The Curse of a Single Red Rose (Haunted Hearts Series Book 7) Read Online Free PDF

he had.
    The woman was full of surprises.
    He grinned and offered her his arm, and once again she slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow. By the time they exited onto the street, the sun had gone to sleep for the night.
    ****
    “You’re not off the hook for spying on me, you know.” Elsa swirled the ice in her water glass.
    He had suggested a glass of wine, but she had declined without explanation. Maybe the woman didn’t want to drink with him.
    He gazed at her through the dim lighting of the restaurant. “No, I don’t expect I am.”
    “You’re sexist.” She raised her eyebrows as if expecting a defense for his behavior.
    He smiled. “So I’ve been told.”
    She traced the edge of her water glass with her fingertip. “I heard that you and your crew worked out at the old Wakefield Plantation house.”
    Okay, if she wanted to change the subject, then he’d go right along with her down a different road. “Not this bunch. My last crew quit when I told them I was working for another Wakefield. They’re a superstitious lot.”
    “Superstitious?” Her eyes lit with interest.
    “Wakefield Manor is haunted. They weren’t going to work in another place owned by a Wakefield.”
    She laughed with a large dollop of derision. “Ghosts? There’s no such thing as ghosts. Are you sure they didn’t refuse to work for you because you’re a…”
    “I’m a what? Those guys are more sexist than I am. Leaving had nothing to do with me. I’m a good foreman. I pay my crew a fair wage, and I don’t bark at them… And I hired a woman.”
    Her smile lit up the room. “So you think that means you’re not really sexist?”
    He threw up his hands. “Oh, are we back to that now?”
    She smiled. “You brought it up again. So tell me about these so-called ghosts.” Her eyes twinkled with amusement. She knew she was leading him in every which direction.
    “I’ll tell you about the one I saw with my own eyes.”
    She leaned forward and put her elbows on the table. “So tell.”
    “Sophia and I went out to the Wakefield family cemetery—”
    “Who’s Sophia?”
    He suppressed a grin. Did he detect a hint of jealousy in her question?
    “She’s Dylan’s girlfriend.”
    “Who’s Dylan?”
    “Let me tell the story.” He waited a moment, and when she didn’t comment again, he proceeded. “Did you hear about the man who stole Les’s identity?”
    She nodded. He was surprised that she had.
    “His name was Brandon Wakefield, no kin to Les. When he had control of the property, he hired Dylan to restore Wakefield Manor, and he hired Sophia to do the interior design restoration.” He chuckled. “That was kind of a tense working relationship until the two of them decided they were a couple again.”
    “Again?”
    “Yeah, they had been together in college. I think he cheated on her. Lots of tension between those two.” He shook his head at the memories of working with them while they were pissed at each other.
    “Most women don’t take cheating too well.”
    She was right about that. Some of them threw things at a man for even looking at another woman. Collin rubbed the spot where he’d once been hit with a flying high-heeled shoe. He’d learned to keep his eyes to himself when he was with a woman. He imagined Elsa tossing her shoe at him and didn’t much care for the mental image.
    “They were sharing a trailer at the work site. Well, you know, living so close together was a little bit tense. She told me they’d had a fight. He disappeared that night and didn’t show up for work the next day, so she asked me to help her find him. We searched the grounds, and that’s when we found the old Wakefield family cemetery.”
    He would have expected Elsa to shiver. Instead, her eyes glowed bright with anticipation. “I bet that was creepy.”
    “An old woman came out of the fog, like she’d materialized right out of the swamp.” He made a movement with his hands like a magician might when making something