaned forward and looked up and out of the windshield toward the sky. "I told you, Mama!" She chuckled as she turned her head toward me. "I guess you must be really good at your job if you got that much out of him in a ten-minute conversation. I haven't gotten more than a mumbled hello or goodbye out of him in sixty-plus years."

In college, I majored in journalism, and my dream had always been to be an investigative journalist. But that wasn't my actual job now. I'd thought it was going to be, especially after I landed the internship at CNN. But once I got hired at Pulse , things took a different turn.

"I think I just reminded him of her," explaining why Mr. Mitchell might have opened up to me. "When he walked out on the porch, he looked like he'd seen a ghost."

Aunt Rhonda turned toward me and studied me for a few seconds before returning her attention to the road. "Yeah, I guess you do favor her. We'll have to pull out some pictures before you go."

"I'd love that, if we have time." My return flight was tomorrow evening, and I was going to be on that plane despite the Firefly Island-sized hair that was up my boss's butt. My plan was to pitch boring stories that Alexandra would never greenlight. As much as I loved my aunt and I felt guilty about her running the business on her own, I had a weird premonition that this place would be like quicksand, and the longer I stayed, the harder it would be to get out.

"Did you give Old Man Mitchell Houdini? I thought he hated that thing; he's always hollerin' about furball this and furball that."

"Um, no, I gave her to Harlan."

"Oh…so you did see Harlan."

"Yep."

"And…"

"And what?" I could feel myself blushing, and I was glad that the sun had set so even if she glanced over it wouldn't be glaringly obvious.

"And what did you think?"

"He seems nice."

"Nice? Buttercup, I could use a lot of adjectives to describe that boy, and nice is not one of them."

"He's not nice?" I'd known the man for all of ten minutes, but for some reason the thought of him being mean caused my heart to sink.

"Oh no, he's nice, alright. Nice on the peepers. Don't tell me you didn't notice. Or are you immune to seein' a perfect male specimen since you live in La La Land?"

I thought that was the case, but Harlan had proved me wrong. "No, I'm not immune. He's very attractive."

"Mmm, hmm." She hummed as she followed a line of cars off the main road. My eyes doubled in size as we turned onto a mile-long driveway tunneled with mature oaks that were covered in twinkle lights.

"Wow, this is so…magical."

I knew that the gala was being held at Abernathy Manor, which the town was known for, but I'd never actually visited the place as a child.

"It's alright, I s'pose." Aunt Rhonda did not seem impressed by the scenery.

At the end of the road sat the house proper, a palatial estate that looked worthy of royalty and dignitaries.

"Do you think this place is really haunted?" I remembered that Grammy Moore had believed that it was, which was why I was never allowed to come here, but I wasn't sure where my aunt stood on it.

"No. I don't think it is." Aunt Rhonda shook her head. "I know it is."

"You do?" Aunt Rhonda was, in most circles, considered eccentric, so it did not surprise me that she had an unfailing belief in the paranormal.

Aunt Rhonda nodded. "I saw her one day when I was on a class tour."

"Who?"

"Lucille. I saw her."

"Is she the ghost?"

We pulled to a stop behind a line of cars waiting for the valet that was about a dozen deep.

My aunt shifted in her seat toward me. "You don't know the story?"

I shook my head. Grammy Moore never told me the details, just that the mansion was haunted.

Aunt Rhonda took a deep breath. "Lucille Abernathy came from old money. Back in those days, the Abernathys were in the same league as the Vanderbilts. Unfortunately for Lucille, money can't buy love. Her fate was sealed the day she met a longshoreman named Bruce Comfort, who was beneath her station. She fell head over heels, and the two had a torrid affair that ended in a secret engagement. When her family found out that Lucille planned to marry, they told her to choose between him or her family, wealth, and inheritance. She chose wrong."

"She chose her family?" I figured losing out on true love would make anyone want to haunt their family.

"No, she chose him and was disowned."

Plot twist.

"But it turned out her feelings for Bruce were not quite as reciprocated as she'd believed them to be. After she gave up everything for that man, he called off their engagement and eloped with a maid who worked for her family the same day. Well, now Lucille was heartbroken, completely devastated. So, of course, she went running back to mommy and daddy, but they told her she'd made her decision and that she was no longer their daughter."

"Wow, that's harsh."

Aunt Rhonda nodded in agreement. "Sure is. And the next day, when the family woke up and came down for breakfast, they noticed that a window had been broken out in the parlor. So they looked around, thinking that they might have had an intruder and something might have been stolen. But instead of missing artwork or valuables, they found Lucille dead in her childhood bed. She left a note on her nightstand saying that she poisoned herself and that before she had, she put a curse on Bruce Comfort and all of his male heirs that doomed them to a lifetime of the same heartache that she had experienced."

"The Comfort Curse." I'd never known that the two folk tales were connected. The haunting and the curse. But it made sense now.

"That's right. So far, this current generation seems to have broken it, but their father and uncles were not so lucky."

The passenger side door opened, and I jumped an inch off my seat. I hadn't realized that we were at the front of the line. I had been so engrossed in the story that I hadn't even realized we moved up.

The valet, who looked twelve but I assumed was legally allowed to drive, took my hand with a nod. "Ma'am."

I knew it was a Southern thing, but I didn't love being called ma'am. Living in Los Angeles, I already felt ancient being twenty-nine.

"Well, let's get this shindig over with." Aunt Rhonda stepped beside me and linked her arm with mine.

As we entered the grand foyer, there was a large chandelier hanging overhead and ornate woodwork everywhere my eye landed. It reminded me of a movie set; it was hard to believe that this was a family home at one point.

A ten-foot painting hung on the wall. It was a portrait of a man, a woman, two sons, and a young girl.

"Is that her? Lucille?"

"That's her. And she's still here." Aunt Rhonda looked up the steps with a disturbed expression.

"Rhonda Moore!" A woman with fire-engine red hair and bright pink eye shadow approached my aunt. "I expected to see you today in the shop! Where were you hiding?"

"Oh, I just got ready at home with my niece. Daphne, this is Miss Caroline Shaw; she owns the Pretty in Peach beauty salon."

"Nice to meet you, Miss Shaw."

"You too, dear. Are you ladies going to bid on anyone tonight?"

I turned to my aunt. "Bidding?"

"There's a bachelor auction."

"There is?" I asked.

The only bachelor I was interested in bidding on was Harlan Mitchell, and I doubted he'd be up for auction.