Read Online Ready & Willing by Elizabeth Bevarly - Free Book Online Page A

open in her grimy palm. “I just proved it.”
    Instead of pursuing the topic of his existence or her own rationality, she asked, “How did you know they were there? I mean, if you knew they were there, why didn’t you get them yourself while you were still alive?”
    “Because I didn’t know they were there when I was alive. I lost them not long after the set was given to me for my fiftieth birthday. I only found them myself this morning.”
    She shook her head slowly, then chuckled.
    “What do you find funny, Mrs. Magill?”
    She looked at him and smiled, albeit a bit shakily. “I just realized there’s something that bothers me more than discovering I’m being haunted.”
    “What is that?”
    She pressed a palm to her forehead and gazed at the iron grate lying haphazardly beside the square hole in the floor. “That if these air ducts are original to the house, I need to get them replaced, and that’s going to set me back a lot more than I planned to spend just yet.”
    He smiled back at her, he hoped reassuringly. “Don’t be concerned,” he told her. “The house is quite sound.”
    She expelled a long, weary-sounding breath. “Too bad I can’t say the same for myself.”
    “Have no fear, madam,” he said. “You are one of the soundest people I have ever met.” He was about to say more, but her legs suddenly buckled beneath her, and she landed on her rump with a resounding thump.
    Again, he instinctively reached for her, and this time didn’t check himself quickly enough before touching her. For the merest of moments, his fingertips grazed over her lower arm, and although he felt no physical sensation of touching her, something akin to an electrical shock leapt into his hand, sending a shudder of heat up his arm. Mrs. Magill must have felt something similar, because she jolted at the contact, scrambling away from him, pressing her own hand to her shoulder.
    “What was that?” she asked breathlessly.
    Silas, more than a little shaken by the sensation himself, replied, “I don’t know. I gather we just discovered what happens when your world meets mine.”
    She looked as if she wanted to say—or perhaps ask—something else, then seemed to think better of it. She only nodded silently, pulled her dungaree-clad legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her knees. She still clutched the errant cuff links in one hand, and her bare arms were trembling.
    “I truly won’t hurt you, you know,” he said softly.
    “It’s not that,” she said quietly. “For some reason, I’m not afraid of you. It’s just . . .”
    “What?” he asked when she didn’t finish the statement.
    She blew out another breath, this one sounding a bit shaky. “If people who die are able to come back, then why . . .”
    He understood then. She was a Mrs . Magill, after all. And there clearly was no Mr . Magill living with her. “Your husband,” he said simply.
    She nodded.
    “You want to know why I’m here and he isn’t.”
    She nodded again, but dropped her gaze from his to study the floor instead. “It’s nothing personal,” she told him.
    Silas took a few steps toward her. “I don’t know why I’m here and he isn’t,” he said honestly. “I only returned here myself a few days ago. And only because of the fix my great-great-et-cetera grandson has managed to get himself into. When I realized what was about to happen, I had to come. I can’t have him sullying the Summerfield name the way he is bound to sully it if he involves himself in a criminal enterprise. The only way to stop him was to come here. And the only way to come here was to join myself to something that belonged to me in life, something that represents the man I used to be.”
    “Your portrait,” she said, sounding a little more steady.
    “Yes, my portrait. When I saw you come into the shop, and when I heard you say you lived in my home, I knew it was fated that we meet. So I changed the price on my portrait to make it affordable to