by Julie Kenner
The first thing he saw was his breath forming little clouds in the air in front of him. He could see them. There was no mistaking it, the bedroom was that cold.
“Hell, here we go again,” she whispered.
He stood very still, vaguely aware that Kiley was gripping his arm now, maybe a little less concerned about hiding her fear. He felt wind hitting him in the face and glanced toward the windows, relieved to realize there might be a very simple explanation for the cold—but the windows were shut tight.
Then where was that icy wind coming from?
“What the…?”
Suddenly, there was rattling, shaking. The lamp on the bedstand trembled, and the light fixture in the ceiling began to swing. The room exploded in sound and motion. Dresser drawers flew open one after the other, one of them so hard it wrenched itself out of the dresser and onto the floor, scattering its contents. The closet door flew open at the same time, as did the bathroom door, towels sailing through it as if hurled at them by unseen hands. The curtains were whipping like vipers.
Then—just as suddenly—the wind died and everything went still. Utterly, perfectly still. The curtains fell limply, the stands and fixtures stopped trembling, the room was silent again.
Jack breathed. Maybe for the first time since turning on the light. No steam emerged from his lips now. It was over, whatever the hell it had been.
And Kiley was still clutching his arm, with both hands this time, and her body was pressed tight to his side. Given that she’d sooner cling to a spraying skunk or a rabid badger—or both—he figured she must be pretty shaken.
“I don’t like you, Jack,” she said. “You know that, right?”
“Right. No more than I like you, Brigham.”
“And I’m not afraid of this thing. I’m not afraid of anything. You know that, too, right?”
He shrugged. “I’ve never seen you scared. I can give you that.” Till now, he thought, but he didn’t say that part aloud, mostly because it would piss her off and he was dying to see where the hell she was going with this.
“Good, just so we’re clear on it. I wouldn’t want you to take it the wrong way when I ask you to spend the night with me.”
He swallowed hard, about to tell her she couldn’t pay him enough to spend the night in this fucked-up house. But before he could speak, she went on.
“You’re used to this, after all,” she said. “You talk to the spirit world all the time, right? So you’ve seen this kind of shit before.”
He probed those big eyes of hers, wondering for one brief moment if she could have possibly engineered this entire event, special effects and all, just to finally trip him up. And all of a sudden, he realized he had to be very, very careful.
“Right,” he said. “Not that you ever really get used to it, but yeah, I’ve seen it before.”
The relief on her face was so intense that he thought she was close to tears.
“I don’t know why the hell that should make me feel any better, especially when I still don’t believe you’re for real.”
“But it does?” he asked.
She pursed her lips. “Will you stay? Spend the night?”
He would rather stick hot needles into his own eyes, he thought. But aloud, he said, “Sure.”
She sighed, lowering her head, eyes, shoulders, all at once. “Good.”
“Hey, I’ll expect suitable compensation for this. Don’t think I’m doing it as a favor or anything.”
“No, not on your life.” She met his eyes again, hers hiding just a hint of a smile this time. “So do you think you can…get rid of it?”
He didn’t even know what the hell it was. He was clueless. He’d never been within a hundred miles of a real ghost, so far as he knew. Didn’t even believe in them—or hadn’t, up until five minutes ago. Now he wasn’t sure what to believe. “If this thing can be…banished, then I’m the guy who can do it.” He was lying through his teeth.
Her shaky smile widened a little. “I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not sleeping in here.”
“Don’t blame you there.”
“Do you want to?”
“Huh?” He thought his eyeballs might have come close to popping out of his head.
She shrugged. “To get a better feel for—for whatever it is we’re dealing with.”
He pursed his lips. “Oh. No, there’s…no need.”
“Then you already know what it is?”
He nodded, deciding to say anything that came to mind, so long as it kept him from having to sleep in this room. He still had goose bumps, even though the chill had fled. “It—uh—seems like a pretty straightforward case of poltergeist activity. It’s not that unusual. Not a big deal.”
“Maybe not to you.”
He shrugged. The genuine-looking gratitude gleaming up at him from her eyes gave him the cojones to move farther into the bedroom, where he bent to pick up a drawer, along with several of the items that had been flung from it. His nonchalance fled, though, when he realized he was holding a pair of thong panties in his hand. Something tightened in his nether regions, and he stuffed them back into the drawer and hoped she hadn’t noticed.
“So is there a guest room or something?” he asked as he replaced the drawer in the dresser and closed all the others.
“Not furnished. We can sleep downstairs. There’s a sofa bed.”
He shot her a questioning look. She ignored it, swallowing something he took to be her pride when she said, “Will you wait here while I grab a nightgown?”
He nodded. “You, um…wanna shower?”
“Not in there.”
He felt sorry when he saw the shudder that worked through her. “Hell, Brigham, why don’t you just come back to my place with me, spend the night there? This is insane.”
She met his eyes and shook her head just once, left then right. “I’m not letting this thing chase me out of my house.” Then she took her gaze off him and looked around the room. “You hear that, spook? This is my goddamn house now. I’ve sunk every penny I have into it, and I couldn’t leave if I wanted to. So you and I are just gonna have to come to terms! Got it?”
Jack half expected the house to reply, even found himself looking around at the empty space, as she had been doing. But the house said nothing.
Sighing, she strode past him to the dresser, yanking open a drawer and plucking a nightie from a stack of silky fabrics without even looking down. “You have got to get rid of it for me, Jack. You do this for me, and I swear, I’ll lay off you forever.”
He shook his head, his gaze stuck on the nightie she held. It was emerald-green, like her eyes. Satiny and smooth. Indecently short, with spaghetti straps and lace in the deep V of the neckline. He was actually curious to see how she was going to look in that thing.
If he were being honest with her, he supposed he might admit that he would actually miss it if she stopped bugging him all the time, trying to get the best of him. But he wasn’t being honest with her. Far from it.
And he was about to begin living the lie of a lifetime.
She hurried out of the bedroom into the hall. He followed, pulling the bedroom door closed behind him, wishing he could lock it, wondering if locks could keep ghosts incarcerated and guessing probably not. He followed her down the hall to the stairs. On the way she opened a closet and tugged out a stack of sheets and blankets. Back downstairs, in the living room, she yanked the cushions off her sofa, and Jack assisted her in pulling it out. Then he stood there watching in some kind of surreal trance while she made up the bed. For two.
“Turn your back.”
“What?”
“I want to get undressed and I’m afraid to leave the room by myself. Pathetic and stupid, I know, but there it is. So turn around.”
He turned around. “And what am I supposed to sleep in?”
“Your shorts?” she asked.
He could hear her peeling off her clothes, the fabric brushing over her skin. It was interesting, trying to guess what she was t
aking off, what remained. He chided himself for having impure thoughts about his worst enemy, but then decided he was sleeping with her, so it was only natural.
She finally said, “Okay,” and he turned again.
Then he saw her in the green nightie, the way it hung from her shoulders, flowing like a satin river over her skin, except for where it tripped over her breasts. He could see them clearly through the fabric, nipples and all. He found himself licking his lips and told himself to knock it the hell off.
“What?” she asked.
He jerked his gaze upward, to her eyes again. “You do realize you’ve left nearly every light in the house on?”
“And you think I want to sleep in the dark after that little exhibition upstairs?”
He shrugged. “You don’t even want to brush your teeth?”
“Planning to kiss me before morning, Jack?”
“Not if you begged me, sweetie.”
“Then why are you worried about it?”
“Because you might roll over and breathe on me.”
She rolled her eyes. “My breath is fine. And I showered this morning. But if you need to, you can use the shower in the downstairs bathroom.”
“I think I will.”
“Good.” She came to him, taking his hand as if he were a child being led to the school bus for the first time. “This way.” She led him through the living room, down a hallway and in through the third door on the left. “Here we go.”
“Great. Thanks.”
He stood there for a minute, waiting. She leaned back against the countertop, also waiting.
“Uh, were you planning to stay for this?” he asked at length.
She licked her lips. “Figured I could brush my teeth while you were washing up.”
She didn’t wait for an answer, just turned to face the sink, opened the medicine cabinet and located a toothbrush that was still in its wrapper. “I always keep extras around. There’s one for you, too.” She took out a second toothbrush and laid it on the counter. Then she glanced over her shoulder with a frown. “Well, go on, take your shower. I’m not going to look at you.”
“You’re looking at me now.”
“That’s because you weren’t moving.” She turned to face the sink again, cranked on the water.
Sighing in resignation, Jack turned on the taps, adjusted the temperature and began stripping off his clothes.
CHAPTER SIX
SHE KEPT HER EYES LOWERED, everything in her focused on brushing her teeth, as he peeled off his clothes. The mirror was dead ahead. She could catch a glimpse of him if she wanted to, but she didn’t want to. Hell, she couldn’t think of anything she wanted less. Besides, by the time the thought had time to pass through her mind, he was under the spray. She heard him yank the curtain shut, heard the way the flow of water changed when he stepped underneath it.
From the shower he called, “I can’t believe you’re too scared to even go into the bathroom by yourself.”
She frowned, her eyes rising to the mirror, where she could see very little—just his shadow on the shower curtain. “I am not scared.”
“No?”
“No. I just want to make sure you’re close by in case anything weird happens again.”
“So I can protect you from the bogeyman?”
“So you can witness it. You’re my ghost buster, after all.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So I figure you need access to this thing—so you can figure out how best to deal with it. So you’ll know which rattles to shake and which weeds to burn, that kind of shit.”
“Helpful of you.”
“I do what I can.” She rinsed her mouth, spit, gargled, spit again. “Don’t let it fool you, though. I’m no more convinced than I’ve ever been that you’re for real.”
“Then why ask for my help?”
She thought on that for a long moment, then sighed. “You’re the best shot I have. There’s not really anyone else.”
“So it’s one of those ‘last man on earth’ situations?”
“More like one of those ‘any port in a storm’ situations.”
“I see.”
She sighed. “So, have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Figured out which rattles to shake and which weeds to burn?”
He was quiet for a moment. “I have some ideas.”
“Good. How much longer are you going to be?”
“Two minutes, why?”
She glanced at the toilet, decided not to risk it, reached for a clean washcloth and turned on the taps.
“Hey!”
She looked up fast at the exclamation, realized her blasting hot water into the basin must have given him a shot of cold. “Sorry.” She shut the water off. Then she smeared some of her facial cleanser on, dipped the cloth into the basin and washed her face. She was applying moisturizing night cream when she glimpsed his long, tanned arm snaking out of the shower, groping for a towel. She handed him one.
“Thanks.”
“You’re wel—” Before she could finish, he yanked back the curtain and stepped out of the shower. And then she was stuck there. She couldn’t force her errant gaze to move from his body. Good God, it was incredible. Who would have thought such a jerk would have a body like that? Muscular shoulders, smooth and hard. Sculpted chest, and abs—oh, hell, his abs belonged in Playgirl. She could wash laundry on those abs.
“I’m wel…?” he asked.
“Built,” she said.
“Compliments, from you?”
“More like an expression of surprise.”
“Shock and awe?”
“Shock, yeah. Not so much of the awe.”
He shrugged. “And what would it take to up your awe factor? Just out of curiosity, mind you.”
She shrugged right back. “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe if you lost the towel?”
He gaped. She grinned, and then he relaxed. “Funny,” he said. He reached for his clothes, which he’d draped over the towel bar. The briefs he tugged free were small, dark blue and clingy. She finally worked up the willpower to stop gawking at him and turned around again. But she was all too aware that he was dropping the towel and pulling those briefs on, and some little devil inside was trying to talk her into peeking.
She resisted. Barely.
“You want to stay while I drain the snake?”
“Drain the…? Oh. That’s the tackiest thing I’ve ever heard.”
He shrugged and moved toward the toilet.
She darted out of the bathroom at the speed of light. But she didn’t go far. After closing the door behind her, she remained right there, just outside it. Hell, it pissed her off to no end that she was afraid to be alone in her own house. But damn.
She heard the flush, the water running in the sink. Then he finally stepped out of the bathroom. He didn’t close the door, just held it open. And stood there looking at her.
“What?”
“Oh, come on. You know you have to. Go on, I’ll wait right out here.”
She thinned her lips, thought about snapping at him. But hell, he was right. She did have to go, and as a matter of fact it was borderline decent of him to offer to stay close by while she did.
“I don’t need you to wait out here for me,” she said as she went into the bathroom.
“No, I know you don’t. But I’ll wait here, anyway.”
If she didn’t dislike him so much, she’d have been grateful. As it was, she could only wonder if he was storing up all these weaknesses he was discovering in her for future use in the unending battle between them.
When she came out again, she noticed him looking at her body, and decided she wasn’t the only one with weaknesses. He looked often, every time he thought she might not notice. Could her nemesis be attracted to her? Damn, she would never let him hear the end of it if he admitted that one!
She led the way back to the living room, flung back the covers and crawled into bed. She really hadn’t been worried about spending the
night with Jack. Now, though…
“You aren’t going to put on a shirt?” she asked.
“Wasn’t wearing a T-shirt,” he said. “Can’t very well sleep in my button-down.”
“I don’t know why not. I could.”
His eyes changed just a little, lowering slowly. And she got the distinct impression he was picturing her sleeping in his button-down shirt, and liking the image.
“This isn’t going to be a problem, is it, Jack?” she asked, sliding to one side to make room for him.
He got into the bed beside her, pulled the covers over them both and lay back on the pillows with his hands folded behind his head. “What isn’t?”
The attraction, she thought. The fact that his body turned her on like nobody’s business and the feeling she got that he was having the same reaction to hers. But she wasn’t going to be the one to admit it! “Nothing,” she said. “Never mind.”
He nodded. “’Night, Brigham.”
“’Night, Jack.”
She closed her eyes, knowing good and damned well she would never sleep.
He did not seem to have the same problem. In fact, he was snoring softly within ten minutes. And five minutes after that, he rolled over, and before she knew what to expect, he had wrapped her up tight against him, imprisoning her there with one arm and one leg. Her face was pressed to his utterly unclothed chest, one arm caught between his belly and hers, and her pelvis was mashed to his groin.
“Oh, great,” she whispered.
“Mmm,” he replied. And then one of his big hands burrowed into her hair, stroking just a little before settling down.
Something in her stomach turned a somersault. She tried to tug her arm from where it was trapped between them, but in the process her hand brushed over his abs, and she stopped what she was doing as her heart skipped a beat. Lifting her head away from his chest, just a little, she peered up at his face. His eyes were closed, his breaths deep and steady. Sound asleep. So…
She let her palm rest lightly on his abdomen, and when he didn’t stir or react, she moved it just a little, up and down over the rippling muscles there. God, he must work out like a man driven to have a belly like this. She’d never touched anything so perfect. So arousing. Too bad it was attached to a man she didn’t like.