by S. E. Harmon
I raised an eyebrow. “Exactly how much research about me did you do?”
“I shop at her wellness store from time to time.” He scratched his head. “She never did tell me what she grows. Do you know?”
Chronic. Mary Jane. That sticky icky. I cleared my throat. “Herbs, I think.”
When we reached the entrance again, he toed on his sandals, and I stuck my feet in my boots. I crouched down to wrangle with the laces as he waited patiently. “So have you tried giving the ghosts some boundaries?” he asked.
“Of course I have.”
“Do you make them abide by those boundaries? No exceptions?”
Not really. I set the boundaries and then let them harangue me until I changed them. Dakota’s knowing gaze said he already knew that. “What if they....” I swallowed. “What if they do something to me?”
“Such as?”
Such as throw me off a fucking bridge. “Something physically violent.”
“Their options are limited, you know. They need you—you don't need them. If something happens to you, it might be another hundred years before they find another. Remind them of that. They might even start to protect you.”
I blinked away images of ghosts wearing dark suits and shades with matching stern expressions. “All right.”
“Declare that you’re in, all in, and you’re willing to start receiving more. You’re ready to listen to your spirit guides and receive messages from the other side. Open your arms and heart and let them in, wholly. Completely.”
“I have,” I said with a touch of frustration.
“Only because you felt you had no choice. They chose you, not the other way around. You're resentful of your own gifts and you'd rather they disappear altogether.”
There was no point in denying what was so obviously true.
Dakota knew when he’d scored points. “Start feeling and seeing this as a part of life—your life—every day.”
And to think I’d actually been enjoying our meeting. “Even when they get on my damn nerves?”
He grinned cheekily. “Especially when they get on your damn nerves. And don’t hesitate to be firm. Limit certain areas of the house. Do you have an office? A home office?”
“Not exactly.” Mostly because Danny and I were still dancing around whether we lived together or not.
“It might be beneficial to give them a set time and place they’ll be able to reach you.”
I sent him a skeptical look. “You mean like office hours?”
“If you like. When you show the ghosts you have things under control, they'll have more confidence that you'll solve their problem. Give you a little room to work.”
I mulled that over briefly, teeth worrying my bottom lip. Despite looking like a toddler, the majority of what Dakota said had made sense. And it wasn’t like I had any better ideas. “I’ll try it,” I finally said.
He shrugged. “Up to you.”
“Man, you’ve really got this empathetic thing down pat.” I sent him a wry look as I rose. “See you next week.”
“If that’s what you want.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You know, I’m really starting to really dislike you.”
“Luckily for us, such a benign emotion as ‘like’ is not critical to your progress.” He grinned as my eyes narrowed farther. “Call me, maybe?”
Despite the fact that Dakota was a snarky little plant whisperer, I wasn’t ready to discount his ideas. An hour later, I found myself wandering an IKEA, looking for inexpensive office furniture—and never mind how I was going to jam it all in my sedan. I got lost in no less than five times, and each time I found something else I never needed.
I went through a narrow section between some mirrors, determined to get back on track, and popped out on the other side in housewares. I muttered a curse even as my gaze caught on a set of bamboo salad bowls. I migrated over, even as my splurge nerve center started arguing with the thrifty part of my brain.
You don’t need bamboo salad bowls, Brain said.
Salad is good for you, I argued back.
What’s wrong with the bowls you already have?
They’re not fucking bamboo. I’m not going to debate with you if I have to state the obvious.
Because salad is healthier in bamboo? My brain tsked. And aren’t you here for a desk?
I pulled a set of four off the shelf. You don’t know my life!
Danny called as I was standing in the kitchen section, wondering if we needed a teakettle with a crystal knob. I was leaning toward yes, even though neither of us ever used a kettle… or particularly cared for tea.
“If I bought you a teakettle, would you use it?” I asked in lieu of greeting.
“No,” he said, entirely too comfortable with my strangeness. “And neither would you.”
“Maybe my mother—”
“Your mother doesn’t like new things. So unless you’re in a thrift shop, no.”
“Maybe your mother—”
“You don’t like my mother. And to be perfectly honest, she doesn’t like you. Yet.”
I scowled. “I’m hoping there’s a real reason you called, Daniel, other than to rain on my parade.”
“Tab and Nick just left a coin dealer in Miami. He brokered a deal for Luke ten years ago, when he wanted to sell some coins. Several of those coins matched the coins from Mason’s collection.”
“Yes.” I punched the air with my fist and the fancy—expensive—teakettle went flying. I caught it on the way down, nearly fumbling the damn thing, and secured it against my chest. I sighed with relief. “I hate to say I knew it, but I fucking knew it.”
“You still have three suspects on your board.”
“One of whom is Luke,” I reminded him as I stuck the teakettle back on the shelf. “Fuck you very much.”
Danny made an amused sound. “We secured an arrest warrant to get him picked up, but they’re having a little trouble tracking him down.”
“Is that your delicate way of saying he’s flown the coop?”
“We don’t know that yet.” At my snort, he sighed. “Well, one of us has to stay positive.”
“So that means I can be as pessimistic as I want?” I couldn’t help but be excited at the prospect. Dear Diary, Today I was given permission to be the saltiest motherfucker that ever walked the earth. “That’s so generous of you. And to think I’m just getting you this fancy ass teakettle for your birthday.”
He hung up, but not before warning me about what happens to annoying boyfriends who buy useless things. I slid my phone back in my pocket and glanced down at my overfull cart. It was a little hard to switch gears from detective back to casual shopper, and it took me few seconds to make the transition. Then I made a beeline for the office furniture section, or as much of a beeline as you can make in a store the size of Texas.
Chapter 26
By the time I got back to Danny’s, my car loaded down with purchases, he still wasn’t home. I’d planned to talk to him about Dakota’s suggestion, you know, before I renovated his guest room or anything pushy like that. But it wasn’t like I was going to do any big transformations today. I had to clean it first. He certainly couldn’t fault me for cleaning, could he?
I changed into some faded shorts and an old shirt, determined to end the day on a productive note. Moments later, I stood in the doorway of Danny’s spare bedroom, a little stymied about where to begin. At one point the guest room had been completely accessible. Nicely decorated, even. Now it was the place storage containers went to die.
I shuffled into the room and started with a random container. Christmas decorations. I peeked in another and found more decorations. And in the next. Why Danny, a person who thought a tree was ‘too much trouble,’ had three boxes of ornaments, would just have to remain a mystery.
I opened another container only to find the assorted dinnerware he’d gathered over the years, which I’d replaced with my matching set. Another container netted some mismatched glassware that he said he’d thrown
out. Clearly, the room had become a catchall for everything Danny didn’t want to part with. I couldn’t say I was all that surprised.
He was different this time around.
Subtle differences, mind you, but different all the same. If I didn’t have our old relationship to compare, I probably wouldn’t even notice. Before, he was so open and willing to be vulnerable with me. This time, it was like I had to claw my way back in. No less than I deserved, I guess. I left him once—I could understand being gun-shy the second time around. Hell, I wasn’t sure if he even knew how to give me his whole heart anymore. And this room was the result… a physical manifestation of our relationship troubles.
Just when I was making progress, I stumbled upon an old crate of pictures. Goodbye another hour of my time. I plopped down on another Rubbermaid container. Once I was sure it would hold my weight, I got lost looking through old photos.
I couldn’t have asked for a better atmosphere. The sky had finally opened up with the rain that had been threatening all day. The house was cozy, the quiet only interrupted by the rhythmic patter of rain against the windows.
Most of the photos seemed to be from Danny’s late teen and college years, which wasn’t much of a surprise. Before that period, his childhood wasn’t the happiest, and nowadays, he acted like having his picture taken would actually kill him.
I picked up one of the few photos of him as a child. He was standing next to his sister in the park, and they were both holding ice cream cones. Even in such an idyllic picture, there wasn’t a smile to be found on their serious little faces. I ran my thumb across the photo as I wondered what the ice cream had been making up for. Maybe the bruise on his cheek. There was also a small cut above his eye. I doubted it was from roughhousing—the little Danny told me about his childhood indicated kids were to be seen and not heard.
I put the photo back and closed the crate. Tight.
“Rain?” Danny’s voice from somewhere in the house made me jump. “Can you come in here, please?”
Fuck, he was home early. I glanced around the room with a grimace. Three hours of work and all I had was the aftermath of a Category 5 hurricane. I’d hoped to have a little more cleared out before he came back, and I had a feeling he wasn’t going to be a fan of the chaos stacked up in the hallway.
I headed to the front, my flip-flops slapping the floor loudly as I walked. “I know, I know,” I said when I got to the living room. “But most of those boxes are going in the attic.”
He wasn’t in the living room. Or the kitchen. I poked my head out the screen door to check the back porch, and nada. I stuck my hands on my hips. “Okay, this better be strip hide-and-seek.”
His voice came again, somewhere to my left. “I’m in here.”
I headed through the kitchen and into the laundry room, a space barely big enough for a washer, dryer, and a tiny sink we never used. He was frowning at my cherry red LG stackers, which were a far cry from the beat-up washing machine and dryer he’d gotten off Craigslist a billion years ago.
Oh fuck, I meant to tell him about those.
“You’re wet,” I said stupidly, looking at his damp clothes. His gray jeans and favorite Rolling Stones T-shirt were a little worse for the wear.
“It’s still drizzling out. I came in here to throw them in the washer and found these.” He gestured at the stackers.
Before I could even think of a good defense, he had his hands around my waist. He lifted me up on the sink and my hands flew to his shoulders. It probably shouldn’t be that easy for him to pick up a full-grown man. I dared any deer in headlights to look as startled as I did in that moment.
“Laundry room sex?” I made a sound of approval. “Detective McKenna, I didn’t know you had it in you.”
He stepped between my legs and braced his hands on either side of me. Despite the interest level of his dick, which I could see very clearly in his jeans, he ignored my offer. “No more dancing around it, Rain. Where are we? Relationship wise?”
I sighed. If I wasn’t getting fucked, the sink was too hard, and the faucet was poking me in the small of my back. “Since we’re men, I was kind of hoping we could skip the whole ‘where’s this relationship going’ thing.”
“Don’t you wish.” He nuzzled the sensitive junction of my neck, and I was torn between a laugh and a moan. “Honestly, I’ve been just as bad at voicing what I want as you have.”
“I don’t really know where to start.”
Dark blue eyes regarded me steadily. “Then maybe I should. I don’t care about all the stuff you’ve been bringing over.”
“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you? I noticed that the Keurig is no longer broken and the lamps are new. The glasses aren’t chipped and suddenly my flatware matches the nice plates.” He paused. “Oh, and we have nice plates.”
I sighed. “Fine. You’ve got me dead to rights.”
“I am a detective, after all.”
“You didn’t notice the couch, Columbo.”
“It’s the same color,” he said with a glare. “And what’s with all the boxes in the hall?”
Such a simple question to make my heart flutter. I didn’t bother to break it gently. I gave him the truth hard and fast and without any lube. “I’m making the guest room into my office.”
“You are, huh?” His face was a blank canvas at that moment that I had no chance of reading. “You know you’re welcome to use mine.”
“I know.”
“But you still want your own.”
“Yes.”
I knew Danny rarely used his home office, which was a glorified broom closet. But staking out space in his house—my space, Rain's space—was about more than just a convenient place to work. It was about showing him that he wasn’t going to shut me out. I wasn’t going anywhere, anytime soon, and he was just going to have to start trusting in our longevity. We also weren’t going to have doubles of every damn thing anymore, either.
Maybe the lamps, though. Those were nice. They’d look fantastic in my new office.
His gaze was all too observant. “So what brought this on?”
“Dakota thinks it could help with the ghosts. If they had a dedicated space to contact me and dedicated hours when they know I’ll be here, they wouldn’t need to hunt me down all the bloody time.”
“Office hours?” he asked doubtfully. “For ghosts?”
“It’s worth a try.” I shrugged. “I bought a desk earlier and I’m going to need your help putting it together.”
Danny was always better with those instructions and little bolts and screws. The last time I tried to put something together from IKEA, I smashed through two pieces of particleboard and my own thumb. I still wasn’t sure what the Scandinavian translation was for fuck this dresser, but seriously, fuck that dresser.
Danny had other concerns. “I’m not even going to ask how you fit something like that in your BMW.”
“I tied it to the top with bungee cords.” I wiped sweaty palms down my shorts and tried to sound casual. “I’d also like to paint.”
“You would, huh?”
“Yep.”
Finally, a small smile tugged at his mouth. “Okay.”
“Okay?” When his amused look grew, I cleared my throat. “Of course, it’s okay.”
He laughed outright then. Little did he know, this was a “give a mouse a cookie” situation—the more of Danny I had, the more I wanted. He was about to lose half of his drawer and closet space. And those ugly ass pots he wouldn’t toss were going to be replaced with my new copper set.
“I guess this probably seems pretty redundant at this point, but I want to be perfectly clear,” I said.
“About what?”
“I love you. And I want to live with you,” I said, putting the rest of my cards on the table. “Full-time.”
His response was to kiss me damn near senseless. “I have news for you, Moonbeam,” he said when he finally pulled back. “You already do
.”
He leaned in to kiss me again. And yes, I took the time to mutter, “That’s not my fucking name,” before I kissed him back.
In my humble opinion, there was only one way to celebrate the decision to officially live together, and probably not a way Emily Post would agree with.
I was mid spectacular blow job—if I do say so myself—when Danny’s phone vibrated. We were both so lost in our own little world that reality was an almost vulgar intrusion. The loud buzzing stopped, but I knew it would start up again. I sucked harder, reapplying myself to get him off. We seemed to be on the same page as his hand tightened in my hair, and he rocked faster and faster. My hands flew up to his thighs almost reflexively, but he wasn’t going any deeper or faster than I could handle.
After a few seconds of trying to catch up with his rhythm, I let him take over completely, letting him fuck my mouth relentlessly. I looked up at him from under my lashes, dropping my hands deliberately and tucking them behind my back. I trusted him implicitly, and he was free to use my mouth however he wanted.
He groaned as his hips snapped forward a few more times, and he came with a gratifying shout. “Fuck,” he said hoarsely. “Fuck me sideways.”
We ignored his vibrating phone once again as I sucked him a little longer, enjoying the taste of his release and my power over him all at the same time. It was heady. Intoxicating. I already wanted to do it again. He finally pulled back with a whimper, cursing.
He pulled me up off the floor and reached for my pants, and then he chuckled when he realized I came already. “Really?”
“Don’t judge me, Irish,” I croaked. “Or you’ve just had your last laundry room blow job.”
He opened his mouth to respond and his phone vibrated again. He swore loudly and answered. “McKenna.”
He proceeded to have a conversation that seemed to consist mostly of him listening and saying “uh huh.” I started to move away to give him privacy, but he circled my wrist with his hand and pulled me closer. I didn’t mind that or the way his thumb absently stroked my hand, but I did mind feeling sticky from coming in my pants like a teenager.
Danny hung up and kissed me thoroughly. “Who was that?” I asked when he finally got done checking my throat for polyps with his tongue.