Jaxson's Song (7 page)

“
No. It’s just a rental. Watch out, somewhere here in the
middle, there’s a place in the carpet that sticks up.”

“
Oh, I think I just found it,” Kate gasped, wincing when she
fell forward on the stairs and banged her shin hard. Above her,
Jaxson stopped and swore under his breath before he backtracked to
help her to her feet. He kept one hand wrapped around Kate’s arm,
just above her elbow, until they made it to the second floor
landing.

“
Sorry. I keep forgetting to replace the bulb up here. Are you
okay?”

“
Yeah, I’m fine. Just clumsy,” she said, stepping away from
Jaxson to face the long, darkened hallway.

Jaxson walked a few feet
past Kate and suddenly the hallway was illuminated in a soft,
golden light. “Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour, then you can
pick which room you want for the night.”

“
How many bedrooms are up here?”

“
Six.”

“
Wow.”

“
Yeah. So, you’ve got five to choose from.”

Outside, the storm peaked.
They strode down the hallway, toward the first of the six bedrooms
as rain pinged loudly against the roof and windows. A flash of blue
arced across the sky, casting the large bedroom in an eerie light
the minute Kate and Jaxson entered the room.

“
This room will be fine,” Kate said, turning a slow circle as
Jaxson closed the door behind them. She wandered closer to the
window, peering at the black, rain soaked, wind-whipped world
beyond the pale lace curtains. “There’s a bathroom through that
door?” she asked, turning to the left.

“
Yeah. I think there are towels beside the sink. And there
ought to be blankets in here somewhere.” Jaxson’s voice was muffled
for a second, and then he emerged from the walk-in closet, a thick
chocolate-brown fleece blanket clutched in one arm, a set of navy
blue sheets in the other. “Found
’
em.”

“
Thanks.” Kate held out her arms for the bedding, but Jaxson
didn’t move.

“
I’ll help you make the bed,” he offered after standing
awkwardly in the middle of the room for a moment.

“
Oh, okay.” She nodded, moving to the other side of the bed
and catching the end of the sheet he draped across the full-sized
mattress. “So,” Kate said casually as she tucked her end around the
corner of the mattress and then straightened. “You never said why
you came to Florida. How come you left New York?”

Deep rumbling outside
seemed to match the sudden shift in Jaxson’s mood. For some reason,
Kate realized as she stood facing him now beside the bedroom door,
her question had struck a nerve.

His face was a tense,
irritated mask before even that much expression was shuttered. “It
was time for a new start. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“
Jaxson, wait—”

Another sharp crack and
resounding boom echoed around them, and the lights flickered one
final time before the room went black.

Chapter Six

In The Dark

J
axson
turned and for a second, his
face was illuminated in the flash of blue-white light through the
partially open curtains.

“
There should be a flashlight in the top drawer of the
nightstand.”

And then he was gone. The
soft click of the latch signaled his exit from the pitch dark
bedroom. Well! Kate huffed out a breath and put one hand out as she
navigated the furniture around her in order to get to the bed and
the promise of a flashlight. It wasn’t hard to do; all the
furniture in the room was pushed up against the walls. Within
thirty seconds the tops of her thighs hit the mattress of the extra
large bed—the only piece of furniture that stuck out into the
middle of the room. Kate climbed onto the bed and ran a hand
against the soft, quilted fabric of the bedspread.
It’s so dark in here
…

She waved a hand back and
forth in front of her face and shivered a little when she could
only just make out the outline of her fingers. She glanced down at
the bedspread beneath her and tried to remember what color it was
supposed to be. Blue, maybe? Like Jaxson’s dress. Yes, that was it,
blue with little white flowers dotted across the top and
bottom.

Jaxson. Kate sighed and
tucked her legs beneath her bottom in the middle of the enormous
bed, then leaned over abruptly when she remembered there was
supposed to be a flashlight in the bedside table. There wasn’t one,
but Kate found a small stockpile of thick pillar candles and
several packets of matches in the drawer on the other side of the
bed. Several long minutes’ worth of fumbling in drawers produced a
small silver tray that she assumed was meant to hold the candles as
they burned.

She struck the match along
the side of the rough strip along the edge of the matchbook, pupils
dilating as sparks raced along the line and the match flared to
life. She lit two candles and settled herself against the pillows,
reclining back, kicking her rubber-soled clogs off her feet and
onto the carpet, and laying back down to cross her legs at the
ankles. Absently, Kate turned her head and twisted the gold ring on
her thumb around in slow circles as she watched the flickering
flames throw shadows on the delicate, tea-rose patterned wallpaper
beside the bed.

She yawned, and her mind
began to drift over her very eventful first night back in her
aunt’s home—her home now, she reminded herself for the umpteenth
time since she found out she’d inherited the place. Remnants of the
storm echoed in the now soft spatter of raindrops against the roof
of the house and the distant rumble of thunder. The midnight soaker
seemed to have moved on for the night, further inland, leaving a
calm, easy silence in the candle-lit bedroom.

Kate breathed in the
peaceful, comfortable stillness, let it soak into her skin, because
in the morning reality would once again come crashing down around
her. She would have to go back to her own house; the day after that
she was due back at the hospital. According to the nursing Shift
Coordinator, Kate was banished to basement for corpse-sitting
duties for another six weeks. Well, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. At
least she wouldn’t be alone during her next shift; she’d already
been informed that a guard typically completed each night shift
alongside the night shift nurse.

Apparently, the hospital
in Crystal Cove had its share of midnight vandals—kids breaking
into the morgue for kicks. She shuddered and turned onto her side,
propping her head on her hand and watching the candle’s cheery
flame dance in the shadows. What kind of kid broke into a
morgue…for fun? She could see a kid sneaking into a school, sure,
or onto a football field to spray paint something, maybe even a
movie theater—which, admittedly, sounded kind of intriguing, but
the local morgue? No, she just didn’t see the appeal. But she could
understand why the hospital’s board of directors had voted to beef
up security and place a nighttime guard in the basement.

What she didn’t understand
was what she herself was doing down there. Granted, she was fresh
out of nursing school, but Kate didn’t think she’d ever heard of a
hospital employing a third shift
“
morgue nurse.” Really, what was she
supposed to do? Make sure anybody the staff brought down in the
middle of the night or wee hours of the morning was really dead?
Wouldn’t the attending doctors and nurses have already determined
that?

Well, at the end of the
day it didn’t matter, she decided. She had a steady job with decent
wages at a small-town but reputable facility. There would be money
in the bank every week to pay the few bills that she and Lilly
incurred. She could keep the fridge and pantry stocked with food;
cooking dinner for only Lilly at the end of the month, and then
lying to her sister and saying she’d already eaten, would now be a
thing of the past. Now that their mother’s final medical bills were
paid off, maybe she and Lilly could even afford a luxury or
two—some news clothes, a girls’ night out. So, who cared if her
current job description was a shade on the morbid side?

The house, though…that was
another thing altogether. That did matter. For one brief, wild
second, Kate entertained fantasies of trying to sell the old place.
Immediately, she put the brakes on that train of thought. Selling
the house before Lilly was finished with college and comfortably
out on her own, would be foolhardy. What if they had some emergency
or an illness, or…well, Kate couldn’t think of anything specific
right off hand, but the reality was, any number of situations could
pop up over the next four or five years and severely tax her and
Lilly’s limited resources. And aside from some distant aunts,
uncles, cousins, one grandmother, and a very well-meaning Lindsey,
she and Lil were on their own.

Kate felt a twinge of
conscience at discounting her family. Okay, maybe she and her
sister weren’t
“
on their own.”

But it wasn’t anyone
else’s job to take care of the two of them. They all had lives and
bills and problems of their own. And to Kate’s way of thinking,
she’d done a good enough job taking care of her sister, these last
few years. Even Aunt Charlotte, when she’d made the trek from
Louisiana for Lilly’s high school graduation, had remarked on what
a good job Kate had done. The same family members who had initially
balked at the idea of an eighteen-year-old guardian for a
fifteen-year-old girl, had eventually come around to admit that
Kate had stepped up to the plate.

They didn’t know about the
things Kate had went without in order to take care of her sister
and put herself through nursing school. And it didn’t matter now.
Her hard work had finally paid off and they’d made it through one
of the darkest parts of their lives. Now, there was real hope for a
better future and she wasn’t going to screw it up by throwing them
into debt. She sighed and sat up to blow out the candle.

So, someone had broken
into her house tonight…tried to? Kate wasn’t sure, but thought she
may have come home before the intruder had a chance to actually
enter the house. She didn’t care what those officers said—someone
had forced her door open—and not from inside the house, either.
Kate had never heard a more ridiculous scenario. Were the police
experts on door latch damage? Really, how hard would it be to
really determine such a thing? Kate didn’t know, but why would
someone even do that? For what purpose?

A chill crept along her
nerve endings as another thought came to mind. Assuming the lock
had been damaged from the inside…what if whoever had been on that
porch tonight had tried to make it look that way, to throw off
suspicion for the breaking and entering they’d done? So,
this…thief…picks locks on people’s front doors, then somehow
scratches the latch to make it look like the damage was done from
inside the house? Kate frowned, but figured it made as much sense
as anything else, and moved forward to extinguish the last candle.
There was only one problem with her scenario. Nothing had been
stolen.

Sure, maybe she’d
interrupted him before he could go into her house. But if that were
the case, why had he already covered his tracks with the whole
funky lock damage thing? Kate paused over the candle, lips pursed,
but then shook off her anxiety and put out the flame. She could
spend the rest of the night attempting to pick apart the actions of
a crazy person, or she could get some sleep and, in the morning, go
shopping and splurge for a better lock on her front
door.

“
Fuck!”

Kate’s head snapped up at
the muffled curse that carried through the wall. Sitting in the
dark, she bit her lip and giggled at the torrent of curses that
echoed from Jaxson’s bedroom to hers. Clearly, he had the room next
to hers. What was he doing over there? Did she want to know? A
crash and a bang effectively finished shattering the peaceful
solitude of the house. Kate clapped a hand over her mouth as her
mind whirred through the possible scenarios of what was going on in
the next room. Her new neighbor wasn’t boring, she’d give him
that.

Kate vaulted easily off
the bed. Walking carefully in the dark, she followed the sound of
Jaxson’s grousing and the intermittent thumps, to the adjoining
bathroom. She and Jaxson had connecting rooms? One hand groped
along the grainy, textured wallpaper of the bathroom and a second
later, she located the switch and flipped it on. Three large, pale
globes buzzed to life over the single wood-and-porcelain vanity,
and Kate spied the door at the other end of the cozy bathroom.
Apparently so.

She rapped gently on the
door and when a thick, answering silence was the only response, she
twisted the knob and slowly pushed the door open. Cautiously, she
poked her head around the now partially open door. She bit her lip
at the sight that greeted her.

“
Jaxson, what are you doing?” She brought both hands to her
mouth and hurried over to the tangle of man and pantyhose on the
floor beside the bed.

“
What’s it look like?” he grumbled, sitting up and reaching
for his tangled stockings. This time, he jerked them the rest of
the way off and, smooth, muscled legs freed, stood up to face his
neighbor.