Page 44 of Haunted Spurs

I whip my head toward him and shoot him a death glare before he even gets the chance. He immediately throws his hands up in surrender, but his blue eyes are absolutely laughing at me.

“What’s going on?!” Carolina bursts into the living room, completely out of breath, with Indya and the rest of the group right behind her.

In the middle of the room, Katherine looks at us, mortified. She’s clutching a massive leather-bound volume to her chest, her face so flushed with embarrassment that even her nose is bright red.

“Guys… I’m sorry,” she says, raising a hand. “I got completely absorbed in reading the legend of the Scarlet Lady in this journal, and then… a window slammed somewhere and I jumped out of my skin.”

A collective sigh of relief breaks the tension in the room, and a second later we all burst out laughing.

Sam walks over to her, grinning, throws an arm around her neck, and pulls her in close, ruffling her hair before pressing a quick, affectionate kiss to her temple.

“Sweetheart…” he says, glancing over at Josh. “If we’d known that, we could’ve put our infamous twenty minutes to much better use.”

Josh shoots him a death glare while Lizzie giggles again.

Indya steps forward. “What’s the legend of the Scarlet Lady?” she asks, tying her copper hair back.

“Elizabeth Dawes,” Ron says, cutting in—and he starts telling the story.

As he speaks, effortlessly holding everyone’s attention with that easy charisma of his, something tight coils in my stomach. Sharp, annoying, unwelcome.

And I hate the fact that I’m not the only one in the room watching him like that.

“Yes, exactly!” Katherine jumps in, clearly excited, flipping through the pages of the tome as soon as Ron finishes speaking. “And right here, tucked between the pages, are a bunch of newspaper clippings and articles. They mention local kids who, over the years, claimed they saw her apparition near the gates, or heard her desperate wails…”

“Oh, please. That’s obviously bullshit.” Emerson pushes his glasses up his nose with one finger, striking a stiff, almost lecture-like pose, as if he’s about to address a room full of idiots.

“No, it’s not,” Katherine snaps back. “From an anthropological point of view, it’s fascinating.”

“I can list, point by point, all the thermodynamic reasons why it’s scientifically impossible for a concentration of energy to remain trapped in a visible form after death,” he continues, looking so smug it makes me want to throw the leather-bound tome straight at his face.

Katherine straightens, her eyes flashing behind her round lenses. “Hey, just so you know, I’m a scientist too.”

“Now this is interesting!” Susan says, plucking one of the yellowed clippings from the book with her red-painted nails. “It says here that if you say the Lady’s name four times in front of a mirror and blow out a candle, you can talk to her spirit.”

Emerson sighs dramatically and rolls his eyes, but no one is paying attention to him anymore.

“Four is an unusual number, though,” Katherine says, tapping her chin. “Most folklore symbolism revolves around three or seven. Four doesn’t really have a strong esoteric basis…”

“Four is the number of weeks that, according to local records, the original citizens of Elm Hollow spent hunting her beloved before they captured him and chained him up.”

Ron’s voice.

Fuck.

My stomach does a backflip. It is unbearably, fucking sexy that he knows all this stuff.

"And how exactly do you know that?" Levi asks, crossing his arms, amused and impressed at the same time.

Ron leans casually against the wall, hands in his pockets, and gives a lopsided smile. A smile that sets the entire living room on fire. "I studied the historical archives and the closed files at the Elm Hollow town hall."

Yeah. Damn him. He is way, way too sexy.

"Seriously?!" Katherine's eyes light up. She takes two quick steps toward him and grabs his arm. "You and I absolutely have to have a long chat!"

And... did I already mention that this annoyance is growing exponentially right alongside my irritation?

My brain short-circuits.