Falling For Zoe (The Camerons of Tide's Way #1) by Skye Taylor Page A

comes.”
    Jake glanced at Zoe and shrugged.
    “Please come again, Mrs. Jolee. I’ve so enjoyed your visit and hearing all about Martin.” Zoe bent to kiss the older woman’s cheek.
    Celia looked pleased with the familiarity and reached up to tuck a stray curl behind Zoe’s ear. “Please, just call me Celia. You’ll take good care of Martin?”
    “You can count on me, ma’am.”
    As she watched Jake guide his mother-in-law across the lawn, Zoe realized she should have asked if it was all the doors Martin tended to leave open or just one in particular. Then she gave herself a mental shake. There is no ghost, you idiot. I’ve been here the better part of a month. Surely I’d have noticed a ghost leaving doors open before now?
    BY THE END OF the week, Zoe was no longer so sure about the house not being haunted. The first morning after Celia’s visit, when Zoe had come down to breakfast, she’d found the front door ajar. She’d closed it carefully, trying to picture herself shutting and locking it the night before. But the more she thought about it, the less certain she was about what she remembered or didn’t remember.
    Two days later the French doors in the study were open, and the long lacy curtains wafted gently in the morning breeze. That incident had been pretty easy to justify since the afternoon before Zoe had stopped on her way home from work to get the new bird feeders. After she’d hung them along her back fence, she distinctly recalled standing at the porch railing admiring her magnificent view of the waterway and the dunes beyond. But when she had retreated to the study to watch out the partially open doors as the birds began to discover their new feeding stations, a squirrel had shown up. His antics as he tried to hang upside down to shake seed out of the feeder had made her laugh out loud, which prompted Polly to join in with raucous laughter. Zoe’d had to restrain Jet from taking off in a mad dash to catch the squirrel before it made it back to safety. She must have gotten sidetracked by the dogs and forgotten to return and latch the doors.
    Besides , she kept telling herself, if there were really a ghost, wouldn’t the dogs have barked at it? Scotch at least. He barked at everything. Even the cats had continued strutting about with their noses in the air as if they owned the place with no one and nothing to challenge that belief. Surely, the cats would have noticed an unexplained presence in the house and meowed their disapproval. Wouldn’t they?
    On Thursday, after a quiet day at work, Zoe decided to organize the closet under the stairs. At the far corner, hidden in the shadows, she found a box and dragged it out to investigate. Old newspapers with headlines from significant dates in history filled most of the box. Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. The assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King. Zoe scanned through the yellowed reminders of America’s past, then at the very bottom of the box she found a framed photo of a young man in uniform. Zoe carried the frame to the kitchen and cleaned the glass. He was a handsome young man, dressed in old-fashioned army greens. Was this Martin Jolee? Or perhaps his younger brother Richard?
    For reasons she didn’t totally think through, Zoe took the photo into the living room and set it on the mantle next to a wedding portrait of her parents and a group snapshot of her siblings, her sister-in-law, and her nephew taken the previous Christmas.
    Zoe’s gaze lingered over the group photo, marveling for the zillionth time how beautiful both her sisters were and how different she was. Erin and Kelly had smooth ink-black hair and clear ivory complexions, while Zoe’s flaming red mop frizzed out of control and a thousand freckles marched across her face. She was definitely the changeling in the family. No wonder no man had ever looked at her with desire in his eyes.
    With a sad snort of self-mockery, she returned her gaze to the young