Wraiths of Winter (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 3) (4 page)

With
my
mental
obstacle
course
successfully
navigated, now came the physical one.
My dad was still
standing slack jawed right in my path. “Um, Dad…you should
probably go see what Shelly’s doing. Don’t you think?” Hint,
hint—get out of my way, this is hard enough as it is!

“Who?” Dad asked, still studying Lucas and clearly not
comprehending a word I said. “Oh! Shelly! Yes, right. I’m
going to go see Shelly.
Over there—in the kitchen.” He
pronounced his words slowly like Lucas was either stupid or
barely spoke a word of English.
At least now I knew where I
got my smooth moves from.

I led Lucas to the Man Cave and flicked the light
switch. When he saw the pool table, his face lit up instantly.

“Damn! This room is
sweet
!” Lucas picked up my
dad’s pool stick and balanced it in the palm of his hand. “Good
weight.” He leaned over the table and took an imaginary shot.
“Perfect length. Can we play a game?”

My dad tried to teach me how to play several times
before but I had no desire to learn. Until now. “Sure. But
you’re totally going to kick my ass—I don’t know how to
play.”

“What?” he said in disbelief. “You have a setup like
this
in your own house and you’ve never even played?” He
started to gather up the balls and place them in a triangular
frame. “Lucky for you, I’m a good teacher. By the time I’m
done, you’ll be a pro.” He lined up the point of the triangle on
a dot on the felt and carefully removed it.

“You might want to wait until you see how bad I am
before issuing that kind of statement.” I finally started to feel
comfortable around him and the words just started to flow.
“Better men than you have tried and failed.”

“Better men than me?” Lucas said with a cocky smile.
“And just how do you know they’re better? You’ll have to see
how good
I
am before issuing
that
kind of statement.”

OMG!
Were we flirting? Or more importantly, was
I
flirting with him? I couldn’t be—I was madly in love with
Zach.
It was just a friendly game of pool between two new
friends, nothing more. “Fair enough,” I answered, “Where do
we start?”

“We start with me teaching you how to break.” He
rounded the table and joined me at the far end. “Stand in the
middle and hit this cue ball into the others.”

Leaning over the table, I squinted at my target and hit
the white ball as hard as I could. I watched disappointedly as
the cluster of balls barely moved on impact. I didn’t know
much about the game, but I knew enough to know that wasn’t
what was supposed to happen.

“Not too bad for your first time,” Lucas said as he
corralled the balls back into the frame and set them up again.
“You just need to be more confident and put more of your
body behind your shot. I’ll help you this time.”

He instructed me to get into position again so I did.
Only this time, he did, too—right behind me. He placed his
left hand on the edge of the table and his right hand on mine.
I flinched instinctively but he caught my hand and put it back
into position.
My hands were always cold so the warmth
radiating from his was welcome, yet strange. With his hand
he repositioned the cue until it was to his liking. He pressed
against me from behind and spoke softly into my ear.

“Now, who’s your worst enemy?”

 

“What?” Misty, of course, but what did she have to do
with anything?

 

“I want you to look at that ball and imagine your worst
enemy’s face on it—so what’s her name?”

 

“Misty,” I replied with a snarl, picturing her smug little
face taunting me from the table.

“Okay, Misty then. Think of all the reasons why you
hate her and then when you’re ready, I’ll help guide you
through the shot.”

All
of the reasons why I hated Misty? If I thought of
them all, this game would go down in the Guinness Book of
World
Records
for the
longest
game of pool
ever
.
I
concentrated on the main reasons and then nodded my head.
“Okay, I’m ready.”

Lucas guided my hand back and said, “On the count of
three, give her what she deserves. One, two….”

“Three,” I finished with determination in my voice.
The cue moved forward, striking the ball with precision. In
amazement, I watched as the cluster of balls broke formation
and scattered around the table, two of them actually finding
the pockets and plopping in noisily.

“YES!” I shouted excitedly. Then without thinking, I
turned around and threw my arms around Lucas. “You’re the
world’s best teacher!”

Lucas slid his arms around my waist and laughed.
“See, I
told
you I was the better man!”

Instantly, I released my grip in embarrassment and
guilt. Was he still talking about pool?
Or was he comparing
himself to Zach?
Or was
I
the one making the comparison?
Either way, I couldn’t take the chance of giving him—or
myself—the wrong impression.

“Yeah, I guess you were right,” I replied selfconsciously. “You
are
a good teacher.” I moved around to the
side of the table to put some distance between us. “So what
happens next?”

“I don’t know,” Lucas answered as he leaned over the
table and stared into my eyes. “That’s up to you.”

His brown eyes melted over me like warm chocolate.
Oh no! He was definitely flirting with me, wasn’t he? Or was I
just imagining it?
Was I interpreting his actions based on
what I thought Lee would be doing in this same situation? As
much as he reminded me of Lee, interacting with Lucas was
definitely new territory for me. One thing was clear—I was
treading on unstable ground.

What should I say? Should I admit that I thought he
was flirting with me and ask him to stop? More importantly,
did I actually
want
him to stop? Yes, yes I did. But what if I
was terribly wrong and he wasn’t even flirting with me? Why
was I
still
so clueless when it came to boys? Ugh!!
The best
thing I could do in this situation was play dumb and pretend
that he was still talking about the game. Extending the cue
stick across the table to him, I calmly replied, “Here, I guess
it’s your turn.”

Lucas shook his head no. “I’m disappointed in you, Ru.
You gave up too easily. It’s still your shot.”

My pulse started to pound. “What did you just call
me?” Lee was the
only
person in my entire life who ever
called me Ru.

“I called you Ru. Does that nickname bother you?”
Lucas locked eyes with me, staring deep enough that I was
afraid that he could read my mind.

“No, it’s fine…it’s just….” Now that I was in the perfect
moment, I didn’t know how to tell Lucas about Lee.

Lucas leaned against the pool table beside me and
crossed his arms over his chest. “I give up. Is there
something weird going on here or am I just going crazy?
When you saw me this afternoon, you fainted. Your boyfriend
looked like a deer caught in the headlights and your parents
didn’t fare much better. Why does everyone in this house
react so strangely when they meet me?”

I laid the cue stick down on the table and sunk into the
nearest recliner. “It’s because you look like someone else,
someone who died over a year ago.”

Something flickered in his eyes that I didn’t recognize.
But who could blame him for having such a weird reaction?
It’s not every day that multiple people freak out on you
because you remind them of a corpse. Whatever I saw in his
eyes, as quickly as it appeared, it was gone again. “Who do I
look like?”

Where should I start?
How do you tell someone that
you think they’re adopted? The answer to that is “You don’t”.
I would only tell him who he looked like and see if he could fill
in the blanks himself. “You look like someone that I used to
date.
His name was Seeley Lucas.
You look so much alike
that, well, I could swear you were twins.”

Lucas opened his mouth to speak but paused and said
nothing instead. Finally, he asked, “Do you have any pictures
of him?”
“I do,” I responded, leaping up from the chair. “Follow
me.”

All of the time I spent running on the track really did
its job.
I ran all the way to the attic door without having to
catch my breath. Lucas, on the other hand, was panting by the
time he caught up with me.

“Geez, Ru! Where are you taking me?”

I opened the door to the attic and led him inside.
“Sorry, I live in the attic. My photos of Lee are in the
bedroom.”

Well, in the closet to be more exact. I flung open my
closet door, dropped to my knees and began to dig. After Zach
and I really started to get serious, I buried the box full of Lee’s
things as far back in my closet as I could. Rooting through box
after box of old school assignments and fashion magazines, I
finally found it. Dusting it off with my hand, I got up to return
to Lucas who I’d left in the living room. But I didn’t have to
look too far to find him. Lucas was sprawled full out on my
bed.

“I interrupted something here today, didn’t I?” He
lifted the bouquet of roses from my pillow, sniffed them and
then tossed them aside.

Blood rushed hotly to my face. “No. You didn’t,” I
protested weakly. He knew I was lying—I could tell.

“Yes, I did. You’re a bad liar, Ru.” He lifted the lid
from
the fondue pot and
dipped a strawberry
inside.
“Somebody was about to lose their virginity today, weren’t
they?” He gave me a sly smile before wrapping his lips
around the strawberry.

“I was
not
!” I shouted, not caring if the whole town of
Charlotte’s Grove could hear me. The audacity of this boy was
astounding. Seriously, we just met and
none
of this was any of
his business.

He licked the remaining drops of chocolate from his
fingers. “Don’t lie, Ru. There’s nothing to be embarrassed
about. Everyone has to have a first time sometime, don’t
they?
No guy would go to this much trouble for someone
unless he knew he was popping her cherry.
I guess that
explains why your boyfriend was in such a rush to get me out
of here.
A dead boyfriend on your doorstep must be the
ultimate cockblock seeing as how you never actually went
through with it.”

“Okay, smarty pants. So what makes you so sure that
we didn’t?” He had some nerve coming in here, lounging on
my bed and assuming that his mere presence was enough to
make me decide not to have sex with Zach. I didn’t decide not
to sleep with Zach—I forgot to. There was a big difference.
Wasn’t there? Yes, yes there was.

“Well, for starters, this bed’s too neat. There’s no
way
any hardcore rolling around went on under these sheets. The
candles have never been lit and if
I’d
had you naked, there
wouldn’t be a drop of chocolate left.”

His ego inflamed me. “The only way you would ever
have me naked is on a slab in the morgue!” Stomping my way
to the living room, I called back, “And get your dirty shoes
off
of my bed!” I sat down on the futon and pulled out a picture
of Lee.
It was the same picture that Scarlet flung at me the
first time Zach was in my room. I wanted to take a page out of
her book and chuck it straight at Lucas’s head.

He walked out of my bedroom with tousled hair and a
look of satisfaction on his face. “So that’s him?” he asked, his
voice and expression now serious.
I handed the photo to him. “That’s him.”

He studied it carefully, going so far as to take the
picture into my bedroom and hold it up next to his face in the
mirror. After several minutes, he spoke. “You’re right.
We
could definitely be twins.” His tone was somber, like he was
seriously considering the possibility.

Finally, I thought of the perfect way to nudge the
conversation in that direction. “When’s your birthday?”

 

“October 23
^rd
. His?”

 

“The same. And you turned eighteen this year, didn’t
you?”

 

Lucas nodded his head in the affirmative. “What do
you know about him? About his family, I mean.”

He set it up nicely so I drove it home. “I know that he
was adopted and had no information about his biological
family.”

Lucas bolted out of the futon and headed for the door.
“I have to go—I’ll see you in school tomorrow.”

I wanted to call after him, to ask him what he knew
and what his thoughts were on the subject but I decided
against it.
Regardless of his tough, ballsy façade, I’d just
dropped a major bomb on him.
I needed to give him some
space, some time to deal with the damage in his own way.

By the time I got to the entrance hall, he was already
in his car and halfway to the main road.
Dad and a halflooped Shelly stared at me from the dining room doorway.

“If he didn’t already know he was adopted, he does
now,” I informed them. I turned back around and retreated to
the attic without another word.

I pulled back the comforter and settled into bed but
my mind couldn’t have been more unsettled. What a day. One
more attempt at losing my virginity ended badly. Did Misty
have a voodoo doll of me somewhere with its legs tightly
sewn together? No—she probably couldn’t sew. A teeny, tiny
chastity belt, maybe? Yeah, that was more her style.

How could I let Lucas see my room this way?
If he
blabbed a single word of what he saw, I would kill him—
literally toss his body off of the new Destiny Bridge with my
bare hands.
What happened—or didn’t happen—in
my
bedroom was strictly between Zach and me.
If Misty caught
wind of this, she would stage another attempt to steal him
away from me again. The only way I could relax enough to fall
asleep was
to
picture her face on that cue ball while
I
repeatedly shot her epic skankiness across the table.