* * *

Megan watched as the two men returned from outside. Inside, her home seemed like chaos, organized chaos, but chaos nonetheless. In confusion, she saw the other men, who had introduced themselves as Rob Johnson and Liam Hookson set up cameras all around the house. They stood on tripods in the corners of each room. Cords and wires snaked across the hardwood floors. The woman, Donna Collins, tried to explain about infrared cameras and spectrum cameras, but Megan was lost after the camera part was out of the woman’s mouth.

Her dining-room table was covered with videotape players, computer monitors, and DVD machines. Donna tried to explain tech central to her and Andrea, but since the woman seemed to know what she was talking about, Megan was satisfied they would see what she saw, hear what she heard. She sighed. She hoped. She clasped her hands together. Please don’t let her be crazy.

Jack’s long strides took him over to the table, close to her. In her mind, he moved like a pirate captain on the deck of his ship, secure in any surroundings, comfortable in his own skin. His dark hair, worn long, and scruffy beard stubble added to the idea of a smuggler and raider.

He introduced his producer, Luke Tremaine to her. Luke was Jack’s complete opposite. Just as dark, but well-groomed, an executive type against Jack’s wildness. Luke wore a well-cut, expensive suit, even here to investigate her and her home, like a visiting lawyer. She shuddered. She’d met too many of his type at Andrea’s office. Smooth talkers and full of ego and inflated self-worth. How her sister worked with them every day, she would never know. She’d gone to one office party while Aaron was deployed and fell asleep in a back office, tired of listening to people who talked just to hear themselves.

Jack took a seat beside her. His icy, ocean scent carried over to her. It completed his pirate captain persona to her. All that was missing was the salt-tinged breeze and an earring. He placed his large hands on his thighs and leaned forward to her. His dark eyes seemed to look straight through her. The silence should have been awkward, but his calmness settled her roiling emotions. Jack O’Malley didn’t talk unless he had something to say.

The microphone on the table glared at her like a coiled snake. She took a deep breath; her lungs still tender from the extreme cold of earlier. Her hands shook. She locked them together and shoved them between her thighs.

“Walk me through what happened just before we came.” His voice soft and directed toward her like the microphone wasn’t even there. “Start with your morning.”

“This morning, Aaron, my husband, was everywhere. In the bathroom. At the breakfast table. Maybe I was tired and half-asleep, I don’t know, but he just appeared all over the house.”

“Were you stressed about our team coming?”

“A little.” She stared at the table. “I’ve missed work this week to stay home. To see Aaron.”

Jack sat up straighter. Moved the microphone closer to her. She stared as his fingers wrapped around the microphone. Strong hands, like Aaron’s, except for the dark hairs on the back and running up his arms into his rolled-up shirt sleeves.

“Then my sister arrived. We argued about everything. About me staying home, about Aaron, everything.” Her voice trembled and stuttered to a stop as she remembered the aftermath of their argument.

“She didn’t believe me. Then I felt Aaron everywhere. The room filled with the scent of his aftershave. The air got freezing cold. Cold enough for Andrea and me to see our breath fogging in the air. That’s what usually happens when he appears. Then it changed. It was like a vicious animal loose in the room. The wind whipped up, tore the curtains down, ripped the pictures off the wall—ripped our wedding pictures.” She bit her lip, her eyes burning with unleashed tears.

“Then we showed up, right?”

“Yes, it all ended like the finish of a fight. Hot. Cold. In a battle in my living room.”

His fingers moved to turn off the microphone. She watched as he looked at the table, not meeting her eyes, and his cheeks flushed a deep red. He cleared his throat.

“Ghost Releasers would like to use your story for the show. I’ve never heard of such strong paranormal, psychic energy.”

“No way in hell,” Andrea’s voice carried across the room as her long, angry strides carried her to the dining-room table. “The Martin-Stovall’s are not a circus act. We don’t do reality television like some famous families. Megan has already signed the papers. If you think you can double-cross us, think again.”

Megan glanced back and forth as if at a tennis match as Andrea and Jack O’Malley shot daggers in a volley between them. She got her first genuine smile in days. Her hand whipped up to cover her mouth and catch a laugh before it escaped. She turned it into a cough.

“I’m not technically a Martin-Stovall anymore, but a Trent.”

Andrea whipped her head around and shot angry looks at her instead. She sobered quickly. Andrea in this mood was not a pleasant person to be around. And she was right. Her parents would have a coronary if she did something as gauche as Ghost Releasers and it was televised.

“Okay, okay,” she tried to placate her sister before turning to Jack.

He looked at her, ignoring Andrea altogether. “We wouldn’t use your name or your face. We can film you, so you wouldn’t be seen. Even use a voice distorter. But this case is too important to not record and study. The paranormal field could jump ahead by light-years if we collect any verifiable evidence. You would be helping others in the same predicament.”

“That was a low blow, Mr. O’Malley.”

“It was. But still true,” he added. He caught her gaze. “And it’s Jack.”

She could see his point, she could. Megan gnawed her lower lip. She had watched psychic and paranormal shows once this all started and nothing on them came close to what she had experienced. Maybe she did need to allow them some access. If she and her family were protected. Daddy might understand, but mother would have her committed, and disinherited from the family.

“Okay,” she told him, ignoring her sister’s outraged gasp. “But no names and my family must be protected. Nothing to identify me, Aaron, or the rest of my family. His family has been through too much already. Aaron was an only child.  I can’t have them hurt for anything in the world.”

Jack reached across the table, hand outstretched. Megan raised her own. His big hand enveloped hers. His warm flesh heated her cold fingers. She would have sat there forever just like that if not for Andrea’s throat-clearing cough. Jack dropped her hand, but their fingers fell to the table, inches apart. Electricity tingled over her fingertips.

Megan jumped in her seat as the microphone slammed down onto Jack’s fingers. He yanked them back with a muttered curse. He stared at the microphone and she saw the dent it had made in the wood table.

Megan grew light-headed. Nausea swamped her stomach, and her vision blurred with blackness around the edges. She tipped over and waited to hit the floor. It didn’t happen as strong arms grabbed her and cradled her body.

She felt herself lifted and carried across the room. Laid gently on the sofa, she looked up to see Jack O’Malley standing over her. Her face grew hot and she knew a blush was racing across her skin.

“I’m sorry you had to see me like this. I haven’t fainted since I was a teenager. I’ll be fine in just a moment.” She tried to get up, but Jack sat on the edge of the sofa and took her shoulders in his hands.

“Just relax. I’m sure you’ve had a lot of excitement today. Have you eaten?”

She closed her eyes. “I think I had breakfast. I don’t remember if I ate it all or not.” Megan glanced at the setting sun blazing through her living-room window. “Okay, maybe I need something to eat.”

Megan and Jack glanced at the kitchen doorway as Andrea came through with a glass of milk, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and Megan’s forgotten vitamins. She slid up on the sofa and accepted the tray, embarrassed to be treated like an invalid in her own home. It felt as if the entire room was watching her.

Jack seemed to sense her awkward feelings as he got up from the sofa, walking across the room. He turned and called over his shoulder to her. “Eat up and once you are yourself again I’ll show you all the nifty ghost hunting gadgets we have.” He smiled, and she returned it.

She nibbled on her sandwich as Jack left the living room and Andrea took his spot on the edge of the sofa. A few big bites, a few swallows of milk, and her vitamins and Megan felt the blood return to her head and her faintness pass. Might as well have damsel in distress tattooed across her forehead. She had always hated the fainting she did at the most stupid moments. Once her anemia was diagnosed and her iron pills taken every day, she hadn’t fainted since her senior year in high school.

Had she taken her pills at all the last few days? She couldn’t even remember. Which said it all. She probably had missed days of them, no wonder she fainted. Her face heated up at the thought of being carried in Jack’s strong arms. Too easily she could imagine she did look like the damsel in distress to his piratical persona. Ugh!