Proposal (3 page)

“No one likes warm champagne, Susannah, even when it's from the state of my birth. Now, why don't you change out of those wet things, and—­”

“Climb into bed with you?” I asked. “That sounds like a really, really good idea.”

“—­and stop lying to me about where you were tonight.”

 

Cinco

I
FROZE, MY
shirt halfway over my head.

“Wait. How could you tell I was lying?”

“You can't even balance your checkbook. Who would ask for your help with Statistics?”

I tossed my shirt to the floor. It was slightly disconcerting that he hadn't even noticed I was wearing only a bra (and jeans), but that's one of the downsides of dating someone who'd lived with you for years, even if he'd been in spirit form at the time and chivalrously only materialized when you were fully clothed. I'd always imagined he'd been too irritatingly faithful to his Roman Catholic upbringing—­and his Victorian-­era roots—­ever to have considered spying on me, but now I wasn't too sure.

Except of course that since I'd managed to reunite his soul with his body a few years ago—­another skill of mine that, sadly, cannot be measured by the SATs—­he refused to go further than second base (third on the rare occasions he drank more than three glasses of wine) with me out of “respect” for what he thinks he owes to me—­and my family and Father Dominic and the church—­for all we've done for him, giving him a second chance at life, blah blah blah blah.

Sometimes I get so sick of hearing about it. All I want to do is
bone
, like a normal ­couple.

But we can't, because we aren't normal (although normal isn't considered a therapeutically beneficial term), and my boyfriend has post-­traumatic stress from being dead. And is also Catholic and a century and a half years old, of course, even though he doesn't look a day over twenty-­six.

“I happen to be making a B in Statistics, Jesse,” I said. “That's above average. And no one balances their checkbook. No one even
has
a checkbook anymore, except for you and Father Dominic.”

“Stop avoiding the subject,
querida
.” He regarded me impassively from the bed. “And stop thinking you'll distract me from it, too, by undressing in front of me.”

Damn
.

“Fine.” I snatched a dry shirt from my school-­issued dresser. “If you must know, I was at the cemetery.”

He raised one dark eyebrow—­the one with the scar through it, a perfect crescent moon of brown skin where dark hair should have been. “Cemetery?” he echoed.

Then indignation swiftly replaced bewilderment.

“Was
that
what I felt earlier?” he demanded, rising from the bed. “I thought it was because you were out there driving in this storm. But that wasn't it, was it? It was because you were chasing a ghost, alone, in a cemetery,
at night
.”

I'd begun peeling off my boots. I know he'd asked me not to undress in front of him, but my jeans were soaked. I needed to change them.

Okay, they might have not been
that
wet. But I needed time to come up with a reply that wouldn't enrage him. This was an evasive maneuver.

“Jesse, I don't know what you're talking about. What do you mean, what you felt earlier?”

“You know exactly what I'm talking about. We may no longer have a ghost-­mediator connection, Susannah, but I can still tell when you're feeling afraid, and earlier this evening, you were very, very afraid—­”

Now I was the one who felt indignant. I nearly dropped one of my boots.

“Afraid? I wasn't afraid of that little brat. I just didn't enjoy being pelted by funerary floral arrangements, that's all.”

“Susannah.” Now he was looming over me, seventy-­three inches or so of tasty man-­meat. “
What happened in the cemetery?
”

Susannah.

I felt another chill down my spine, but unlike the one I'd felt when I'd seen the name
Paul Slater
on the envelope Lauren had handed me, this one was pleasant.

As hard as it is to date someone with nineteenth-­century manners—­seriously, it's getting to a point where I spend so much time swimming laps in the campus pool to work off my sexual frustration, my highlights are becoming brassy—­I still feel a thrill every time Jesse calls me Susannah. He thinks the name everyone else calls me—­Suze—­is too short and ugly for someone of my strength and beauty.

Yeah. He gets me. Well, except for the part where I'm totally fine with premarital sex and am also convinced that God, if he or she exists, is, too.

“Well,” I said, since he was still looming over me, looking more like a dominating he-­male than a nerdy doctor-­to-­be. I had no choice but to tell him, even though I knew it was going to make him mad. “Okay, so there's this NCDP who's been stealing flowers off his dead girlfriend's grave, and the girl's family got it on video—­well, static is what they mostly got, but it's been freaking everybody out—­I'm surprised you haven't seen it, it's been all over the news. But I guess you've been busy with your studying and interviews and stuff. So, anyway, I decided to go check it out tonight.” I wiggled out of my jeans. “And long story short, this guy, Mark, says—­”

“
Susannah
.” My name came out in a frustrated hiss. When I glanced in his direction, I saw that Jesse had turned to face my window, the curtains of which he'd closed, so no one could see that a resident of the Virgin Vault was entertaining a contraband man in her room.

He had his arms folded across his chest and his dark head bent, his gaze fastened to the floor. I felt a surge of shame for my bad behavior—­but not for my black hipster briefs, which even I have to admit I look pretty hot in.

“Sorry,” I said, pulling open a drawer and grabbing a dry pair of jeans. “But you're the one who told me to change out of my wet things.”

“Not in front of me,” he ground out. “I'm not a eunuch.”

“Oh, believe me, I
know
. But you're the one who says we have to wait until we get married to have sex, and that we can't get married until you can financially support us both, which is just about the most ridiculously chauvinistic thing I ever—­”

“Can we not have this conversation again
right now
?” he questioned over his shoulder. “I've told you, I respect you and your family both too much to be a financial burden—­”

“I thought you said you didn't want to have this conversation again right now.”

“Are you finished dressing?”

I zipped up my fly. “Yes.”

He turned around. His angular jaws—­beneath a dusting of five o'clock shadow—­had a slight flush to them, and his dark eyes were brighter than ever. “What happened in the cemetery? Did he hurt you?”

“Geez, of course not.” I thought it better not to mention the vases, or that Mark seemed to have been the one who'd whipped up the super cell. That was probably only a coincidence, anyway.

Except that in my business, there are no coincidences. Had it been a coincidence that of all the houses in all the world, I'd just happened to move into the one Jesse had been murdered in?

I think not.

But if there is some higher power in charge of all this stuff, he or she has some explaining to do. Because why would they put someone like me in charge of mediating a case like Mark's? I was already doing a supremely crappy job of it, if the expression on Jesse's face as I described to him what had happened in the cemetery—­well, an abridged version, anyway—­was any indication. How I'd gone there to convince Mark to move on, and how he'd revealed to me that he couldn't, because he hadn't actually killed Jasmin (like everyone thought), and how he was now convinced he had to go get revenge on the person who (allegedly) had.

“But technically it isn't my fault,” I said in my own defense. “How was I supposed to know there'd been a second vehicle involved in the accident? Nothing in any of the news reports mentioned that. You would think there'd have been skid marks or broken glass or paint from the other car or something—­”

He had me in his arms so fast, I hardly knew what was happening. One second he'd been over by the window, and the next, he was crushing me in his embrace. He may not have been a ghost anymore, but he could certainly move as rapidly as one when he felt like it.

“Thank God you weren't hurt,” he said, burying his face in my rain-­dampened hair. “Susannah, how could you have been so foolish as to have gone there alone?”

“Well,” I said. The hug was surprising, but not unwelcome, especially since I enjoyed the feel of his rock-­hard chest against me, and in particular the familiar tingle from the general vicinity of my pubic bone I always experienced whenever it came into contact with any part of his anatomy. “I didn't have a choice. Father Dominic is away at some ministry conference. And I didn't know you were coming. If you'd called sooner, I'd have waited for—­”

“You can't go on doing this,
querida
,” he said, shoving me roughly away from him so he could look down into my eyes. But he still held on to my shoulders, so I couldn't get away. Not that I wanted to. “I've already lost everyone I've ever loved. I can't lose you, too.”

“Jesse, you're not going to lose me. I had the situation totally under control.” Sort of. “But I have to say that after so many years of you keeping your feelings for me hidden out of propriety, it's really nice to hear you say all those things. Plus, it's emotionally healthy that you're letting them out in this way. Keep unburdening yourself.” I wrapped my arms around his neck. “What is it exactly, that you find so irresistible about me? Is it my magnetic personality? Or my emerald green eyes? Or maybe it's just my hot bod?” I felt something against my torso. “Oh, I'm getting the impression that it's my hot bod.”

He thrust me away from him again, this time looking disgusted. “This is nothing to joke about, Susannah. If that boy had murder on his mind when you left him, he may not stop at killing only his rival for his sweetheart's affections.
You
may also be on his list.”

I wasn't listening anymore, however. Well, not really. I'm on the kill list of so many spooks, the whole thing has really gotten old.

“Jesse,” I said, my gaze fastened on the front of his jeans. “Is it my imagination, or are you
overly
glad to see me?”

“I have no idea what you're talking about, Susannah. If this boy wants to kill you—­or even if he only wants to kill this other boy, Zack—­we should go now, and try to stop him.”

“Yeah, in a minute. Jesse, what's in your pocket?”

His hand went instinctively to the hard lump I'd noticed—­and been mistaking for something else all night. His expression turned unreadable—­as it always did when the subject changed to something he didn't want to discuss, like what being dead had been like, or his predilection for the musical stylings of Nicki Minaj—­and he dropped his hand away.

“It's nothing. We need to go. Get your coat.”

“Jesse, that is
not
nothing. I thought you were glad to see me, but I think I was sadly mistaken. Is that a gun in your pocket?”

He threw me a sour glance. “No, Susannah, I do not have a gun in my pocket. Doctors swear an oath to protect human life, not take it.” Then his brown-­eyed gaze grew hard. “Well, unless it's a human who's already dead, and is trying to harm my girlfriend. Now can we go?”

“No, we cannot.” I took a step forward.

Jesse's pretty fast, what with the whole having-­walked-­in-­the-­valley-­of-­the-­shadow-­of-­death thing.

But with all the laps I swim in the campus pool (and paranormal butts I have to kick), I'm faster. I had one finger through a belt loop of his jeans (to hold him still) and another down his pocket more quickly than he could say, “Good morning, ma'am” (a frustrating habit of his of which I've tried to cure him. No one wants to be called
ma'am
. The first time he said it to my mom, I thought she was going to have a coronary).

“Susannah,” he cried, struggling against me—­or more like against himself. I don't think he could decide whether he was more outraged or delighted to find my hand down his pants pocket.

But then when I cried, “Aha! Got it!” and withdrew the treasure I'd discovered from the depths of his jeans, he grew very still. I don't know which one of us was more mortified when I saw what it was.

Because of course it wasn't a gun.

It was a ring box.

 

Seis

J
ESSE WAS THE
first to recover himself.

“Well, I hope you're satisfied, Miss Simon,” he said, and nimbly snatched the box from my hand, then stuffed it back into his pocket.

I was too emotional to say anything. I was experiencing many “feels” as the kids on Tumblr—­my computer-­savvy friend CeeCee has told me about it—­often say. I felt panic and joy and shame over my behavior, but also exultant over the fact that the ring box wasn't large enough to have caused
all
the hardness I'd felt against me while we'd been making out earlier. So I'd been right: he
had
been happy to see me.

“But Jesse,” I said, when I finally found my voice. “I thought we'd agreed we were going to wait until we were both finished with our education, and
then
get married, because of your nineteenth-­century macho man bullshit idea that you have to support me. Which of course is ridiculous since I fully intend to support myself. And you.”

“Yes,” he said, with forced patience. He hated it when I brought up the part about how I was going to support him, which is why I brought it up as often as possible. It's important to keep your romantic partner on their toes. “But we could still get engaged.”

“
Engaged?
” My voice broke on the word. “Jesse, no one our age gets
engaged
. They live together first, to see how things are going to work out, then—­”

“We already did that, Susannah,” he reminded me matter-­of-­factly. “And I think you'll agree that things ‘worked out' beneficially for both of us.”

“Yes, but . . .” I struggled to put into words what I was feeling. The difficulty was that I didn't know what I was feeling.

Of course Jesse and I had discussed the fact that we were going to get married someday. We didn't have one of those dumb relationships you read about in books where they can't talk about having a future together because one person can't commit due to his abusive past. Jesse had had the most abusive past you could imagine, and all he wanted to do now was move forward from it. We'd both nearly
died
for one another. We'd both given each other up so the other could live. I'd definitely known this was coming.

I just didn't think this would be coming
now
. Tonight.

And that I'd have ruined it by pulling the ring out of my boyfriend's pants moments before, ruining the surprise.

“Can we just pretend that didn't happen?” I asked. “I mean the thing where I pulled that out of your pocket?”

“Gladly,” he said, tersely. “But ­people our age do get engaged, Susannah. You just told me that this Mark fellow—­”

“He was in
the twelfth grade
, and look what happened to him!”

“What about your stepbrother?” Jesse demanded. “He's your age, and he's married.”

“If you mean Brad, who impregnated his girlfriend with triplets soon after high school graduation because they neglected to use birth control, I don't know that they're the best example.”

I'd never really had high expectations for my stepbrother Brad, to whom I'd always mentally referred as Dopey.

But I'd never in a million years thought I'd live to see him pushing around a stroller with three angel-­faced toddler girls in it, calling him Daddy (and me Auntie Suze).

Yet that had not only happened, it happened
regularly
. Weirder still, Brad was now one of the happiest individuals I knew, and almost bearable to be around. It was too bad about his sourpuss troll of a wife.

“We're not Brad and Debbie,” Jesse said from between gritted teeth.

“Uh, no, we are not,” I said. “I've been on the pill for four years just in case you ever break that abstinence-­until-­marriage vow of yours because I don't want babies—­let alone triplets—­until I've at least got my master's degree.”

“And I appreciate that,” Jesse said. “But I'm also not like this spirit of yours, who you think was only trying to trap his girlfriend into staying true to him while she was away at school.”

“Well,” I said, “that's a relief. But then, I never thought you were—­”

“But I
am
a man, Susannah,” he went on, pulling me toward him with one hand while extracting the ring box from his pocket with another.

“Well, that is abundantly clear.” I had a front row seat to the button fly of his jeans, and now that his pockets were empty, I could tell that he was, indeed, still glad to see me. “Abundantly.”

“And I'm not going to be told what to do.”

“When have I
ever
told you what to—­?”

“Every minute of every day since the moment I met you. Even now, you're telling me not to ask you to marry me.”

“Well, I just think the timing is wrong. Asking a girl to marry you on Valentine's Day is very clichéd. And asking her in her dorm room
in the Virgin Vault
is even worse.”

“Well, I would have done it at sunset on the beach,” he said, with a crooked smile, “if you hadn't been off causing a freak paranormal weather phenomenon.”

“Oh, right. Blame it on me. It's all my fault. It didn't have anything to do with that kid in the cemetery.”

“That's exactly my point. If two
high school kids
can get engaged, Susannah, why can't—­”

I flung my hands over my ears. I knew I was acting like a freak, but then again, I am a freak. A bona fide biological freak who can see ghosts and was getting proposed to—­only not, because I'd ruined it, in the way I ruin everything—­by a former one.

“Stop talking about them,” I said, my hands still over my ears. “And where did you even get that?” I nodded toward the hand that was holding the ring. He'd flipped open the lid to give me close-­up view of what I was missing. It was yellow gold—­not my style, but still very pretty—­with filigree along either side of a not-­unsizable center diamond. Very retro, but probably worth a fortune.

Not that its cost had anything to do with the fact that I suddenly wanted to throw up.

“You don't have any money,” I went on. Then I lowered my hands with a gasp. “Jesse! You didn't spend all your fellowship money on a ring for me, did you?”

“No, I didn't,” he said. “Because I'm not stupid. This ring has been in my family for generations. It was my mother's. And before that, my grandmother's. Now I'm hoping it will be yours . . . if you'd act like a lady for five seconds and let me propose properly, and put it on your finger.”

I stared at him. How could he have his mother's ring? I knew everything about him, but I'd never known this.

Well, not
everything
, of course. Not the things I most wanted to know, like what he looked like naked, or even what he looked like sleeping—­unconscious, maybe, but not asleep. After I'd saved him from ever having been murdered in the first place (long story, and another one of our secrets), Father Dominic had forged a few records to help accelerate Jesse's educational process, and he'd managed to skip four years of college. When you've got nothing to do for nearly two hundred years but haunt the room you'd died in during a previous life, you end up reading a lot of books. Most of the books Jesse read were medical journals. He passed the MCATs with one of the highest scores in California state history, and had schools falling all over themselves, offering him scholarships.

And now he was offering me his mother's ring, and I was offering him attitude.

What was wrong with me?

“Not now, all right?” I said, breaking free of his embrace. “Right now we have more important things to do. We have to go keep one ghost from turning a kid into another ghost, remember? And possibly me, too. So let's go do it, and talk about this later.”

He frowned as I began to buzz around the room, gathering my ghost-­busting material. “Susannah, did I do something wrong?”

“You? What could you
possibly
have done wrong?”

“That's what I'm asking you.
Querida
, are you
blushing
?”

“Of course not.” My cheeks were hot as fire. But I couldn't tell him why, because I didn't know why. “Well, okay, maybe I am. I just can't deal with this right now.”

“Can't deal with what right now? The man who loves you asking you to spend the rest of your life with him?”

“Not that. That part's a given. I mean, I'd kill you if you didn't.”

“Is this about your mother?” he asked, flipping the ring box closed as I shoved my cell phone into a bowl of uncooked rice I keep on my bookshelf for just such emergencies. “Is this about how she wanted us to date other ­people while we were at different schools? Are you regretting that you didn't take her advice? Or—­” His voice grew oddly still. “Did you take her advice? Is that where you really were tonight?”

“God, Jesse, of course not!” I exploded. “What do you think, that I made up this elaborate story about the kid in the cemetery so you wouldn't find out I'm cheating on you with some dumb frat boy? Are you
kidding
me?”

Jesse looked thoughtful. “I was thinking of a teaching assistant. I couldn't see you with a fraternity boy. You'd probably only scare them.”

I grabbed my messenger bag. “Thanks for the compliment. Now we should probably go. Is your phone charged? I need you to check and see if there's a local address listed for a family under the name of Farhat. Please, God, there can't be more than one.”

“Or do you think I'm trying to trap you the way the dead boy did his girlfriend because I don't know where I'm going to be for my residency next year?” he mused. “We could be even farther apart than we are now. But I swear that's not what this is about. I'm confident that wherever I end up, we'll work it out.”

“Oh, my God, Jesse, I know.” I reached for the vodka and cranberry Lauren had given me. Now that Jesse was here, he could drive. He's a better driver than I am—­which is disturbing, considering I've had a license longer than he had—­and I needed the liquid courage. For what we were about to do, and, well, for other things.

“Then is it nerves about telling your mother and stepfather our plans?” he asked. “If this was the 1850s—­and I'm glad it's not, because I'm grateful for vaccines and antibiotics—­I'd be asking Andy's permission to marry you.” He ignored the choking sound I made, which had nothing to do with the drink I was chugging. “I'm not going to, not only because I understand that would be—­what did it you call it again? Oh, yes—­ ridiculously chauvinistic, but because you obviously seem to have some kind of issue about the idea of our getting engaged right now. That's fine. I can wait. But I do think we should consider telling your parents the truth about how we met and who I really am and how you can actually see the undead. It's a bad idea to start a marriage with a lie —­”

“Oh, my God, no!” I burst out—­though not loudly enough to draw the attention of my suite mates, who for all I knew were listening at the door. I wouldn't put it past them. Some of them had never been on dates before, and so were extremely curious about them. “Are you insane? I can't tell my mom any of that stuff, let alone Andy. It would blow their tiny little minds. They'll think we were in a cult, or something.”

“Having the gift of second sight is hardly the same as being in a cult, Susannah.”

“You know my mother. She's a reporter. And now she's the executive producer of Andy's show. She only believes in facts she can see.”

Jesse thrust out a hand, the one holding the ring box. “Does
this
look factual enough to you, Susannah?”

I knew he was talking about the ring, but it was difficult not to notice how hard and muscular his hand looked, especially attached to that long, equally muscular arm. That was a fact my mother wouldn't be able to ignore, either. It was hard to believe that such a vibrantly masculine, stunningly attractive person, whose dark eyes practically flashed with intelligence and life, had ever been dead. Any residency program that didn't take him was insane. I was probably a fool not to have said,
Yes, Jesse, I will be Mrs. de Silva
, and slid that ring on my finger the moment I found it, so tantalizingly warm from the heat of his body.

But something still didn't feel right. Probably it was me.
I
didn't feel right.

“Um, yes,” I said, swallowing. “But that isn't the point. My mom and Andy have enough to worry about with Brad and the babies and now Jake starting his own, ahem, business.”

My oldest stepbrother, Jake—­whose only career aspiration upon high school graduation appeared to be a full-­time pizza delivery position—­had surprised us all by parlaying his pizza delivery earnings not into the Camaro of which he'd always dreamed, but into the purchase of a plot of land in Salinas.

A short while later, he opened a storefront in Carmel Valley that dispensed not pizza, but another item of which college students in particular are fond of imbibing late at night. Only one needed a medical prescription to purchase this particular item in the state of California.

I found this business venture of Jake's highly entrepreneurial, yet at the same time ironic, considering I'd privately nicknamed him Sleepy, since he'd seemed to go through life with his eyes half closed. If only I'd known the real reason why.

Well, we all know now.

Jake's medical marijuana dispensary—­the only one in the tri-­county region—­did amazing business, and he was rapidly becoming one of the wealthiest business owners in the area. He'd bought a cool little house in the Valley and, whether out of generosity of spirit or because he genuinely liked him, convinced Jesse to move into the spare bedroom, so he'd have a place to stay when he came home from school on breaks.