Charcuterie Board With a Side of Ghosts

Published by: eXtasy Books

ISBN :978-1-4874-4208-8

Page :253

Word Count :75785

Publication Date :2024-11-22

Series : #

Heat Level :

Available Formats : Charcuterie Board With a Side of Ghosts (epub) , Charcuterie Board With a Side of Ghosts (mobi) , Charcuterie Board With a Side of Ghosts (pdf) , Charcuterie Board With a Side of Ghosts (prc)

Category : Romantic Suspense and Mystery , Paranormal Romance , Romance , Cravings

Product Code: 978-1-4874-4208-8

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Reality and superstition collide when a snowstorm traps a group of friends in a historic house haunted by the spirits of its former inhabitants.

A life-altering experience drives Naya Rollins to the mountains of Vermont. Two months after moving into her new home, she discovers its former inhabitants linger on.

Michael Bradbury had not seen his childhood friend, Naya, for two years. Bumping into her brother Luke and getting invited to visit her in her new home gives him the chance to come clean about his feelings for her. What he isn’t prepared for is coming up close and personal with the paranormal.

Naya Rollins floated in the black void of a dreamless sleep one moment, and the next, she opened her eyes fully alert. Something had woken her up. She wondered what was going on as she looked around her dark bedroom. Nothing moved in the dim light of the nightlight, and all was quiet. She pushed her hand under her pillow and pulled out the phone she’d shoved there. Staring blearily into the activated home screen, her eyes took a moment to focus, only to see it was four-thirty in the morning. It was no longer unusual to wake up at that particular time. Not since she’d moved into the new house.

Moving slowly and silently, she slipped her feet into the slippers by the side of her bed and stood up. The dog snores told her that Jenny, her Pocket Bully, hadn’t heard her. She really didn’t want to deal with her pet’s early morning rowdiness. She took a moment to listen to the silence yet detected nothing unusual nor heard any sounds that would alert her or her dog of an intruder.

By the time Naya exited the toilet, she was too wide awake to attempt to go back to sleep. Jenny was sitting up in her bed, her tail wagging a mile a minute, clearly ready to start her day. Jenny’s wide-eyed stare made her laugh. When she opened the bedroom door and signaled Jenny out, the dog excitedly took to her feet and exited the room.

Naya stumbled out of the bedroom with cobwebs still in her eyes, following the trail of night lights plugged in at four-foot intervals along the corridor. She stopped at the top of the staircase, where she’d placed a huge Chinese camphor wood chest. A friend had found it for her, and it only took one whiff to fall in love with the scent. The aroma cleansed her lungs whenever she breathed it in. Jenny scrambled past her, and she hurried to follow the dog down to the first level of the house.

After letting Jenny out the back door, she turned and headed toward her coffee station. She stopped in her tracks mid-yawn when she stepped into the kitchen. Something didn’t feel right.

Not for the first time since she’d first set eyes on the house could she swear something had moved just out of the corner of her eye. There was no explanation, no proof something moved. Just that nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right. As she looked around, nothing seemed out of place. It couldn’t have been her friend, Carol Sweetman, who had surprised her by arriving two hours earlier and announcing she was staying for the weekend. But judging by the quiet, Carol was still asleep.

She flicked on the light switches one by one, the brightness momentarily blinding her before her vision cleared. Everything seemed to be in its usual place. She must have stood there for a full minute before she gave up, but the curious feeling that someone or something had been inside continued to bother her.

A sip of strong, black coffee later, she heard Jenny’s pitiful whining and scratching on the door to get inside. Naya had never liked the idea of a doggy door, and the thought of having one while living alone in the mountains only made her paranoid. As the dog passed her, she looked out into the back garden. A light mist had settled over the grounds, and a strange sort of chill in the air that had nothing to do with the winter weather made her shiver. The perimeter lights lit up the surroundings. She saw nothing out there, yet she couldn’t get herself to step back inside the house and close the door. A feeling swept over her, telling her to look beyond the obvious. She continued to stand there, staring and running her hands over the tops of her arms.

What’s going on?

No answers came.

After one last glance into the darkness beyond where the gardens ended, Naya turned around and went back inside the house. Picking up her cup, she moved to the living room and sat in one of her comfy chairs, pulling up her feet and wrapping one arm around her knees. She stared at the unlit fireplace, thinking about how different her current lifestyle was.

It hadn’t taken her long to get used to the peace and quiet in the Vermont mountains. It was a welcome change from the hustle, bustle, and toxic competition among influencers in Los Angeles. Looking down at her feet, clad in warm fluffy slippers, she wondered, not for the first time, what had driven her to move to Los Angeles at barely twenty years old. She didn’t have to live there to be a successful influencer or businesswoman. However, one thing that hadn’t changed over the years was her need to know what was going on in the world. It was time to listen to the news.

Bad news first thing in the morning was not something she cared to suffer through, but it had become a ritual for her. Every single channel she logged into played the same miserable broadcast as the others. She gave up and looked through the streaming service before moving on. She tuned into an online video-sharing social media platform, where she watched a Korean lady going about her daily household chores with soothing background music. The site had an abundance of relaxing videos and always showed great recipes that she enjoyed trying out. Her granny’s recipes were great, but she liked to experiment. She was successful most times, but there were other times when she followed everything to the letter, and the food still ended up as inedible goo.