Free Grave Danger by K.E. Rodgers Page A

went
to bed and woke up the next morning in the same cloths. I like
fashion and I like guys who take the time to dress to current
fashion and don’t dress like slobs.”
    If she had wanted to wound him with her words, she
succeeded. Lizzy could cut through his protective snarky exterior
and do serious damage to the man underneath. He was stuck in the
eighties and for a damn good reason. A reason he wasn’t ready to
explore even after all these years.
    Richard had only his pride left to him. His death
had stripped almost everything else away and he knew with absolute
certainty that Mrs. Elizabeth Sands would forever be just out of
his reach. She was too damn good for him, too nice and too
innocent. She deserved a guy like the one she had pointed to in the
glossy sheets of her fashion catalogue, not him.
    She had come to St. Augustine three years earlier
from New York City where her still living husband lived with his
new family. After more than thirty years of watching him live his
life she had taken the final step and left him behind. Her husband
had remarried several years after her untimely death, creating a
new family; one that she couldn’t be part of. But she still kept
her married name which stated quite clearly that she had yet to
move on completely. Richard knew that she would never let him take
the place of her husband in her heart. He would be a fool to ever
think she would.
    “ I’ll be outside.” He spoke in a chilling
voice. “You can send them out when they’re done playing
dress-up.”
    Richard turned and walked away from Lizzy, never
seeing the bright tear slip quietly down her pale cheek.
    Lizzy quickly dabbed at her eyes, turning away from
the other two women so she could compose herself in private. She
had been cruel to him, but he had been asking for it for a long
time. And she had lied. She didn’t want some picture perfect
magazine model. Lizzy wanted a handsome rebel, bad boy who never
brushed his hair except with his fingers. One that looked like he
threw on whatever garment was closest at hand at the time, a
bedraggled smart mouth that not only haunted the streets of St.
Augustine, but haunted her dreams as well. And she would be a fool
to think that he would find her in any way attractive.
    Usually, the few times he did speak to her, he was
questioning everything she did or didn’t do. He was bossy and
argumentative and he would never want to be with a push-over like
her. They were too much of an opposite to ever be compatible; that
whole line that opposites attract was total bullshit.
    Lizzy sighed as she moved to view herself in a small
table mirror, fixing her hair and wiping at her face. Her ghostly
pale reflection stared back at her with sad eyes. But the real
sadness lay deep in her heart where no one could see. Her real
heart might be dead and silent, but her soul’s heart wanted what so
few of them ever found, a connection. As a ghost, she felt she was
distanced from much of the world. It was only with the connection
of souls that this existence became somewhat bearable.
    Plastering a false smile on her mouth, she turned to
the two women. It was best to keep secret dreams in the safe
keeping of her inner soul where no one else could hurt or crush
them. In some ways Lizzy believed she deserved this pain, some
misdeed in her past existence forcing her to exist in this form as
punishment. Seeing Richard flirt and talk with other women was that
punishment. And surprisingly that hurt much worse than watching her
husband marry another woman. Richard Pomar would forever be out of
her reach.
    Lizzy turned her thoughts away from such melancholy.
Being a dressmaker for her community was rewarding and she was a
prized citizen within the city. She had even been selected to dress
noted figures in the community at large, not just the ones in St.
Augustine, but those at the very top of the paranormal world. If
not for her love of fashion, Lizzy would be a wandering broken
soul; this kept her