A Haunted Romance Read Online Free Page A

uprooted in his hand, and when he passed by the center of the flat area he was tilling, he’d toss the selected plants into a pile.
    She gulped. He’d been doing all that work while she slept. If she’d had eggs, she’d have made him breakfast, but she’d only brought a box of Cheerios and some milk to put on them.
    She knocked on the window, trying to get his attention. He didn’t notice her until he shut off the engine. He waved.
    A gust of wind from below her caught her yellow nightshirt, flinging it up just as she reached up to wave back. She grabbed the shirt and pulled it down. Now where had that come from? There was a vent a few feet away—that was probably it, although the breeze had felt cool on her skin rather than warm like the air from the vent should be. Maybe the pilot light had blown—she’d have to find the heater and relight it. Oh well. Hopefully she’d caught it in time. Trent was still watching her from below. She didn’t think she’d flashed him too badly, although he was certainly at the perfect angle to look up her shirt.
    She waved again, let the curtains fall closed, and went over to check the vent. It was blowing warm air. Good. She’d have to explore the basement sometime, but she sure wasn’t interested in doing it now. She might not even have a pilot light. She’d asked the agent to turn on all the utilities, but the range was electric, and the heater might well be too.
    She got dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. The jeans didn’t flatter her, but she was determined to go out and work in the yard. She wasn’t going to let her neighbors do all the work while she hung around in a dress or slept in. She pulled on her jacket. It had to be around fifty degrees out.
    She put some hot water on the stove for tea and walked out to greet her neighbor properly.
    He noticed her approaching and killed the engine. “Hey. Your yard’s in better shape than I’d feared.” Sweat made his face glisten. He must have been working hard, because it wasn’t sweating weather. Chelsea was wearing her winter jacket, although Trent had his shirtsleeves rolled up just like the day before.
    “That’s good. Thank you, you’ve been working hard,” Chelsea said. “Can I get you some tea?”
    “Nope. I’ve got a thermos of coffee right over there. You planning to live here, Chelsea, or just turn the place around to sell it?”
    Chelsea smiled. “I’m here to stay, I think. I-I guess I haven’t decided yet.”
    “It’d be nice if you stayed. But the commute back to DC has got to be a killer. Where do you work?”
    Chelsea hesitated. If she said she was a writer, he’d want to know what she wrote, and pretty soon the town would know. The Cat Connors books were written under a pseudonym for a reason—the sex scenes in them would make her mother blush, for one thing, but above all she wanted her privacy. In fact, freedom from distractions was why she came out here. “I work from home.”
    “Sweet. What do you do?”
    That was the next logical question, wasn’t it? “Oh, just boring stuff.”
    Trent chuckled. “I doubt very much that anything about you is boring.”
    She blushed. She could see what women saw in Trent. Even beyond the fact that he was drop-dead gorgeous, he had a way with words. She wasn’t going to be pulled in, though. She never had good luck with men. Since she didn’t have a witty comeback, she looked around the yard. “You’ve been at this for a while.”
    Trent nodded. “A few hours. I’d rather work before the sun gets up too high. Even in the cool part of the year, if you’re working up a sweat and the sun’s beating down on you, it’s a lot more tiring. What are you going to do about the bed?”
    She blinked. Was that a proposition? “I don’t think we’re to that point, Mr. Johnston.”
    He laughed. “That’s a shame, but I meant the bed frame.” He pointed past her to where the mostly iron bed frame lay against the shed. There was a stack of wooden slats