Relative Strangers Part 10

If only she could gather strength enough to project everything into Corrie Ballantyne's consciousness at once. This. .h.i.t-or-miss, stop-and-start communication frustrated her no end.

Corrie kept missing essential bits of information.

Try as she might, Adrienne could not control what got through and what didn't. Just the effort was exhausting.

Sighing as deeply as Corrie had, Adrienne worried she might not succeed, after all. Would she ever resolve the guilt she'd felt during the last year of her own lifetime and after?

For a hundred years she'd been separated from the man she loved. Wasn't that enough to expiate a sin of omission?

Corrie was in the car, about to leave the hotel for the public library, when Lucas slid into the pa.s.senger seat. "No sense taking two vehicles," he said, "though we could walk."

"Walking seems to get me into trouble," she informed him.

So did riding in a sleigh, but Lucas had the good sense not to remind her of that. Neither did he bring up his own skepticism about her "sightings." Instead he gave her directions to the library, then played the quintessential gentleman when they reached their destination by taking her elbow to squire her through the heavy oak doors that guarded its contents.

Any excuse to touch her, he thought, grinning wryly. Did she have the slightest idea how she affected him? Probably not. And probably just as well. He had to laugh at himself now for thinking, on the night they first met, that he could resist her. Even her strange aberration, the fact that she thought she saw things that weren't there, wasn't enough to keep him away from her.

The dour-faced doyenne of the Waycross Springs Public Library was waiting for them just inside. "Ah, Mrs. Prentiss," Lucas greeted her. "You're looking well this morning."

"Thank you, dear boy." She poked self-consciously at a strand of iron-gray hair that had tumbled across her forehead, but her attention was fixed on. Corrie. "Who have we here?"

"This is Corrie Ballantyne, a guest at the hotel and a friend of the family. She's interested in local history."

"Family come from here?" Mrs. Prentiss asked.

"Not that I know of," Corrie answered.

The inquisition might have gone on for some time had Lucas not reminded Mrs. Prentiss she'd promised to direct them to any doc.u.ments that concerned either Adrienne or her brother Horatio.

Corrie also asked for newspapers from 1947.

A short time later, she was ensconced at one of the long worktables in the reading room, surrounded by yellowing, slightly musty-smelling pages. Decades behind the times, this small, underfunded local facility couldn't afford microfilm. Fortunately, the Waycross Springs Gazette was a weekly and rarely more than eight pages long.

Seated at her side, Lucas paused in his own research to watch her scan issues from October of 1947. What was it that drew him to her? She had a quiet dignity that was appealing, yet he knew she was not at all placid when dealing with something she cared about. Perhaps that was it. He wanted to delve beneath the surface, to tap into the pa.s.sion she tried to keep hidden. He wanted to be the something she cared pa.s.sionately about.

He was getting fanciful. As bad as Corrie herself. How could he let himself fall for a woman who thought she saw ghosts? A woman who wasn't able to tell reality from illusion?

She looked up just then and smiled at him, and his heart raced. Whatever was between them, it was powerful. And it wasn't likely to go away anytime soon.

"This isn't helping, but it's kind of fascinating," she said, gesturing to the page spread out in front of her. "In 1947 I could have bought a washing machine and had it delivered for one hundred and twenty-nine dollars and fifty cents."

Lucas glanced at the other ads on the page. Quart bottles of ginger ale, root beer, sarsaparilla, and Moxie were offered for fifteen cents each, plus deposit. Swimsuits for toddlers sold for fifty-nine cents and up.

Reaching past Corrie, he picked up the next issue, dated October 17th. The middle of the front page carried a story about closing down the woods due to fire danger. At the movie theater Joan Crawford was starring in Possessed, a double feature with Jesse James Rides Again.

Intensely aware of Corrie watching him, he read about a barn destroyed in a flash fire. Volunteers had fought the blaze with Indian pumps and brooms, but their efforts had been severely limited by lack of water. Finally some had been brought in using maple syrup tanks, but not before nine cows, a pair of horses, a bull, and a calf had perished.

Not a single mention was made of a ghost having appeared to a guest at the Sinclair House.

"Oh, well. It was always a long shot," Corrie murmured.

She looked so forlorn that he wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her. h.e.l.l, he wanted to do far more than that! He was trying to think of some way to get past the barrier of her belief in the supernatural when Mrs. Prentiss appeared at his elbow.

"Lucas," she said. "There's a phone call for you."

Corrie watched him leave with a sense of growing dismay. She'd been so enthralled by his presence at her side that she hadn't even heard the telephone ringing.

Why did the man have to be so attractive? She wanted to keep the intellectual puzzle, the mysteries of Adrienne and of her own mother's apparent sighting, separate from how she felt about Lucas. She couldn't do it. He was inextricably bound up in what had gone before and, somehow, so was she.

Frowning, Corrie tried to sort out what that meant. What was the connection? Why did Adrienne only appear to women in Corrie's family?

Or was that a.s.sumption wrong? Apparently her own mother hadn't told anyone she'd seen a ghost, except Hugh Sinclair and maybe her parents. Perhaps dozens of other people over the years had seen Adrienne but had kept quiet about it, fearing ridicule or simply refusing to believe the evidence of their own eyes.

A sudden conviction came to Corrie that the answers weren't there at the library. They were at the hotel. Somehow she had to find a better way to communicate with the Sinclair House ghost.

"I have to go back," Lucas announced as he returned. "Minor emergency at the hotel."

"I'll drive you," she said.

"You don't want to stay here? You haven't even started on the material from the 1890s."

"It's not going to help."

He started to object, then seemed to think better of it. "Whatever you say, Corrie."

Lucas didn't utter another word until they reached the hotel, and Corrie berated herself the whole way. She'd mishandled Lucas from the start. She should have found a better way to tell him about seeing Adrienne in the dining room on Christmas night. But no. She'd just blurted it out. How could she blame him for being so skeptical? It was a tribute to his character that he'd humored her to the extent he had. As far as she knew, he hadn't even considered sending for the little men in the white coats.

They turned the car over to a valet and entered the lobby together. Corrie expected Lucas to go straight to the registration desk, where Joyce was waiting to consult with him over whatever problem had come up. Instead he drew her aside, behind one of the huge pillars. There was an illusion of privacy there, without the intimacy of being together in his office or her room.

"Here's the thing, Corrie. Between now and New Year's Eve I'm going to be right out straight with hotel business, but I'd like it very much if you'd promise me two things."

"What things?"

"First, that if you have any more sightings you'll let me know right away. That goes for sudden insights too. Or if anything upsets you for any reason. I want to know, okay?"

"Okay. Was that one promise or two?"

"One. You and I also have some unfinished personal business to take care of."

"Personal?" He was standing much too close. She couldn't think clearly. Did he mean what she hoped he did?

"Yes, personal. As in nothing whatsoever to do with the supernatural."

"And this second promise you wanted from me?"

He started to say something but caught himself. "Save me a dance New Year's Eve?"

"Sure," she agreed, fighting a sense of chagrin, "if you tell me what you originally planned to ask me."

He glanced toward the registration desk and shifted his weight. "I don't have time to beat around the bush," he said bluntly. "I was going to ask you to spend the evening with me."

"And you decided that wasn't wise?"

"I decided that wouldn't be fair to you. I'll be working."

She suspected he wasn't telling her the whole truth, even now, but she didn't choose to pursue the issue. She was too unsure of how she felt about him. Her resolve not to get any more involved with him seemed to weaken every time she was in his company.

"You're only asking for the evening, not the night," she said in what she hoped was a light tone of voice.

"All right, then. Let's spend the evening together."

"Agreed. The whole evening."

Trouble was, she wanted to spend the whole night with Lucas Sinclair too.

He gave a wry chuckle. "You look as if you're already reconsidering."

"I've said I want to spend the evening with you." Knowing she sounded testy, she tried to soften her tone. "As Rachel would say, what could it hurt?"

"I don't think I'm going to answer that."

Catching her off guard, he bent forward and brushed his lips across her mouth. He retreated before she could say a word.

She watched him stop to speak with Joyce, then go on into his office. It wasn't until he was out of sight that Corrie realized Joyce must have witnessed their kiss. Lucas's mother was positively beaming.

"Oh, great," Corrie muttered. "Nothing like encouraging the matchmakers."

Still, she didn't feel quite as irritated as she would have a few days earlier. She started to return to her room, then did a Columbo-style turn and advanced on the registration desk.

"Joyce, have you got a minute? I have a question."

"Of course, my dear. What is it?"

"It's about the 1947 fires."

"Lucas told me you saw your mother. I looked in the old hotel registers, but there are no entries for October of 1947. The hotel closed for the season in September."

"That's not possible."

"I'm sorry, Corrie, but it is. I should have realized sooner. Till we winterized, only a few exceptions were made. A visiting dignitary, perhaps, who didn't mind that the only heat came from the fireplace in the room."

"I don't suppose you remember any visitors that year. I know you must have been a young child yourself, but-"

"I wasn't here yet.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean-"

"Your guess at my age is accurate enough," Joyce said, amus.e.m.e.nt making her eyes twinkle, "but I didn't move to Maine until after Lucas was born. I met and married Hugh in Colorado. We didn't live in Waycross Springs until Hugh's father asked him to come back and help him run the place."

"But you know so much of the history."

"That should have been your first hint," Joyce said with a laugh. "It's almost always the outsider who wants to belong who goes in for ancestor worship in a big way."

Corrie was glad the phone rang just then, demanding Joyce's attention. She needed a little time alone to absorb this new thought. It was true, she realized. People tended to neglect their own family heritage, to take whatever they'd been told for granted.

What did she really know about her mother, Alice Todd Ballantyne? Or her grandmother, Mary Hanover Todd? And she couldn't even remember Great-grandmother Daisy Hanover's maiden name.

Resolved to remedy her own ignorance after she returned home, Corrie set about implementing a new plan to link with Adrienne. She went into the dining room, even though it was too early for lunch, and sat at the table from which she'd seen Adrienne and her Lucas on Christmas night.

She sat there for a very long time.

Absolutely nothing happened.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

That evening Lucas found Corrie alone at a table in the dining room. "May I join you?" he asked.

"Please. Rachel has a date tonight with someone she met skiing."

Lucas sat and signaled the waiter. "I'm afraid I'll have to eat and run."

"At least you're not just wolfing down a sandwich at your desk."

He grinned. "You sound like my mother. Nag. Nag. Nag."

"You deserve it if you work yourself too hard."

After they gave their orders, Lucas broached the subject he wanted to get out of the way first. "Any further signs of Adrienne or your mother?" That Corrie hadn't contacted him all afternoon probably meant she hadn't seen Adrienne again. He'd caught himself once or twice wishing she had, if only because that would have given her an excuse to stop by his office.

"No," she said. "And I've spent a good deal of time right here today, hoping she'd show up. That she hasn't is beginning to make me nervous. I keep wondering if the haunting has stopped and I'm supposed to figure things out from the clues I've already gotten. If so, we're in trouble. I've tried, but I come up blank. I just don't have enough information."

"Let's not discuss ghosts anymore this evening," he suggested after their salads were served. "Surely there are other things we can talk about."

They discussed favorite books until the entrees arrived.

"What now?" she asked, smiling. "The weather?"

"You?"

"I'm a pretty boring subject."