A Triple Scoop of I Scream by Gabrielle Holly Read Free Book Online Page A

going on here.”
    Thomas switched off the taps and dried his hands. He and Mike returned to the table and sat down as Bridget got up. The redhead yanked open the door of the industrial fridge and pulled out five cans of beer, gathering them up in an aluminium bouquet. She set the bundle in the centre of the table. Everyone wordlessly grabbed a can and popped it open. The five stared at the table top and sipped their beer.
    Bridget was the first to break the silence. “Psychic hypnosis?”
    Mike nodded. “Looks like it and—I know we’re all thinking the same thing—it wouldn’t be the first time with Toni.”
    Toni looked at each of the three ghost hunters in turn, finally landing on Bridget. Bridget’s eyes softened in sympathy. Toni covered her face. She looked up at the sound of Liam’s voice.
    “What am I missing here?” he asked.
    Mike explained, “We all met Toni at a B & B she owned down in Iowa. I was staying there as a guest and Thomas and Bridge were called in to investigate some strange phenomenon—”
    “Right, you guys are from that TV show…” Liam paused as if searching his memory.
    “ Paranormal Research Team ,” Bridget offered.
    Liam nodded then turned back to Mike.
    Mike continued, “The inn was haunted by the ghost of a Civil War soldier. One night we’re all in the dining room and there was this weird—I don’t know—change in the atmosphere. It’s like the air was electrified. Afterwards we all said it felt like we’d been drugged. It seemed like everything was in slow motion and we were all, well, I mean, we all felt—”
    “Sexually aroused,” interjected Thomas flatly.
    Mike nodded. “Yeah, sexually aroused. But I’m not talking about run-of-the-mill horny. I mean like really, really intensely turned on.”
    Bridget winked at Mike and added, “I was in the middle of an excruciating appendicitis attack and all I could think about was jumping that guy!”
    Mike smiled back at her. Toni met Thomas’ eye. He smiled at her, but his eyes read something conflicting—pain? Regret?
    “And you call it psychic hypnosis?” Liam asked.
    Bridget nodded. “It’s a rare but recognised paranormal phenomenon.”
    “And you think that’s what happened to Toni and me upstairs?”
    Toni crossed her arms over her breasts and stared up at the ceiling. She waited for someone to say out loud what they were probably all thinking. Liam finally did so in the form of a question.
    “If it’s so rare, does Toni have something to do with it?”
    And…there it was.
    Toni stopped examining the kitchen ceiling and scanned the other faces at the table. Bridget gave her yet another sympathetic look. It somehow irked Toni. The annoyance must have shown on her face because Bridget looked away.
    Bridget nodded towards Mike. “We’ve discussed this quite a bit—”
    “Oh really?” Toni asked, making no attempt to hide the irritation in her voice. She looked back at Thomas. He rubbed his forehead as if trying to massage away a headache.
    Bridget shrugged. “It was a pretty remarkable thing, Toni. We all felt it and so originally we thought we were all experiencing something external at the same time, something caused by one extremely strong entity—”
    Mike picked up the thread. “But then we started going through our notes. Bridget reminded us that you’d had the paranormal frottage.”
    Mike looked at Liam as if to gauge his understanding. Liam wrinkled his forehead so Mike explained, “Paranormal frottage is like ghost dry-humping. The entity would rub up against Toni—sexually.”
    “Sometimes bringing her to the brink of orgasm,” Bridget added.
    Toni uncrossed her arms and threw up her hands. “Thank you, O’Malley!”
    “Well, it’s true,” Bridget muttered.
    “It is true, Toni,” Mike said. He went on, “And then there was the ménage à trois with Thomas and the ghost—”
    “For the love of… C’mon, Briggs!” Toni yelled.
    “Well, he asked,” Mike said.
    “He