"As a magazine writer cum romance novelist, Carolyn Muir found the phrase, "her skin crawled with desire" a little tasteless and slightly over-used -- until the six-foot-two-inch ghost of Captain Daniel Gregg moved behind her chair, placing one weather-worn hand on its hard wooden frame and the other on the edge of the desk.
He read over her shoulder as Carolyn's fingers clattered away on the old typewriter. For a ghost, she observed, his breath was disconcertingly pleasant and warmly tickled her ear as he leaned into her work space. In his booming voice, the Captain cheerfully pointed out typos and suggested changes whenever he found her language too pallid to describe such a magnificent seaman as himself. He smelled of pipe tobacco, wood smoke, the sea, and an indescribable essence Carolyn suspected must be inextricably linked to ghostly pheromones.
Daniel Gregg radiated a glowing health entirely unseemly yet oddly enticing for someone who once cheerfully billed himself as 'only an illusion.' Carolyn nervously chewed her lower lip, willing her brain to focus on 19th-century sailing techniques even as her body responded viscerally to his mouth, now dangerously close to her ear.
'Now at full sail, the clipper felt her skin crawl with desire,' she exhaled distractedly with her fingers before catching herself and ripping the paper from the typewriter. Obligingly, the Captain continued for her, his lips brushing her ear as he pretended to review the novel.
'Madam, neither clippers nor schooners nor any seaworthy sailing vessels of the last century ever crawled with desire – only their captains could, or earthbound spirit captains such as I, forced to sail the seas of their own unrequited desires, afraid to set anchor by the very one they searched for over 100 years. You deserve so much more than this most arrogant, bombastic, prideful yet humbled-by-love sea captain can offer.'
Carolyn's eyes welled silently with tears, as they had countless times over the last fourteen months of their unconsummated love affair. The Captain bent once more, and murmured into her ear. "You're far too alive and lovely, my dear, to be tied down to a nautical spirit who's too selfish to let you chart your own course but too blasted honor-bound to speak openly of his love."
"Daniel?" the real Carolyn asked. "Do you like where this is headed?"
Captain Gregg stretched lazily on the sofa by the cabin's fireplace, hands behind his head, eyes closed as he mulled the first four paragraphs of Carolyn's latest novel much as he might savor a fine Cognac or brandy. He cocked one eyebrow quizzically. "My dear, it is lovely for a romance novel but I hardly think it does justice to our much-requited beginnings. I was hardly a recalcitrant lover."
Carolyn grinned and ripped the paper from the typewriter, crumpling and throwing it at the man who had once silenced mewling deckhands with a single look. He batted the paper away and grabbed her by the arm, swinging her down onto the sofa where she landed, ungracefully, on his chest.
"My ghostly love slave, the publisher specifically asked for a romantic if fictional follow-up to 'The Captain,' not a pornographic rendering of our first months of unwedded bliss at Gull Cottage," she giggled as she playfully but unsuccessfully evaded his lips. For a moment there was little sound but the flames crackling in the fireplace, their comforting hissing making but a slight dent in the howling February winds buffeting the house. "Daniel," she sighed between kisses, her hair framing his face as his hands crept lovingly down to her bottom, pulling her more deeply towards him. "Martha will be back with the kids – any moment now."
"Now that's a good place to start our tale, wench. With stolen moments that belie the apparent domesticity of our new relationship." His lips left her mouth and moved with excruciating but deliberate slowness to her ear, where he knew she would be unable to withstand the gentle nip of his teeth and intimate moistness of his tongue.
Carolyn heard the door quietly lock by itself and smiled at the Captain's persistence. "I see you're very much in character today. You have 10 minutes, mister to exercise your ghostly pheromones," she murmured as he lifted her gently toward their bed. Their world dwindled to sighs and tangled limbs in the cabin's big four-poster. "We really need to pound out a first chapter…"
That evening at dinner, an annoyed and very pubescent Candace Muir picked at her pot roast and twirled the mashed potatoes into great reservoirs for gravy. "You always ask how our day was, well, how about telling us about yours?" she scowled, intently focused on the new geography of her plate, hoping her mother would forget the progress report still hidden in the folds of her backpack.
"My dear," the Captain replied, smiling at her mother. "Your mother is starting the very first chapter of a book which describes how we came to be a, well, family together here at Gull Cottage. I believe we spent the greater part of the day writing about the days that followed your grandparents' wedding ceremony."
Newly 10, Jonathan looked surprised. "You mean how you kissed mom the first time?" He stared at his hero in a new light. "That's okay I guess, if it made you our dad."
"Well, that's certainly part of what makes a family," Captain Gregg retorted. "A very wonderful part."
Candy's jaw dropped. Her diversionary tactic had backfired. "You're kidding. You're going to tell everyone how you two, you know, managed to hook up and do it even though you're a ghost? Do you two know Mrs. Coburn will be one of the first to check your book out of the library? I'll have to be home-schooled once they figure out who Captain Gregg really is. Wait – I'll move to Philadelphia and hide out with the Muirs."
"Candy!" Carolyn eyed her daughter with what she hoped appeared calm trepidation. "That's enough for now. And get our hair out of your face. Your question is very valid but I don't think you have anything to worry about. This book is a work of fiction, a ghost story, yes, but it has nothing to do with me, you, the Captain or Jonathan or Martha or Gull Cottage or Schooner Bay. The publisher's not even going to bill it as a sequel. It's a romance novel, not a family tell-all thank you, Captain. Love stories sell very well, you know."
"Could read more like a soap opera if it's like anything that goes on around here," Martha groused with characteristic deadpan delivery. "You two have had more ups and downs than anything I've seen on afternoon television."
"Well, let me say this," Carolyn said with growing exasperation. "The publisher's paying me 5,000 up front and 15,000 upon completion for a love story about the ghost of a dead sea captain and the widow who moves into his house. That's what I promised. Of course it's based loosely on our experiences here, but most of it will be made up. And what I promise you is we'll use the money for new clothes, records, a vacation or two, a new car and a new bathroom at Gull Cottage. For you, Candy, and Jonathan. For you, Martha, a long over-due raise." She tugged nervously at the emerald wedding ring the Captain placed on her finger the day the Muirs renewed their vows.
"Captain Gregg, I'm on your side," Jonathan interjected. "Let's buy a boat! I don't care about the bathroom. What will you get?"
"Well, I've got your mother and veritable fame-and-fortune in my lively afterlife," the Captain smiled. "And you, and Candy, and Martha's decidedly easygoing personality and wonderful culinary talents. If finances allow, perhaps lad we could indeed purchase a small sailboat for trips out of Schooner Bay."
Carolyn didn't care how they decided to use the unexpected windfall, as long as they had money in the bank. She stared at Daniel, wondering if his earlier point about where to start their tangled tale had any validity. Which would readers prefer, she wondered, an angst-ridden tale about the poignancy and sadness of a love that could not be or the tangled story of two strong individuals who refused to let propriety, Victorian standards or anyone else's opinion stand in the way of a very passionate if of-necessity illicit love affair?
Her eyes met the Captain's as she silently mulled possibilities for plot development.
"Madam." His voice boomed from seemingly nowhere the next morning. Carolyn jumped, and the typewriter keys correspondingly jammed in mid-strike. She would have to ink up her fingers untangling them, easier, she supposed, than feeding another blasted piece of paper into the machine and retyping the whole page.
"Damn it, Captain. I hate it when you do that first thing in the morning. Materialize now or bring me another cup of coffee. And close those windows! It's cold in here."
"Carolyn, my dear, this is no way to speak to your soulmate?" he cooed as he materialized in front of the captain's desk, leaning into the typewriter. "Black?"
She paused, head in hand, and despite herself, stared admiringly at this latest manifestation of true love. "That sounds so romantic, with your accent. Yes, please." As was always the case, the Captain had a way of melting her early morning fogs away, making her feel like a special princess living in a beautiful mansion on a cliff instead of a harried freelance writer.
Twenty minutes later, windows shuttered and caffeine coursing through her veins, Mrs. Muir eyed the ghost stretched once again on the sofa in front of the fireplace. Usually he strode about the room, rubbing his chin distractedly while dictating text he knew she was too modest to craft. This morning, however, he seemed extraordinarily focused on the task at hand.
"What happened to spontaneity? To your unerring charm and joie de vivre? You seem a little pensive this morning, Daniel."
"Madam, I have been mulling over last night's conversation at the dinner table." She raised an eyebrow, afraid of where he might lead.
"Madam," the Captain began again commandingly, as he always did when he knew his considered opinion would veer decidedly to the port bow of Carolyn's, "You would do both of us a grave disservice by suggesting our physical relationship began only after two long years of protracted dancing ephemerally around issues minor in nature.
"Everyone would think you cuckolded me into sexual subservience, even if I am supposedly a fictional creation of your fevered little female mind."
The Captain knew he was sailing straight into disaster, but defending his manliness was serious business.
I never ever," he added pompously, "ever needed more than two or three days to enchant a lady into my bed. Of course, no one would doubt my ability to sustain continued verbal foreplay, Foreplay? Isn't that what the graceful art of seduction is so woefully referred to these days?"
"So you wish instead to infer I was a woman of no moral character who hopped right into bed with you at the first lusty gaze? My dear Daniel, the widow's walk gets very cold this time of year, not that you would mind."
Slow on the uptake, he realized he'd seriously impugned her character. Blast it! She was so distracting and he never tired of looking at her. She smiled wickedly, deliciously so, the Captain thought.
The storm temporarily abated, they both remembered a certain moonlit night when, strolling along the beach, under the influence of the crisp fall air, Madeira and rugged beauty of the ocean, Carolyn turned stopped walking and shyly turned to face her ghost.
Without a word, she slowly unbuttoned his pea jacket, her eyes never leaving his face. She wrapped her arms around him, inside his jacket, his first contact with any living creature in over 100 years. And for her? He was the first and only love of her life, she told him then, knowing she would never regret the vulnerability she now deliberately invited. Touched, he responded gently at first, stroking her hair while encircling her in his arms. He tried to hide his arousal by pulling slightly away, but she would have none of it.
"Never let me go," she whispered, under the influence of what she knew to be true passion, something new and very different for her. The embrace lasted only a few minutes before his hands strayed to places he had imagined vividly. She tugged at his sweater and he obligingly tore it from his shoulders and flung it onto the beach where it lay, abandoned after 100 years, sloughed off like an old skin. With no further ado, the Captain pulled Carolyn into the shadow of Gull Cottage's cliff face. Urgently they fell upon the dry sand. They didn't even kiss. The time for that came later, when they sneaked quietly back into Gull Cottage, temporarily sated.
"So we should create a fictional truth that mirrors our reality? Carolyn asked pensively. "Provided, of course, I can somehow condense your gigantic ego into 400 or so small, single-spaced pages. People in romantic novels don't just fall into bed together."
"Onto the beach," mused the Captain. "We could write of the raging passion that overtook us, there on the beach one very special Maine night, using the waves of the Atlantic Ocean as metaphor for our lovemaking.
"We must create situations that speak to deeper emotions like our growing commitment and devotion to each other despite our characters having lived 100 years apart." she interjected, pretending she hadn't heard, realizing if he continued on that tact they would soon end up where they always did and nothing would be resolved.
"Why do our collaborations always focus on your idea of a heated love life?" she added. "Jonathan and Candy might start reading our novels in five or 10 years. If you think for one moment I would want anyone to believe we hopped into bed together before the last rumble faded on one of your very first temper squalls – well, then forget it!
"It was the beach, madam," he reminded her again. "We hopped onto the beach."
Carolyn pursed her lips and looked away. The heat was rising in her cheeks, he could tell. Still, the Captain was unprepared for the grin which slowly blossomed across her face. She cupped her hand around his face and cheekily but lightly rubbed her thumb across his too-convenient lips.
"Thank you Casanova. I will be sure to add the details about how hard I surreptitiously worked just to elicit a single kiss from your spectral lips after I found out you were a lying little ghost. Hmmm. Readers might think you a little less than manly, failing to inform your beautiful, love-starved tenant of your real powers."
She did it again, the Captain thought. This impossible woman could turn the tables on him faster than a Noreaster could sink a leaky frigate. He thought of rumbling a little thunder instead of answering her directly, but found he couldn't keep a straight face either.
"To the contrary, my dear. With my face on the back of the hard-cover edition, readers will find it entirely plausible you could barely resist me once you deduced I had some tangibility. And what is wrong with that? I believe it was a true meeting of equals, a magnificent truce (so to speak) between two well-matched sparring partners. In this century, it was what you would call a 'win-win situation.' Our differences, our folie a deux, carried us swiftly to the only place even literary tensions could believably be resolved. Besides, I don't find it necessary to subject readers to a slow build up of sexual tension and double entendres, when the truth is so very palpably fascinating and --"
Caroly coughed tactfully, but the Captain was on a roll.
"If we attended carefully to nuanced character development, readers would logically infer you were incapable of resisting my voice, my magnificent person, my blue eyes, the ripple of my muscles beneath my shirt. Think of it: A beautiful highbrow but loveless society widow flees her in-laws only to find love in the spectral, earthbound arms of a 19th-century sea captain who is only real to her – how endlessly fascinating."
His thoughts belied his utterances. Carolyn Muir was, he thought, was irresistible in an intelligent way that all women past the age of 30 should be. A woman desired as much for her brain as for her stunning beauty, especially by him, a sea captain forced to jettison over 150 years of bombastic opinions about women so they could finally meet on equal footing.
He sighed, contentedly, 19th-century opinions about propriety vanquished by this impossible woman.
"My darling, our situation may have appeared impossible but its outcome was inevitable." He moved behind her chair and leaned forward, nuzzling her neck rubbing what he thought at first was her breasts, until later that day, when Carolyn sleepily explained the modern concept of padded bras. "At any rate, you are too much of a prude to write anything deliciously tempting."
He would have to doctor the manuscript once she had finished editing.
"How does this sound? The Ghost and Mrs. Muir – impossible yet inevitable."
"Inevitable requires time, not two months," Carolyn replied meekly then sighed, surrendering to his lips and the fingers wandering dangerously downward.
Unexpectedly, tears formed in the back of her eyes, threatening to spill down her cheeks. Why was she so susceptible to crying every time their relationship was even obliquely on the table for discussion? She closed her eyes for a second as the man who meant everything to her embraced her firmly, with loving tenderness.
"Daniel," she whispered tenderly into his neck. "Why share our story with anyone at all?"