Spank or Treat [Suncoast Society] (Siren Publishing Sensations)
Page 9
The same guy he’d thought had been the one he’d hired.
Then again, it could have been a trick of the light, shadows, the yard decorations.
Or even another partygoer who’d slipped outside for a little peace and quiet to smoke a cigarette. They weren’t the last ones to leave. There were still plenty of people there.
He shivered again. “Nothing,” he said, returning the phone to the center console. “Nothing.” He shifted the car into drive and headed out of there.
He loved Seth and Leah to death, but it would be a long time before he made his way back there again after dark.
* * * *
It was nearly four a.m. by the time the last guest left. Seth went outside to shut off the yard decorations, taking another moment to stare at them before he did. Kaden had never gone all out for Halloween, usually just a couple of things here and there. With their small gated community, they rarely got a lot of trick-or-treaters anyway.
It was Christmas that had been Kaden’s love.
I hope you don’t mind I took this holiday over and made it mine.
His nose still throbbed a little, but the last time he’d looked at it in the mirror, he didn’t think it’d be too bad in the morning. Maybe a little swollen, but getting the frozen peas on it as soon as he had probably helped. He didn’t think his eyes would end up blackened, either.
He’d just switched off the last display when he heard Leah let out a bloodcurdling shriek, followed by laughter. Racing inside, he found her in the living room, nearly doubled over, practically incapacitated.
“What the fuck? What happened? Are you okay?”
Unable to speak, she simply pointed at the sliding glass doors leading out onto the lanai. In them, the reflection from the ghost hanging from the ceiling near the front door. The effect with the darkened room behind them made it look like the ghost was hovering over the pool.
She finally straightened and lightly smacked his arm, even as she still laughed. “I…thought… I saw… someone…on… the deck… dammit…”
He knew he had to wait for her to get it out of her system, to quit laughing long enough to talk, but it was damn good to hear her laugh.
Even if she would be a little irritated at him over it.
Finally, she gasped for breath. “I was in the kitchen and something caught my eye. I swear I thought I saw that guy still out there. The one we couldn’t figure out who he was? I walked around the counter to go call for you and then saw the reflection of that damn thing”—she pointed—“hanging there and would have wet my panties if you’d allowed me to wear any tonight.”
He grinned. “Then lucky you you’re commando tonight, huh?” His smile faded as he looked past her onto the lanai. For just a split second, he could have sworn he saw the guy standing there, too.
A guy who looked like…
Shivers raced through him. He walked past her and out onto the lanai, but no one was there. No one could be there. He could see all four corners of the lanai from where he stood, and the light from the pool illuminated it almost like daytime.
Walking around the pool, he checked both doors. Yep, locked. Switching off the pool light, he verified all the sliders were locked, locking the one to the living room behind him as he went in.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Yeah. Just like you said, a reflection.” He went and pulled the hanging ghost down and laid it on the sofa. “There. Now it won’t scare the piddle out of you.” He tried to smile, but his gut told him that wasn’t right.
He made his usual nightly prowl around the house following a party like that one. The garage, the front door, the windows, everything.
Leah had gone back into the kitchen to finish up a few things there when he stepped into the living room again and spotted it.
On the shelf where Kaden’s urn sat lay a small, white envelope tucked up against it.
A flash of a reflection caught his eye in the living room sliders, but when he looked, it was only his own image appearing in the glass.
He quickly checked the rest of the house without telling Leah what he was doing—or why. No one in there but the two of them, and all the windows were locked in the other rooms as well. The closets were empty of uninvited guests, and none hid under beds, either.
That left—
“Seth?” Leah’s trembling voice called out to him.
Dammit.
He returned to the living room and found Leah holding the envelope.
“Sorry, babe. I saw it a minute ago but wanted to check the rest of the house first.”
She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. Happy tears or ones of grief, he couldn’t tell. “There’s something in it,” she whispered.
“Knowing Kade, I’m sure there is. Do you want me to open it?”
She looked at the front of it. In Kaden’s handwriting both their names had been printed.
She finally passed it to Seth with a trembling hand.
It felt like there was more than one of Kaden’s infamous index cards inside. When he opened it, he found four small, black cat-shaped tags, with Leah’s name and both Seth’s and Kaden’s initials engraved on the backs.
The index card was also in his writing.
Sorry this is so late, but I kind of wanted it that way. Don’t bother asking around, I swore the person to secrecy and it could have been any of our friends. Consider it a Halloween miracle. Boo! :) I wanted to wait a couple of years before springing these on you, when I suspected you’d both be a little stronger, more healing behind you. I love you both and want you to know how proud I am of both of you. I write this not knowing what lies ahead for me, obviously, but if there’s any way for me to keep tabs on you both and watch from the wings, believe me, I will. I’m kinky like that. Hey, I get to be a voyeur! :) (Sorry. Couldn’t resist that, either.) Enjoy your life together knowing that’s exactly what I wanted to happen. Love — K.
He handed her the card to read as he stared at the tags in his hand.
Kaden the control freak strikes again.
Not that he minded.
It was nice to have these little nudges from the hereafter every once in a while. He wasn’t a religious man himself, so he had no clue where the essence of Kaden now resided, or if it still existed at all.
But having these little gifts meant the world to Seth. He could pretend it meant Kaden was doing exactly that—watching them live their lives and happy for them for moving on.
His friend wasn’t a bullshitter. He knew if Kaden said it, Kaden meant it.
He added one of the tags to the collar Leah now wore and gave it a little jingle with his finger. “You all right?”
She sadly smiled. “Yeah.” She looked up at him. “I didn’t think we’d ever see another one of these. I’m kind of glad we did.” She returned the card to him.
“I know. Me, too.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the lanai. “You want to hear something stupid that I don’t feel quite so stupid for saying now?”
“What?”
She turned to look at him again. “What if we were seeing him?”
“Who, Kaden?”
“Yeah. His ghost or whatever.”
He didn’t respond.
Her eyes narrowed. “You saw him, too, didn’t you? Admit it.”
“I don’t know what I saw. We had a lot of people here tonight. He could have been a one-plus for someone and we missed it. Maybe he was just shy.”
She arched an eyebrow at him. “I saw him standing on the fucking pool deck a few minutes ago. You did, too. That’s why you’re suddenly in urban commando mode. Admit it.”
“I don’t know what I saw,” he repeated. “And I have an excuse for seeing things. Mallory rang my bell good earlier. I could have a concussion for all I know.”
She stood and kissed him. “Well, since we’re both seeing things, let’s head to bed and get some sleep. Maybe tomorrow morning when we wake up you can make me see stars.”
She
cast a sultry smile over her shoulder at him as she headed down the hall toward their bedroom.
Seth paused, the card and envelope in one hand, the tags in the other, and stared at Kaden’s urn.
“Happy Halloween, buddy,” he softly said. “Hope you got a kick out of watching everyone. It would have been your kind of party.”
With the back of his right hand, the one holding the card and envelope, he gently stroked the side of the urn before following Leah down the hall to their bedroom.
THE END
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tymber Dalton lives in the Tampa Bay region of Florida with her husband (aka “The World’s Best Husband™”) and too many pets. Active in the BDSM lifestyle, the two-time EPIC winner is also the bestselling author of over seventy-five books, including The Reluctant Dom, The Denim Dom, Cardinal’s Rule, the Suncoast Society series, the Love Slave for Two series, the Triple Trouble series, the Coffeeshop Coven series, the Good Will Ghost Hunting series, the Drunk Monkeys series, and many more.
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