Free The Haunting of Josie by Kay Hooper Page B

he felt, to control body language and inflection, and by now he was able to do so automatically, even outside a courtroom. Without even thinking about it, he made himself low-key and unthreatening, casual and friendly without stepping over the line she had drawn between them. As if he had never held her in his arms.
    “Hi. I came to help.”
    “I could have managed.” Her voice was calm, not so frozen as before, but definitely cool.
    “I know, but since you did my shopping as well, it’s the least I could do.” He gathered a couple of grocery bags from the van and followed her into the house. Once in the kitchen, she immediately began putting things away while he returned to the van for the last of the bags.
    “It’s raining,” he reported as he rejoined her in the kitchen and set the bags on the counter. “Sort of, anyway. More of an enthusiastic mist than anything else.”
    “According to the weather reports,” Josie said, “it’s going to rain until Sunday.”
    “Miserable weather, good only for staying indoors. All the fireplaces are in good shape, if you want to build a fire,” Marc told her. “And there’s plenty of extra wood stacked by the back porch, in case you didn’t see it.”
    “I saw it, thanks. You didn’t say how much milk, so I got you a gallon—is that okay?”
    “Fine…”
    The conversation went on, casual and inconsequential, both of them being just polite enough to make the effort obvious. Josie finished putting away her groceries and separated Marc’s into a couple of bags on the counter. He opened a package containing a catnip mouse and enticed Pendragon, who showed himself to be a normal feline when it came to catnip and soon happily carried his treat away to play with it by himself.
    “Have you had lunch?” Josie asked.
    Marc looked at his watch, surprised to find that it was after two. “As a matter of fact, I forgot all about it. I’ve been…reading.”
    Josie was putting a pot on the stove and didn’t look at him. “I’m having soup, I think. Would you like some?”
    Not about to pass up any invitation, he said, “I’d love some, thanks.”
    “Then why don’t you take your groceries over and put them away, and by the time you get back, the soup should be ready,” she suggested.
    “Sounds good to me.”
    Josie held the door for him, then stood there watching until he vanished into the cottage. She closed the door and began opening cans of thick, rich soup.
    It had turned into a good day for soup, gray and dreary with the temperature chilly enough to make things miserable without being cold enough for snow or sleet…and why had she invited Marc for a belated lunch?
    As a tacit apology, dammit.
    The methodical task of shopping had calmed her somewhat, leaving her guiltily conscious of having overreacted to his skepticism. After all, she’d realized, it
was
a ghost they’d been talking about, something that was, by definition, a thing difficult to believe—even if you saw it with your own eyes. To be perfectly honest, she admitted reluctantly, if he had been the one to tell her he’d seen a ghost, she probably would have been a bit skeptical herself.
    More than a bit, actually.
    She couldn’t throw stones. Besides that, what did it matter? So he didn’t believe she’d really seen a ghost—so what? She probably hadn’t seen it. She’d been tired, the upstairs hall had been shadowy, and he’d looked like Marc because Marc was on her mind, not because what she’d seen was—or had been—Luke Westbrook….
    Josie shook her head and put the coffee on, and then began assembling ingredients for sandwiches while the soup bubbled. And even if she
had
seen a real ghost—so what? It was certainly no big deal. In seeing a ghost, she had joined the ranks of those who had experienced some paranormal encounter, without rhyme or reason, probably a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and there was no reason to fret about it.
    But she couldn’t help fretting, because the