Doc began singing a Village People song and I knew he was trying to coax me out of the distressed state I was in, but my mind was going in circles and I couldn’t pay attention to him at the moment. Instead I turned my chair around, propped my feet up on the windowsill, and went back to laying my arm over my eyes. After working four straight months in the middle of the night, I find that I think better in the dark.
“M. J.? Are you all right?” a voice asked several minutes later.
With Doc’s singing and my whirling mind I hadn’t heard the front door open. What’s more, as I stiffened and sat up in the chair, I realized I recognized that voice. The day suddenly went from disconcerting to crazy weird. Turning slowly to the front, I took in the tall, dark, and incredibly handsome man standing in my doorway and had to work hard to appear calm and nonchalant. “Hello, Steven,” I said. “What brings you by?”
My ex-boyfriend smiled in that way that’d always made my heart quicken. . . okay. . . still made my heart quicken. Also, the bastard had the gall to smell really good too. “How’ve you been?” he asked, his voice deep and rich, like a great cup of coffee.
I felt my head bobbing. “Good. . . good. You?”
“Good.”
“Good.”
There was a bit of an awkward pause and then the door opened again and in walked my current boyfriend, Heath—who also happens to be rather tall, dark, and seriously hunky.
Things went from awkward and weird to, Are you kidding me, Universe?
Heath said nothing; he simply came in wearing a smile, took one look at Steven, darted his eyes to me, back to Steven, then back to me as if to say, “Seriously?”
I pretended not to notice. Oh, and I also held in the urge to run out of there as fast as my feet could carry me. “Steven, you remember Heath. Heath—Steven. Steven—Heath.”
The two surveyed each other with narrowed eyes and forced smiles. I had a moment to compare the two of them side by side and it occurred to me that as similar as they are in the basics of black hair, dark eyes, and tall stature, they’re still strikingly different. Steven’s shoulders are broad and his chest is very defined, while his legs are very long. His face is also distinctly European in structure with a wide brow and square features, while Heath’s face is very angled with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. His frame is also more proportional and corded with lean muscle. In other words, neither was the kind of guy you’d kick out of bed for eating crackers. . . at least not until after you’d had your way with him.
While the men stared each other down, I cleared my throat and shuffled a few things around on my desk, and that’s when Heath must’ve noticed the charm bracelet I’d set back in the box. “What’s that?” he demanded, pointing to the box on my desk. “You giving her presents now, Sable?”
Steven’s brow furrowed. “Pardon?”
Hastily I put the top of the box back on to cover the gift. “It’s from my father, Heath,” I explained quickly.
“For your birthday,” Steven said with a knowing nod. “That was nice of him.”
I noticed Heath paled a little. “Today’s your birthday?” he blurted out; then his face flushed red. “I mean, yeah, totally. Happy birthday, honey! I came to take you to a birthday breakfast!” Glancing back at Steven, he said, “My gift’s in the car.”
Steven smiled (a bit evilly, I thought). “Her birthday is next week, Whitefeather. The eleventh. Might want to mark that down on your calendar.”
“What brings you by, Steven?” I nearly screeched, desperate to change the topic before this came to blows, and judging by the furious expression on Heath’s face, we weren’t far from that.
Steven and Heath glared at each other for a few more seconds before my ex turned back to me and said, “I need your help.”
“My help? With what?”
“A haunting.”
That took me by surprise. . . much like the entire morning. I waved at a chair and he came forward and took the seat directly across from me. Heath grabbed the other chair and brought it around the desk to park it right next to mine. I held in a sigh and sat down, hoping there’d be no suggestion from either of them of lowered zippers and measuring tape before the conversation was at an end. “Where?” I asked, pulling a pad forward to write on.
“It’s not a where,” Steven said, and for the first time I could see that his eyes were lined with worry. “It’s a who.”
I blinked. “Who what?” (I may have been a little off my game from all the testosterone fumes.)
Steven shifted in his seat, and I suddenly noticed how nervous he was. Coming to me hadn’t been something he’d done on a whim. He’d had to talk himself into it. “It’s not a place that’s haunted. It’s a person. My fiancée’s brother. We think he’s possessed.”
“Your fiancée?” I gasped at the same time that Heath said, “He’s possessed?”
Heath turned narrowed eyes on me while the corners of Steven’s mouth quirked, and that rather big ego that’d been a part of the reason I’d left him came shining to life again. “Yes. To both of you,” he said. (But I thought he looked a bit smugly at me.)
“Well. . . er. . . ,” I sputtered, doodling large circles on the notepad while I tried to collect myself. (He was getting married? We’d only been broken up for a few months! What the hell?) “Congratulations!” I said. Perhaps a bit too enthusiastically.
“Why do you think this guy’s possessed?” Heath asked.
Steven sighed and rubbed the stubble on his chin. “You have to see it to believe it,” he said. “But I’m telling you, there is a ghost haunting this young man. My fiancée, Courtney, can tell you about it better than me. I’d like to introduce you if you’re interested in taking on the case.”
“Possession isn’t exactly our area of expertise,” I said. No way was I getting involved in this. (Okay, so really, no way was I meeting his fiancée!)
“It wouldn’t hurt to meet her and talk about it,” Heath said, never once turning his face away from Steven. “Is Courtney nearby?”
I felt my posture stiffen. Again the corners of Steven’s mouth quirked. “She’s at work at the hospital.”
Now my smile was forced. “Oh? Is she a candy striper or something?” (Please, oh, please let her job be unimpressive!)
“Surgeon,” Steven said.
(Dammit!)
“General surgeon?” I asked. Before a devastating injury to his hand, Steven had once been one of the best heart surgeons in the world. Maybe he’d met another heart surgeon he was attracted to but secretly competitive with. Maybe their competitive nature would eventually escalate to the point that they’d hate each other. . . .
“Neurosurgeon,” he said.
(Double dammit!)
“Ah,” Heath said smugly. “A brain surgeon. That’s cool.”
I was sincerely regretting not having dashed out of the room ten minutes earlier. “Well, I’m sure she’s lovely,” I said. No one in the room believed me. “And while I’d really like to meet her, we’re just coming off a crazy intense shooting schedule and I’m not sure we’ll have time on this hiatus to take on any new cases.”
Steven cocked his head. “That’s not what your Facebook page says. Forgive me for keeping tabs on you,” he said with a sheepish grin, “but I needed your help and looked online to see where in the world you were. I was surprised to find you back here in Boston, and your status this morning said that you couldn’t wait to get back to work on some regular cases.”
(A dammit three-peat!)
“We can at least meet her, Em,” Heath said agreeably. I wanted to choke him. “How about dinner tonight?”
“That’d be great,” Steven said, already standing up. “Say around seven?”
“Seven thirty would be better,” Heath said, just to be
a pain in the butt, I thought.
Steven smiled tightly. “Of course. Courtney will be coming off a twenty-four-hour shift, but if it’s better for you. . .”
Heath wavered and I was still looking for a way out of this. “We can probably make seven,” he said.
“Good,” Steven said, and with that, he turned and headed to the door. Before exiting, he paused and turned back to look at me. “We can meet at the place I took you to on our first date. Do you remember?”
I felt my posture stiffen again. At this rate I’d need the Jaws of Life to ever get myself to relax again. “I do.”
“Excellent,” Steven said. “See you.” And with that, he was gone.
ALSO BY VICTORIA LAURIE
The Ghost Hunter Mystery Series
What’s a Ghoul to Do?
Demons Are a Ghoul’s Best Friend
Ghouls Just Haunt to Have Fun
Ghouls Gone Wild
Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls
Ghoul Interrupted
The Psychic Eye Mystery Series
Abby Cooper, Psychic Eye
Better Read Than Dead
A Vision of Murder
Killer Insight
Crime Seen
Death Perception
Doom with a View
A Glimpse of Evil
Vision Impossible
Lethal Outlook
What a Ghoul Wants Page 34
