Love Overboard aka Ivan Takes a Wife

Chapter 7

Eileen Platz was a small woman in her early fifties. She was rail thin with short jet-black hair and sharp, dark eyes. Her husband had the large frame of an athlete and the soft paunch of a man gone sedentary. They stood on Haben’s newly reconstructed front porch and looked at the ground, which was covered with leaves, then looked at the bare trees and briefly exchanged glares.

“I told you we should have come last week,” Eileen Platz said, her mouth pressed into a mean little line.

“Don’t start, Eileen. It wasn’t my idea to drive fourteen hours to see a bunch of dying leaves.”

Lucy watched them from the front window. “What do you think? Do you think we should let them slug it out, or should we invite them in?”

“I need the money,” Stephanie told her. “Let’s haul them in here and feed them some sparkling cider and crackers and cheese.” She opened the door, introduced herself, and was pleased to see their attitude change once they were inside the house.

“This is lovely,” Eileen Platz said. “This is like living in a museum. It’s absolutely beautiful.”

“Eileen’s a big history buff,” her husband explained. “And she’s a real antique hound.”

“Then I’m sure you’ll enjoy Haben.” Stephanie gave them a room key and directed them to the master bedroom. “When you’re settled in, you can come downstairs for cheese and cider.”

Melody swept into the foyer and stopped short at coming face-to-face with Mr. and Mrs. Platz. She was dressed entirely in black: short black boots, black tights, short black skirt, black leather jacket, and big, dangly black earrings. Her face was pancake white with her usual raccoon eye makeup, and her hair was brilliant orange.

Stephanie stifled a gasp at the orange hair and reminded herself that she’d only asked Melody to make her hair all one color. Probably she should be more specific after this. Probably Melody thought this would be appropriate since Halloween was coming up.

“Melody, this is Mr. and Mrs. Platz. They’re going to be staying in the master bedroom. Would you mind helping them with their bags?”

“No sweat. Just call me Cinderella.” She hefted a suitcase and smiled at Mrs. Platz. “I like your hair. Is that Clairol Ebony? I had my hair that color in March.”

Stephanie turned to Ivan. “Maybe I’m not cut out for this. I have a nagging premonition of disaster.”

“You’ll get used to it. This is a lot like running a schooner. For the most part, it’s fun. You get to meet a lot of new people, and you get to share a part of the past with them.”

“Mmmm, but you never had Melody for a bellhop.”

“No. I was blessed with Ace.”

Stephanie grinned. “I guess we each have our own cross to bear. You never answered my question last night. Does it bother you to see Haben turned into an inn?”

He slung his arm around her shoulders. It didn’t bother him to see Haben turned into an inn, but he wasn’t sure about turning Stephanie into an innkeeper. He’d rather see her turned into a wife and mother. Selfish attitude, he told himself. There wasn’t any reason why she couldn’t be wife, mother, and innkeeper. This was the twentieth-first century. Women wore many hats.

Ivan sighed. Right now, he didn’t care about Stephanie’s hats. At this particular moment he was more interested in her lingerie. He wondered if that made him a sexist oaf. Probably. Probably he should drag his mind out of the bedroom and keep it in the foyer for a while.

He pushed away all thoughts of lingerie and forced himself to concentrate on her question. “I think it’s a great idea. If I’d kept Haben, I might have done the same. Mrs. Platz is right. This is like a museum. It’d be a shame not to share it.”

“I know I’m prying, but why did you sell?”

He shrugged. “I needed the money. I offered the house to relatives first, but no one wanted to buy it. It’s big and expensive to maintain.”

“It must have been difficult for you to part with Haben.”

Ivan nodded. “Sometimes you don’t fully appreciate something until you’ve lost it. I have to admit, while I was living here, I considered it to be something of an albatross.”

“Have you always lived in this house?”

He shook his head. “I did when I was a kid, but after I graduated from high school, I went away to college. Then, when I quit college, I got my own apartment. Actually, apartment is glorifying it. What I had was a room over Gerty’s Bait Shop.”

“Why did you quit college?”

“I was in my junior year when my grandfather died and left me the Savage. It was just a forgotten wreck of a ship, dying a slow death in Nantucket, but he owned it, and he willed it to me. As soon as I saw it, I was in love. I was a lot like you. I really didn’t know why I was in college, except that was what had been expected of me. Anyway, I quit school and got a job on a trawler to pay for the restoration. Most of it I did myself.

“Two years ago my mother died, and last year my dad died. I gave up my room over Gerty’s and moved back into Haben while I straightened out the estate. I love this house, but it’s much too big for a bachelor. It was built to hold lots of noisy people. It needs to have kids running around in it, and dogs barking, and it needs a big orange cat curled up in the Queen Anne wing chair.”

“You could have managed that. All you had to do was find a wife.”

“Seemed like a high price to pay for noise.”

Stephanie wondered at the pain that statement caused her. “Mmmm. I suppose pirates aren’t very domestic.”

Ivan tugged her closer. “Doesn’t have anything to do with being domestic. It has to do with finding the right woman.”

“Picky, are you?”

“Very. Marriage isn’t something a person should rush into.”

Stephanie stared at him for a moment. “I can’t imagine you rushing into marriage.”

He’d choose very carefully, and his marriage would last forever, she thought. If the family photos and paintings on the wall were any indication, he came from a long line of family- oriented Rasmussens. Again, there was the twinge of pain that she preferred not to analyze.

She decided to steer the conversation in a lighter direction, so she wrinkled her nose and teased him. “You seem more like the sort to be dragged to the altar-kicking and screaming.”

Ivan stared back at her. He’d always thought so, too. He’d liked his easy bachelor existence. It was amazing how something ridiculous, such as a broken toilet, could change your entire outlook on life. All his plans for the future now included Stephanie. Bachelordom had become a colossal bore.

There was the sound of tires screeching outside the house, and Ivan and Stephanie ran to the window in time to see a car swerve onto the sidewalk and come to a bumpy stop with two wheels on the curb. Its driver rested his head on the steering wheel for a second, took a dis- believing look at Haben, and shook his forehead before slowly driving away.

“Melody must be up on the widow’s walk again,” Stephanie said. She stormed outside and looked up at Melody. “What are you doing up there? You’re a traffic hazard.”

“I’m talking to Tess. She doesn’t like Mrs. Platz being in her bedroom. She says she doesn’t mind making this into an inn, but she doesn’t want strangers in her bedroom. Oh yeah, and she wants pineapple upside-down cake for dessert tonight.”

Ivan made sure the doors were locked and the windows secure. Stephanie shut off the lights and took the hand Ivan offered when he met her in the foyer.

“So, lady innkeeper, what do you think of this hotel business?”

“I think it will be fun. What do you think?”

Ivan smiled wanly. “I think it will be a pain in the butt. I spent the entire evening explaining household artifacts to Mrs. Platz. What I really wanted to do was find a dark corner and make out with you.”

Stephanie looked at him. “Do grown-ups make out?”

“Yeah. When grown-ups do it they call it foreplay. And it’s pretty hot stuff.”

“And Mrs. Platz made me miss it. Will there be another opportunity?”

His hands splayed across her back, and his mouth met hers in a slow, sensuous kiss. “You can’t escape it.” His lips moved to her temple, then her ear, and he told her some of the details of foreplay.

Stephanie got a rush that went from her heart to her doodah. He was right. It was pretty hot stuff. She rocked back on her heels when he released her. “Wow.”

“Play your cards right, and tomorrow I might tell you more. I might even demonstrate.”

“Promises, promises.”

A promise he was going to enjoy keeping. In fact, he’d like to keep it later in the night. Or even better, he’d like to keep it now. It could take months for her to really learn to love him, he reasoned. He didn’t think he could wait months. Maybe he was being greedy. Maybe he should be content with being liked a lot. She already liked him a lot. And he really shouldn’t hold off because of her virginity. That would be discrimination. He didn’t want to be accused of being a sexual bigot. He almost had himself convinced when the phone rang.

“I have to get this,” Stephanie said, moving out of his arms. “It’s probably my mother. She always waits for the rates to go down before calling.”

Her mother. It might as well have been a call from God. So much for rationalization. He waved good night and went upstairs, telling himself it was all for the best, but not quite believing it. He had payroll checks to sign and a stack of ledgers to go over. Pretty boring stuff compared to relieving Stephanie of her virginity.

Half an hour later Stephanie crept up the stairs and got undressed in the privacy of her room. She dropped a warm nightgown over her head, checked her closet, and looked under her bed before creeping under the big down quilt. The wind had picked up since the afternoon, whistling in the eaves and roaring through the oak tree just outside her window. She was glad she’d had Ivan remove the screens and put the storm windows in place. The heating bill was going to be prohibitive if they had this much wind throughout the winter.

She switched off her bedside light and was thankful for the quiet. Obviously Eileen Platz hadn’t found any dead people in her closet. There would have been a scream by now. She wondered if Lucy and Melody were having trouble sleeping. Probably not. They hadn’t seemed too upset about the corpse. Of course, they hadn’t seen him. He hadn’t crashed down onto their feet. She closed her eyes and tried to relax, but there were too many things rolling through her mind-mostly thoughts of Ivan.

She slid out of bed, temporarily giving up on sleep, and went to the window. She’d chosen this bedroom because, like the master bedroom, it was at the back of the house and overlooked the harbor. She raised the shade and pulled the sheer curtain aside. It was a dark night, but she could see the outlines of the tall ships against the black water. One of them was the Savage, she thought, feeling a surge of pride and affection.

She slumped onto the chintz-covered window seat and looked into the night with unfocused eyes. She wondered if Ivan was already asleep in the bedroom across the hall and felt a vague discontent that they were separated. They weren’t married or engaged. They weren’t even lovers. There was no justification for the loneliness and frustration she felt, but she felt it all the same. Some of it was sexual. As Ace would put it, she was a hotbed of raging hormones. Thanks to Ivan Rasmussen.

She was musing about the pleasures of love when a gust of wind shook the house, and the dead man in the gray suit swung past her window.

It happened so fast, Stephanie thought she’d imagined it. When he swung by a second time, she stifled a scream and jumped from the window seat in astonishment. It took a moment for her to gather her wits and shake away the initial horror. There was an explanation for this, and she was going to find out what it was.

She moved toward the window when another blast of wind buffeted Haben, and the dead man crashed through the window, feet- first. His eyes were closed in eternal slumber, and his hands were innocently clasped across his chest. He smashed into the wooden window frame, and his feet flew up from the impact, almost kicking Stephanie in the head.

She instinctively jumped back, losing her balance and sprawling on the rug amid a shower of broken glass. By the time she’d scrambled to her feet, the man was gone. She stood helpless, inches from the window seat, afraid to move in her bare feet.

“Ivan!”

He was at her door even before she’d called. “What was that crash?” He looked at the window and at the glass surrounding her.

“It was the guy in the suit,” Stephanie said. “He was flying around past my window. Next thing I knew, he’d crashed right through. Never moved a muscle. Had his eyes closed the whole time.”

Ivan grimaced. “Steph, the man’s been embalmed. You didn’t expect him to open his eyes and say howdy, did you?”

“No, but then I didn’t expect him to crash through my window either.”

He walked across the room and looked out the window. He scooped Stephanie into his arms and crunched over the glass shards to the door. “Stay here,” he said, setting her on her feet. “Don’t move from this spot. I’m going outside to investigate, and I don’t want you running around the house in your nightgown.”

Five minutes later he was back. “I couldn’t find anything. I’m calling the police.”

Stephanie grabbed him by the shirtfront. “No! You can’t do that. No one will ever stay here again. What am I going to say to Eileen Platz? She’s not going to understand about some old guy in a gray suit turning up in closets and crashing through windows. It’ll get in the newspapers. They’ll say the house is possessed. I’m in enough freakin’ trouble with Melody up there on the widow’s walk.”

The line of his mouth tightened. “Okay, but you can’t sleep here, and I’m not leaving you alone. This dead guy has a definite preference for your room.”

He hooked his hand behind her knees and lifted her into his arms. He quietly closed the door and carried her across the hall. “You can stay with me tonight.” It was a sign, he decided, his tongue firmly planted in his cheek- and much more potent than a phone call from her mother. It would be wrong to ignore a definite sign such as this. “We could see if tab A fits into slot B.”

“Are you kidding me? How can you think of tabs and slots at a time like this? There’s a dead guy running around out there! And why are you dressed? You don’t even have your shoes off.”

“I had business to attend to.” Shoe factory business, he thought with distaste. I wasn’t cut out for the shoe business. Hopefully, sometime soon he could close that chapter of his life. He kissed her lightly on the lips. “And you’re still suspicious of me, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know. I think my nerves are shot. Too many years of being a cop. Too many days of living with Melody.”

He pulled her into his room and locked the door. “You need to relax,” he said, smiling wolfishly. And he needed to relax. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since he’d met her.

Relax? In his bedroom? In her nightgown? She couldn’t remember feeling more unrelaxed. It was funny how just moments ago when she was all alone, she’d thought it would be comfy to spend the night next to Ivan Rasmussen, and now that it was a definite possibility, she felt like jumping out the window.

He had his hands at her hip, and his eyes gazed into hers, seeing the mirror image of his own excitement and his own apprehension. In all seriousness, he’d intended to wait a while longer before making love to her, but there was no way he was going to leave her alone and unprotected-and he knew there was no way he could spend the night with her and not make love. He rubbed his thumb over her panty elastic, enjoying the simple intimacy, and moved his hands up her sides to frame her breasts. He felt her shiver at his touch and saw her face light with pleasure.

“I like this nightgown,” he said, his voice soft and seductive. “It’s sexy, with its high, ruffled neck and long, ruffled sleeves. It covers you from head to foot, but it clings in all the right places.”

She stood absolutely still, barely breathing as he pulled the thin translucent material taut over her breasts. He lowered his mouth and kissed her, slowly, and her doodah started to hum a little tune.

Doodah humming aside, there was no doubt in her mind that being with Ivan was right. She’d known Steve for years and hadn’t known him at all, and she’d known Ivan for a very short time and felt as if she knew all that was important about him.

There had been an overwhelming chemistry between them from the very beginning, but that wouldn’t have been enough. It was enough for kisses and a few fantasies, but it wasn’t enough to make her want to spend the night next to him. She realized now that she had to love a man to think of doing that. Ivan was very close and very real, and she loved him.

She tugged his shirttails from the waistband of his jeans and slid her palms along the flat plane of his stomach and the hard wall of his chest. “I’m glad I waited all these years,” she said. “I’m glad my first time is with you.”

“Hmmm, so do you love me?” he asked, flicking the overhead light off, unbuttoning his shirt. “How much?”

Stephanie smiled at him. “Enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“Enough for anything you have in mind.”

Ivan’s grin flashed white in the subdued light of the bedroom. He kicked his shoes off and nestled her close to him. He kissed her temple and the sensitive spot just below her ear.

He wanted to go slow, to make it beautiful for her, but she was making control difficult, and he felt a rush of heat slam into him as her hands explored the small of his back and slid below his waistband.

He groaned and moved against her, kissing her hard. The kiss deepened, demanded more, promised everything. He laid her on the bed, inching her nightgown over her head, moving the material slowly, kissing each new inch of exposed flesh-the inside of her knee, her thigh, dark slick shadows, and all the soft feminine places pirates like him loved to ravish. He watched her arch under his kisses, her breathing shallow, her eyes following his every move.

“Steph, are you sure? We could stop here…” Not easily, he thought, but he could manage it.

“I’m sure.”

Lord, how he loved her. The strength of it almost took his breath away. He was taking something very special from her, and he wanted to make sure he was replacing it with something equally wonderful. In his heart he offered her everything he valued-fidelity, trust, respect, affection, passion.

“I love you,” he whispered, his hand sliding across her belly, dipping lower, stroking, inflaming.

She whispered the words back. “I love you.” And she really did love him, she thought. And she loved what he was doing to her.

“Do you like this?” he asked, his finger circling the center of her universe.

“Yes,” she said on a sigh.

And then it happened… her universe exploded.

It was dark when she awoke. The wind had slowed and rain pelted the windowpane. It was a good thing Ivan had gone back to her room to tack plastic over the broken window. After he’d secured the plastic they’d showered together and made love again-for a very long time. They’d talked in hushed voices, enjoying the easy intimacy their loving had brought. They’d teased and explored and found preferences, finally losing themselves to the desire they’d created, and they’d fallen asleep with legs and arms entwined. It had been the nicest possible night, she thought. If it had followed an elaborate white-gowned ceremony, it couldn’t have been any more perfect.

She snuggled closer and swept her hand the length of him, almost as a reassurance that he was real. He stirred in his sleep and wrapped his arms around her, his touch renewing the now familiar pulse of desire.

Ivan wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or if he was awake-and didn’t care. He rolled over, and in one smooth, swift movement made her gasp at the speed of his reaction, leaving no doubt in her mind that he was the direct descendant of a pirate.

Stephanie mustered her reserves and gingerly eased herself onto a chair at the breakfast table.

Ivan looked up from his plate of pancakes and couldn’t resist teasing. “Have a rough night?”

She glanced over her shoulder to make sure the dining room was empty. “Why am I the only one walking funny?”

“Because you’re the one who got greedy and woke me up in the middle of the night,” he said, covering her hand with his and smiling at her with such unabashed affection that she was sure anyone watching would instantly know they’d shared a bed.

“Don’t men get sore?”

“I try to keep in shape,” he bragged, polishing off a tumbler of fresh-squeezed orange juice. “Practice, practice, practice.”

Mr. and Mrs. Platz came in and took seats at the table. “It’s raining,” Mrs. Platz said morosely. “First no leaves, and now rain. And this is a lovely inn, but I hardly slept last night. The wind was howling, something terrible. And there were thumping noises and crashing noises. Lord, for a while there it sounded as if something was banging on my window.”

Melody served them pancakes and sausage and glasses of juice. “Must have been Tess. I warned you about putting Mr. and Mrs. Platz in that room.”

Eileen Platz put her hand to her throat. “Who’s Tess?”

“Tess is our ghost,” Melody told her cheerfully. “She’s really a nice old lady, but she only likes to have Ivan sleep in her bedroom.”

“Well,” Mrs. Platz said, sizing up Ivan, “I don’t suppose I blame her.”

Ivan tipped back in his chair. “Tess was the wife of Red Rasmussen, the pirate. She predates this house by about 150 years, but the current Haben was built directly over the foundation of the original Haben, and some believe she’s taken up residence here. Legend has it that Red died at sea, and Tess died waiting for him.”

“How romantic,” Mrs. Platz said. “How sad.”

“It wasn’t Tess that was at the window last night,” Stephanie said. “It was-” She paused and poured herself a cup of coffee. “It was the wind. It blew one of the branches from the oak tree into my window and smashed the glass. We’re going to have to trim that tree back,” she added lamely, looking at Ivan.

Mr. Platz dug into the sausages. “These are terrific. Are they homemade?”

“I get them from the butcher down the street,” Stephanie said. “He makes fresh sausage every Thursday.”

Melody brought herself a plate of pancakes and took her place at the table. She eyed the sausage critically.

“Does he add nitrates? Is the meat cured?” She opened her dark eyes extra wide. “I read about nitrates. They’re chemicals that they put in the meat to make it change color and stuff, and they give you cancer. They make your pancreas rot away, and you die writhing in pain. And if you drink beer while you eat the nitrates, you get huge cancerous tumors that grow all over your body. And do you know what they make sausage out of? Ground-up pigs. Have you ever seen a sausage pig? They’re big. We’re talking really big-”

“Excuse me,” Stephanie said, “I think we’ve already had the discussion about pigs.”

Melody blinked black mascara-caked lashes at her. “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

Mrs. Platz leaned forward. “About this ghost, has anyone ever seen her?”

“I talk to her all the time,” Melody said. She lowered her voice for emphasis. “We be mates.”

Mrs. Platz’s eyes glittered, and she sucked air through her narrow mouth. “Do you think she’d talk to me? I’ve always felt very strong cosmic vibrations, but I’ve never actually talked to a ghost.”

Melody shrugged. “She hangs out on the widow’s walk.”

“Does she materialize? Does she drip ectoplasm?”

Melody’s face was expressionless as she ate her pancakes. “Mostly she just hangs out.”

“Well, how do you contact her? Do you have to go into a trance? Do you need a white candle?”

“She likes cookies,” Melody said. “She has a real sweet tooth.”

Mrs. Platz looked confused. “How can a ghost eat cookies?”

“I eat them,” Melody said matter-of-factly. “Then I tell her about them, and she gets turned on by that.”

“Lord, I would love to see a ghost. My neighbor, Sophia Schroth, would die if she knew I’d talked to a ghost.” She looked at her husband. “I knew I should have gone to the window last night.”

“Ms. Lowe said it was the wind, and that’s what it was… the wind,” Mr. Platz told her.

“It was the wind at Ms. Lowe’s window, but it might have been Tess at ours. We were sleeping in her bedroom.”

Mr. Platz rolled his eyes. “You need to get help, Eileen. You’re beginning to sound like your aunt Rose.” Mr. Platz leaned toward Ivan and spoke in a confidential voice. “Her aunt Rose talks to Walter Cronkite all day.”

Mrs. Platz pinched her lips together. “I believe in ghosts. I always have, and I always will. And I can feel that there’s a ghost in this house.”

“Hah! Some ghost,” Mr. Platz said. “Has to knock on windows to get into her own bedroom. If she’s such a hot ghost, why doesn’t she just waltz through the wall? Any self-respecting ghost can waltz through walls.”

Mrs. Platz dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “Don’t pay any attention to him,” she said to Melody. “He doesn’t understand about these things. He has no psychic energy.”

Melody poured more maple syrup on her pancakes and nodded in understanding.

“Do you think if I went up to the widow’s walk, I would get to see her?” Mrs. Platz asked Melody. “Do you suppose you could introduce me?”

“Sure. Hey, anybody who uses Clairol Ebony’s okay in my book.”

Mr. Platz grunted. “You think she’ll be out in the rain? Won’t her ectoplasm get wet?”

“I don’t know,” Melody said. “But she grooves on fog.”

Stephanie kept her eyes averted and concentrated on her mashed potatoes. She felt hideously sorry for Eileen Platz, and at the same time was on the verge of bursting out laughing. The poor woman had maintained a marathon vigil with nothing to show for it other than a red nose and frozen feet. At one point a small crowd had even gathered to watch the two crazy women standing in the rain on the top of Haben. The local cable station had sent a minicam, and a kid from the high school paper had stopped by to get details. The astonishing part was that everyone seemed to know about Tess, and no one disputed her existence. What the people of Camden, Maine, couldn’t understand was why Eileen Platz thought it necessary to talk to old Red’s widow. Stephanie chewed a piece of fried chicken and wondered about the sanity of New Englanders.

Melody looked as if she’d fared considerably better than Mrs. Platz. Her hair was freshly washed and starched and more brilliantly orange than ever. “It’s a shame you didn’t get to see Tess,” she said to Mrs. Platz. “She probably went to the mall.”

Eileen Platz sat a little stiffer in her chair, and Stephanie thought she was most likely trying to decide if she’d been made a fool of. She couldn’t begin to guess why Mrs. Platz had believed Melody in the first place. Because you believe what you want to believe, she told herself. Eileen Platz wanted to believe there was a ghost on the widow’s walk. Just like all those kids in the rehab programs had wanted to believe drugs would help them cope, make them smarter, make them cool, make them sexier, give them energy. She almost wished Mrs. Platz had seen Tess. After standing in the rain for seven hours, Mrs. Platz deserved to see something.

“Cheer up,” Mr. Platz said to his wife. “We’re staying here one more night. Maybe the ghost will come back and knock on your window some more.”