The Secrets of Bell River. Kathleen O'Brien

Jude spoke tersely. “Don’t waste your time reading trash, Mitch.”

      “You saw this?” He held up the magazine, but Jude still didn’t turn around.

      “Of course. Molly eats that crap up. But even if she hadn’t shown me, at least six people in town did.”

      “Nice.” Mitch felt like spitting onto the picture, though that would be pretty juvenile, and not anywhere nearly as rewarding as spitting in Haley’s actual face. Now that might make him feel fairly buoyant for a minute or two.

      “Gossips are saying she called you, earlier today,” he said carefully.

      Jude didn’t respond.

      “Well, did she? Dang it, Jude. Why are you such a clam about it? I thought she’d promised not to bother you for six months. I thought she had given you that long to heal and—” he chose his words judiciously “—to decide what you really want.”

      Jude’s mouth tilted up at one corner. “And Haley always keeps her promises. She’s famous for her patience.”

      “Don’t go all sarcastic on me. What did she want?”

      “What she always wants—me to come back.”

      “You told her you aren’t going to, though, right?” Mitch knew Jude must have done so. Jude had told Haley no for months now, but the delusional brat was so spoiled she didn’t believe it. She always thought she could cast a spell on anyone, and get exactly what she wanted, sooner or later.

      “You told her no. Right?” Mitch wasn’t sure why he even asked, except that he lived in fear that one day Haley might prove that she hadn’t been delusional—that Jude was still under her spell and she could dance him straight back to Hollywood.

      “Of course I told her,” Jude said softly, his tone indicating his refusal to be drawn into melodrama. “But you know how she is. She cries, apologizes for rushing me and vows not to ask again until the six months are up. She thinks I just need time to—” he looked at the piece of wood he held “—get over what happened.”

      What happened. Mitch had heard only bits and pieces, but that was enough.

      “I don’t know how you stand it, Jude,” Mitch said, his voice surprising him with its husky anger. But damn it. He and Haley and Jude had been kids together here. Jude had straight-up saved her life, no two ways about it. For her to treat him that way, as if he were a meal ticket, a sugar daddy, a stepping stone on her way to stardom...

      Well, it chaffed Mitch big-time. And if she were pretending to be singing another tune now, he hoped Jude was smart enough not to fall for it.

      “I don’t know how you listen to everyone carry on about her, ‘such a sweetheart, such a beauty, such a credit to Silverdell’...and never say a word.”

      Without answering, Jude angled his gouge and put another scroll in the wood. Frustrated, Mitch stared at his friend’s back, thinking of the scars beneath his ratty sweater, and the limp that showed up at odd moments, when he stepped wrong on that bum ankle.

      “I don’t know how you do it,” he repeated harshly. “And frankly I don’t know why you do it.”

      There was one explanation, of course, and it chilled Mitch to consider it. Maybe Jude protected Haley’s reputation because he still loved her. Maybe, in spite of everything, he was still the guy who had, once upon a time, faced dragons to protect her, gone hungry so she could eat.

      Maybe Jude and Mitch weren’t that different, after all. Both of them still in love with women who no longer existed.

      It made him sick. Jude deserved a hell of a lot better than Haley Hawthorne. And if he didn’t find someone soon, he’d be that much more vulnerable to Haley’s siren call. She might be a skank, but she was hot.

      “Hey,” he said, suddenly inspired. “I hear you met the new hire, Tess, when she came to interview. I hear you were the guinea pig again.”

      “Yep.”

      “So what did you think?”

      “She’s good.”

      “Yeah. But I mean what did you think?”

      Jude chuckled. “What is it with everyone? I think she seems very nice. She’s pleasant. She seems to have walking-around sense. She’s talented. She’s fine.”

      Mitch let a second’s silence pass. “Not bad-looking, either.”

      “You think so?” Jude lifted a shoulder. “Then good. Ask her out. Maybe she’ll take your mind off Bonnie for a while.”

      “No. Not me.” Mitch had a feeling Jude was being deliberately dense. But he didn’t want to come right out and say that Tess’s fragile vulnerability seemed like it might be right up Jude’s alley. Mitch had only seen her for twenty minutes or so, but somehow she looked like the kind of gal who could use a knight in shining armor.

      And, to put a spin on Jude’s advice to him, the only cure for one damsel in distress was another damsel in distress....

      “I was thinking about you, numbskull. I was thinking you might ask her out. She’s kind of interesting. When they offered her the job earlier tonight, I thought she was going to turn it down. But then, at the last minute, she said yes. And you know what’s weird? It was almost as if the clincher, the thing that made her decide to take it, was learning about the ghost.”

      Jude turned at that comment. “No way.”

      “Yes. They had to tell her, because Isamar had one of her visions. You know, she thinks she sees Moira floating on the staircase.”

      “I know. What I don’t know is whether Isamar is loony or just putting everyone on. Or—” Jude smiled “—maybe she has the occasional nip of brandy. I’ve heard that enhances one’s ability to detect paranormal activity.”

      Mitch laughed. Everyone knew Isamar was one of those sweet but superstitious types who secretly wanted life to be a lot more exciting than it was. She “saw” Moira, sure, but she also saw the ghosts of her favorite characters in books, and even once insisted that the ghost of Brad Pitt had come to her room asking for milk and cookies.

      “Yeah, well, anyhow, she usually keeps her visions to herself, so as not to scare the guests. But this time ‘smart’ Alec came in blurting it out. We all figured that cooked the goose, for sure, but instead Tess seemed positively fascinated, and—”

      Before he could finish the sentence, the baby monitor, which sat on Jude’s workbench, never more than a foot or two from him, crackled to life. The static was followed by the sound of a baby’s cries. And then came his sister’s voice, weighed down by the threat of imminent tears.

      “Hush, Beeba, hush. Please. Please. Can’t you sleep? Just one night? Can’t you—”

      In an instant, Jude was heading toward the house.

      “Sorry, Mitch,” he said as he reached the door. “If anyone is going to ask Tess out, it’ll have to be you. My life has way too many females in it already.”