He met her on a case. It was a simple salt and burn, but he'd met her there. She'd run into him in the cemetery while he was on the way out. She had caught his eye. She was doing research for her next book. His heart was still wounded over Cassie, but she knew how to heal him. She took one look at his festering bruises and scratches and declared he must come back to her home for some first aid. He hadn't agreed, he was more of dragged to her car and taken to her house which was, thankfully, in the same neighborhood as where the retired hunter's house he parked the car at was.
"I'm U. M. Locke," she had said, smiling brightly when she handed him the ice pack for the nasty bruise on his cheek he had gotten when the damn ghost hit him. "I'm an author. Not a very good one, but I have a following."
"Dean W-," he had stumbled. "Dean Westminster."
"A solid English name," she commented. "I might use that in a book if you don't mind."
"Sure. But hey, listen I'm staying just down the block…" He paused and prayed the old hunter wouldn't mind. "For a week. How about I take you to dinner in payment? I don't like to be indebted to anyone."
She hummed, as if deciding to put that trait to the character Westminster, and then nodded. "Alright, no place fancy though. I can't stand those places." She laughed at that, her own little joke. "One condition though."
"Anything for a face like yours," he shamelessly flirted.
She laughed again. "Tell me a story. Surely you can make one up about how you got those bruises."
"I got attacked by a ghost," he answered truthfully, almost sheepishly, but she didn't have to know that.
"Oh?"
"Yeah he lived in that cemetery, and at his old house. Had to salt and burn his bones to get him up there." He pointed up, as if to heaven. He didn't know why he was telling her this, maybe because she had asked for a made up story and wouldn't believe it or think him crazy. Maybe she just had one of those faces. He didn't know, but he was telling her anyway.
"How'd he die?" An author question he presumed.
"Murdered, poison, by his own wife, he stayed to get revenge."
"I like it," she had grinned at him, clapping her hands. "Alright, pick me up tomorrow at seven?"
"Sounds like a date." He grinned right back.
XxXxX
He had gone back to the old hunter's place giddy. He asked the man's wife, Helen, about staying a few more days and she had replied wholeheartedly yes, much to the discomfort of her husband, who could now not tell Dean to go. Then he had asked about U. M.
"Oh she's a sweet girl. I've read all her books, and so has Frank," she replied, causing Frank to blush.
"She's a mystery and supernatural author, a right good one who gets things pretty right too. Not of speck of Christian in her though. Pure pagan girl and that makes its way into her books."
"I've got a date with her tomorrow," Dean had started.
"Oh you should take her to Maloney's, best steak in the county and casual too," Helen replied.
"Shouldn't you be asking the boy on how he got a date with the neighborhood's hermit bachelorette?"
"Hermit bachelorette?" Dean asked, puzzled.
"She doesn't date much," said Helen cautiously.
"She doesn't date at all," Frank exclaimed.
"She's been asked, but none of the boys suit her anyways," Helen retorted. Frank snorted.
"Be careful boy, some people call her a witch. And we all here know about witches."
Dean would take it to heart.