by Sarah Wynde
“Bad news?”
“You could say that,” he agreed, not looking up from his phone as he one-handedly typed a response.
Akira pulled her tank top over her head and looked around for her sweater. Where had she left it? Ah, right, across the room, draped over the Asteroids cabinet. She grabbed it, but didn’t slip it on, clutching it in her hand as she returned to the couch. “Well, I’ll just leave you to it, I guess.”
“No, no, no,” Zane said, springing to his feet, and stepping closer to her.
“No?” Akira asked the question lightly, smiling, trying not to let the trickle of relief she felt at his words show on her face. Navigating the territory between flirtation, casual sex, friends with benefits, or something more was so damn hard. It wasn’t that she had any expectations: she’d acted on an impulse, and if it was only a fun evening, well, it had still been fun. But it was nice that he didn’t want her to leave. Maybe more than nice.
“No,” he repeated firmly. He hadn’t put on any clothes yet, but he didn’t seem at all self-conscious about his nudity as he took her hand and tugged her closer, lifting her hand to his mouth and pressing his lips against her knuckles, before dropping it and sliding his hand around the nape of her neck. She swayed into him, feeling the liquid warmth starting again, the tingle of attraction running through her veins. Leaning down so that his lips were only a few inches away from hers, he added huskily, “A good teacher should never leave her pupils confused.”
“Confused?” Akira breathed the question, eyes on his mouth.
“I’m a very bad physics student,” he confessed. “You completely lost me at amplitudes.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, reaching up to take his lips. She let the kiss last, long, and slow, and deep, before pulling back and saying breathlessly, “I think you have a natural talent.”
“Um, Akira?”
Akira’s eyes widened and she stepped back from Zane. “Dillon? What are you doing here?”
“Not looking,” Dillon responded, voice dry, as Zane’s eyebrows shot up. Akira nodded at Zane, confirming that yes, his 15-year-old ghostly nephew was in the room.
She was grateful to be wearing her clothes—and that Dillon hadn’t shown up ten minutes earlier—as Zane, without rushing, grabbed his jeans and underwear and started dressing. “Nice timing, Dill,” he drawled. “I didn’t know you could reach my office.”
“It took some effort,” Dillon said. “And it’s not comfortable. I feel like I’m being stretched like saltwater taffy. But it’s late.”
“What’s he saying?” Zane asked, pulling on his t-shirt.
Akira shook her head, not wanting to get into explanations. “We played pool for a while, and it’s getting late. I should go.”
“Take Dillon home,” Zane suggested. “I’ll pick you up there and we can go out to dinner. In my car. And then we’ll figure out where we can pick up our physics lesson without interruption. I moved back in with my dad and Grace after my mom died, so how do you feel about—yeah, I thought not,” he finished, seeing her shaking her head before he’d made it through the question. No way was she sleeping with him in the same house as the CEO and Chairman of the Board of the company she worked for. Maybe they were his relatives, but they signed her paycheck. “Your house?”
Akira thought for a moment. She still had a pleasant little rush of desire running through her. And she wanted to spend more time with Zane. Plus, if she started letting her ghostly companions limit her activities, where would she stop? She nodded. “I’ll have a little conversation with my, um, roommates, about boundaries and privacy first.”
“Hey, I can’t exactly knock, you know,” Dillon answered as Zane grinned at her. “I got worried. I’m still worried,” he added pointedly.
Akira gave him an exasperated look. They’d had this conversation over lunch. Dillon thought his uncle was going to break her heart. And even though he hadn’t said so, he was undoubtedly worried about the consequences for him if Zane did. But Akira wasn’t afraid. Her heart was tough, and her walls were thick. After a lifetime of keeping secrets and a few failed relationships, she knew better than to count on other people. Even other people who bought pool tables so that she’d play with them. “I’m fine,” she told him.
“I’ve been watching a lot of television,” Dillon told her. “These things don’t end well.”
“What’re you and Rose watching?” Akira asked. “Soap operas?”
“It’s some show about housewives. People keep on dying. And relationships all end badly.”
Akira smiled at him. She and Zane were just going to have a little fun: there would be nothing desperate about it.
***
“Hey, do you want to come to North Carolina with me?”
He was a morning person. She could hear it in his voice, all cheerful and wide-awake despite how little sleep they’d had. Damn. Morning people, blah. She opened a reluctant eye, and peered at the clock. 7:47.
“Why are you awake?” she muttered, finishing with a yawn that she buried in her pillow.
“Because it’s morning?” he offered in response, before tugging lightly on a lock of her dark hair. “Come on, come to North Carolina with me.”
She rolled over, onto her back, and stretched, arms above her head, back arching, and then wiggled down in the bed, a little deeper under the light sheet that covered her. Hmm. Even half-awake, she could see his reaction to her movement in the way his eyes darkened, the lids half dropping. “Or you could come back to bed,” she suggested, voice husky with sleep.
“The body is so, so willing,” he said, sliding his hand across her stomach and leaning down to kiss her. “But the brain is stuck with responsibility,” he added as he sat back up, mouth twisting.
“In North Carolina?” Akira asked, reluctantly sitting up, sheet clutched high.
“Yeah, Lucas . . .” Zane shook his head, apparently not wanting to get into details, but looking grim. “He took a job for me.”
“A job?” Akira was surprised. Zane might play a lot of foosball at work, but she’d gathered that he was the one who coordinated assignments for the people whose work involved . . . quirks. Didn’t he usually give Lucas jobs? “Isn’t that backwards?”
Zane sighed. “Yeah, but the only reason Lucas works for me instead of the other way around is that he doesn’t do so well staying home. He’s not an office type.”
Akira bit back her smile, but Zane obviously saw it, because he grinned at her and trailed a finger down her cheek, before saying, “He doesn’t know what he’s missing.”
“I was just thinking that your office isn’t very—um, formal,” she defended herself. She hadn’t been thinking about what they’d done in his office, just that Zane didn’t seem to draw the lines between work and play that most people did.
“Yeah, well, Lucas likes the road. But a lot of the work we do comes from his connections. Whoever asked him to do this job probably knew I’d say no. Someone’s calling in a favor.” Zane stood with a sigh. He was already showered and half-dressed, Akira realized.
That sounded so dubious, she thought. Favors? Were they the Mafia? “You don’t know who you’re working for?” she asked. She was feeling an unwieldy mix of doubt and curiosity, a combination of uncertainty about who Zane was and what he did and a desire to know more.
“That sounds a lot more exciting than it really is.” Zane was looking around for his t-shirt. “It’ll be someone in the FBI.”
“The FBI?” That was better than the mob, but not necessarily less exciting.
“Yeah.” Zane pulled on his shirt. “So, you want to come?”
“Is anyone going to be shooting at you?” Akira asked, not sure what she’d do if the answer was yes. Briefly, she remembered what Grace had said the day before about today being a rough day.
“I wish,” Zane answered, almost as if to himself. “It’d be more fun.”
Her eyebrows arched up. Had Grace been understating? What was wrong with this job Zane was doing? What
exactly was he going to do? She didn’t say anything but he looked back at her, and must have seen the questions as he tried to smile. “No, it’s just a straightforward job. I’m going to fly up there in the company plane, meet Lucas at the airport, hold someone’s hand for five minutes, tell her I can’t find what she’s looking for, and then fly home. No big deal, really.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed again. She was sitting, the sheet tucked around her body, one hand under her chin, and he brushed her hair back, off her shoulder. “So, no go?”
“Are you kidding?” Akira smiled at him. She didn’t understand what was going on. She was definitely missing something. But she wanted to find out what it was, and there was an easy way to do so. “A chance to spend the day above the clouds in a little tin can that bounces around like a carnival ride?” She leaned forward and brushed a kiss across his lips. “Do I have time to shower?”
***
The pilot was a surprise. He was the tow-truck driver from Akira’s car accident of several weeks earlier.
“You fly planes and drive tow-trucks?” Akira glanced at Zane uncertainly but he was busy filling out paperwork at the tiny airport’s front desk.
Dave grinned at her. “Drive one buggy, you can drive ‘em all,” he assured her.
That was why he’d seemed familiar before, she realized: he was the pilot who had flown her to Tassamara on her very first visit. He’d been wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, and she’d been so nervous at first that she hadn’t remembered his face.
“Dave used to fly the space shuttle,” Zane drawled from behind her. “A little plane like this is nothing to him.”
Was Zane teasing? Akira looked at Dave and he shrugged. “Not a lot of jobs with NASA anymore.”
Akira wasn’t sure whether it was reassuring or not to know that the pilot had flown in space, but she didn’t say a word when he handed control over to Zane and let him bring them most of the way to North Carolina. She could see Zane’s hands on the controls from her forward-facing seat behind the pilot, and between the soothing sound of the engines, the lack of sleep, and the smooth flight in clear blue skies, she spent most of the trip in a pleasant half-daydream, half-doze, thinking about the way those hands had touched her, and how they felt on her skin.
At the airport, however, there was no Lucas, just a car with a driver.
“Oh, hell,” muttered Zane. “I’m going to kill Lucas.” He strode across the tarmac toward the car as Akira and Dave followed him out of the plane.
“So,” Dave said to Akira, voice casual, as they watched Zane’s back receding. “Ghosts, huh?”
Akira glanced at him and frowned. It had been weeks since their first encounter: why were ghosts still on his mind?
“You should go with him.” Dave wasn’t looking at her and his tone was unrevealing.
“Why’s that?” Akira asked warily.
“I need to stay with the plane, and he could use the company.”
Akira’s frown deepened. Did that have something to do with ghosts?
The pilot looked at her and smiled, a twist of his lips that didn’t reach his eyes. “You might be able to help him.”
“How so?” Akira asked.
“Grace let me know when she called to schedule the flight that it was a lost kid case. If the kid was alive, Zane would know where he is already.”
Oh, hell. Had Zane brought her here thinking she’d talk to a ghost for him? The stab of pain was almost physical; the betrayal a bitter taste in her mouth. And then she looked at Zane, leaning down and talking to the driver of the car, and bit her lip.
She’d go with him. She’d see what this was. And if he had been manipulating her—well, she’d deal with that when she was sure it was true.
***
The drive was quiet.
Akira was silent, gazing out the window without noticing the scenery, trying to remember every shade, every nuance, of the conversations that had brought her here. Zane hadn’t mentioned ghosts. Or lost children, for that matter. But he hadn’t tried to persuade her to come, either. No promises of fun and excitement, no words that turned on the charm.
But had he lied to her? Had he known that Lucas wouldn’t meet them? She didn’t think so, but she wasn’t sure.
She sighed.
Zane was texting, but he put his hand over hers, where it lay in her lap, for a quick squeeze, before bringing it back to his smart phone. “I’m sorry about this,” he said, not really turning his attention to her. “Lucas is saying that circumstances have changed, but he’s not giving me a lot of information. I’m still not sure what’s happened.”
Akira glanced at his phone. Surely it would be faster for him to just call and talk to Lucas? Was he texting so that she wouldn’t overhear what he said? She glanced at his face, his profile turned to her, trying to reconcile her paranoid thoughts with the man she thought she’d come to know.
She couldn’t.
She liked him, she really did, and seeing him as a liar and a manipulator just didn’t fit. Dillon’s warnings about his uncle had been about girlfriends, casual relationships, a lack of commitment coupled with a playful attitude toward life, not lies. She was ready to be stood up when a baseball game called, not to be deceived about ulterior motives. Zane just didn’t seem like an ulterior motive kind of guy.
His phone buzzed. “Oh, hell,” he muttered as he read his message. He glanced at her quickly, almost as if to check whether she was reading over his shoulder, and then grimaced when he saw that she was watching him. “You’re not going to like this.”
She raised her eyebrows in the question, but didn’t say anything. She could feel her shoulders tensing. Was he going to ask her about ghosts?
He looked worried, eyes tightening. “This was a custody case: the dad took his kid and disappeared. Happens all the time, and mostly the kids wind up home within a few days. But this dad is gone, gone. No one’s seen him, his car, anything. He hasn’t used any of his credit cards or taken money out of any banks. Best-case scenario would be that he spent a long time planning this.”
“And worst-case?” Akira asked the question even though she already knew the answer.
“That’s what the feds think it is, now.” Zane sighed.
“You brought me to the scene of a murder-suicide?” Akira couldn’t keep the accusation—and maybe the hurt—out of her voice. He had to know what that meant. They hadn’t talked much about the ghosts. Oh, sure, he’d asked her a few questions over the past several weeks, but mostly about Dillon. He seemed to respect her wish to not talk about what she could see. But even though Akira knew that a lot of the common stories about ghosts were wrong, Zane had to suspect that a murder-suicide was likely to leave ghost energy behind.
Zane’s eyes widened. “No,” he protested. “Definitely not! We’re going to the mom’s house, and there’s no way anyone died there.”
Damn. Maybe they should have had a few more conversations about ghosts. Ghosts weren’t always tied to the place they died. Some were, but not all of them.
“No,” Zane continued. “The problem is—the thing is—see, what’s happened is—”
The car had slowed dramatically and Akira, looking over Zane’s shoulder, could see the reason why. “The media found out?” she offered Zane. “And let me guess—the kid is cute?”
Following her glance, he saw what she was looking at. Cars. Lots of cars. And vans. The ones with satellite dishes on their roofs. Flashing lights from police cars, people milling around, reporters directing cameras, a crowd of neighbors, and behind it all, a driveway leading up to a posh, Palladian suburban house with a lopsided “For Sale” sign planted in the lush grass of the front yard.
“I’m so sorry,” Zane apologized. “If Lucas had told me, I wouldn’t have asked you to come.”
“I’ll wait in the car,” Akira said, looking past the crowd to the house. It was definitely haunted. She could see the shimmers of energy, almost like a color change in the air near the door of th
e house. It wasn’t just a ghost, it was a fresh ghost with a lot of power. Maybe a desperate ghost. That made it dangerous for her.
“I’m sorry, ma’am.” The driver, in the front seat, had been listening to the conversation. “I’m only supposed to drop you off. The other Mr. Latimer will be driving you back to the airport. I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Can you take her back to the airport first?” Zane interjected.
“No can-do, sorry.” The driver’s words were firm.
Zane looked at Akira. “Do you want to wait outside? I can find Lucas, and make him arrange for another car.”
Akira looked at the crowds of newspeople, already eagerly motioning toward their car. “Oh, that’s just a thrilling idea,” she said bitterly.
“I’m sorry,” Zane repeated, but a little less apologetically than he had the first time. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have brought you. But I didn’t. This should only take a few minutes.”
A few minutes. Depending on how perceptive the ghost was, that could be bad. But Akira looked at Zane’s face, his expression anxious but firm, and knew that he hadn’t lied to her. He didn’t understand the risks, but he hadn’t lied.
“I’ll come inside,” she said. They’d have a long talk after this. She’d tell him some of what she knew about ghosts. After that, if past experience held true, she probably wouldn’t be sleeping with him again.
Damn.
Today was turning into a day when she should have stayed in bed.
CHAPTER TEN
Lucas was an older, tougher, more heavily muscled, more serious version of Zane. They were clearly brothers, but on Lucas, the charm held an edge of danger.
Akira managed not to glare at him, simply smiling tightly as they were introduced. Inwardly, though, she was thinking, Asshole. Damn him for putting her in this situation.
But her eyes narrowed as she saw him rubbing his temple with a wince of pain, as he responded wryly, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, too.” Huh. Did Lucas, like the others in his family, have a psychic gift? But she dismissed the thought as he ushered them through the foyer, past the formal living room, and down a hallway to a more casual but still luxurious family room.