The Last Kiss Goodbye: A Charlotte Stone Novel

by Karen Robards

  “Yes,” Charlie said instantly. Running was what she did for relaxation, and tonight she badly needed to relax.

  “You notice he’s not inviting us,” Buzz said to Kaminsky, only partly under his breath, as they passed Charlie.

  “I noticed,” Kaminsky agreed. They were moving on to their respective doors, while Tony had walked Charlie to hers and stopped.

  “I heard that,” Tony called after them good-naturedly. “And it’s because you don’t run. But you’re welcome to come along if you want.”

  Declining, they both disappeared inside their rooms.

  “I’ll be back in ten,” Tony told Charlie, who nodded. Then he waited until she was inside and had closed the door.

  Flipping the switch beside the door caused a lamp to come on, which allowed Charlie to see her surroundings. Decorated in soothing earth tones, the room was typical hotel: two queen beds with a nightstand holding said lamp between them, an armoire containing a TV and, on its lower level, a mini-fridge, an armchair with a floor lamp in the corner by the heavily curtained window, a bathroom, and, opposite it, a closet. Having preceded her inside, Michael now stood in the middle of the room, giving her an unreadable look.

  “What?” Charlie said.

  “Not a thing,” he answered. She didn’t probe further. Instead she extracted her running clothes and her small cosmetics case from her suitcase and went into the bathroom to change. When she emerged a few minutes later, she was wearing silky black running shorts, a pale pink tee, and sneakers. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail.

  “Cute,” was Michael’s comment as his eyes swept her. “Dudley’s going to think he hit the jackpot.”

  Charlie glared at him. She was carrying his watch—she didn’t feel like having it slide around on her arm while she ran.

  “Is there something you want to say about me going running with Tony?”

  “Nope.”

  Walking over to the nightstand between the beds, she set the watch down by the phone. His eyes tracked her.

  She gave him another inimical look. “Good. Then I’d appreciate it if you’d just let me enjoy my run in peace.”

  “Whatever you want, babe.”

  Then Tony was at the door and the three (!) of them were heading for the roof.

  The track ran along the perimeter of it, which was thirty stories high and provided an excellent view of the glowing skyline of downtown Charlotte. In the middle was a swimming pool, lounge chairs, and a few fake palm trees all decked out in white Christmas lights. There were a couple of people in the pool. Otherwise, the roof was deserted. Almost as soon as Charlie started to run, she felt the tiredness and tension and, yes, even the fear, start to ebb away. The warm summer breeze smelled faintly of chlorine. The black sky and full moon and twinkling stars overhead seemed almost close enough to touch. Street sounds drifted up from below. There was an occasional laugh or splash from the swimmers in the pool.

  “I hate it that you’re caught up in this, of course, but I have to admit I was glad to get the chance to work with you again,” Tony said as they rounded the far side turn for the eighteenth time. They’d been talking about the case in a desultory way without coming up with anything new. A seasoned runner herself, Charlie appreciated the fact that they were at the four and a half mile point and he wasn’t even breathing hard yet. She also appreciated how good his lean, fit body looked in his shorts and tee. It made a nice change from his FBI agent suits, and she thought for what must have been the thousandth time that she was a fool if she didn’t at least give this budding attraction between them a chance.

  Of course, the fact that she was afflicted with the ghost from hell was quite a deterrent. Especially given the fact that he was within easy earshot, keeping pace without the slightest difficulty. Not that she would describe what he was doing as running, exactly. She wasn’t even sure his feet were touching the ground. But he was indisputably there, glancing at her from time to time with mockery in his eyes.

  “I’m glad to have the chance to work with you again, too,” Charlie replied. It was absolutely true. The seeds of a promising relationship were there, she thought: they simply needed nurturing.

  Hard to do when she had a ghost on a leash.

  This is my life, and I owe it to myself to make an effort.

  “Oh, yeah? I got the impression, last night, that you were kind of in a hurry to get rid of me.”

  And that would have been because of a blaring TV and a blast of hope that said ghost had managed to stay earthbound rather than move on to his just rewards.

  “It’s only—I believe in taking things slow.” That wasn’t really a lie. At least, it had been part of the reason she’d sent Tony swiftly on his way. Okay, a really tiny part.

  “You’re not seeing anybody right now?” he persisted.

  Charlie ignored the slash of a pair of sky blue eyes in her direction. “No, I’m not.”

  She’d definitely said it a little too firmly. Tony didn’t seem to notice, though. In fact, he smiled. “Me either. So maybe we could take it slow together.”

  A sky blue eye roll. Which Charlie pretended she didn’t even see.

  “Maybe,” she replied, and Tony laughed.

  “You sound like you might be a little bit gun-shy.”

  “Just a little,” Charlie agreed.

  “Some bad relationships, huh?”

  Charlie nodded. “A few.”

  He chuckled ruefully. “I hear you. I’ve had my fair share of those, too.”

  They reached the five mile mark and pulled up. They were both breathing hard by this time, and Charlie at least was feeling one hundred percent better as they headed toward the elevators.

  “How about we start with dinner again, the first chance we get?” Tony was smiling at her as the elevator doors opened and they stepped inside. Returning his smile, Charlie registered how handsome he was. With his dark, even-featured face and hard, athletic body, he would make any right-minded woman drool. Plus, he’s sweet and smart and I like him a lot, she thought.

  By turning her back on the six-foot-three-inch, sardonic-looking ghost who leaned, arms crossed, against the back wall of the elevator, Charlie was able to concentrate on the real, live man with whom she would truly like to begin a real, live relationship.

  “I’d like that,” she said. Tony’s eyes moved over her face. Then, to her surprise, he slid a hand around the back of her neck, pulled her closer, bent his head, and kissed her.

  There was nothing about the kiss that fell under the heading “taking it slow.” Instead, there was tons of tongue action, tons of heat. Getting into the spirit of it, Charlie kissed him back, and thoroughly enjoyed the pleasant little tingle of excitement that chased around inside her.

  The ping of the elevator announced that they had reached their floor, and Tony reluctantly let her go.

  Charlie smiled at him. And to hell with her glowering ghost, who had straightened to his should-have-been-intimidating full height and had squared his impressively broad shoulders and was looking at Tony with violence in his eyes.

  She didn’t flick so much as a glance in his direction. The crux of it was, she had her life to live. And she refused to let him throw her off. He was an affliction with which she had been saddled. What she had with Tony—what she might be able to have, if she let herself, and put some effort into it—was real.

  The borrowed FBI agent/security guard glanced at her and Tony as they emerged from the elevator. Tony lifted a hand in greeting as they passed him, then waited a beat before whispering to Charlie,”I don’t suppose you’d want to stop by my room for a candy bar from the mini-fridge?”

  Despite the semi-hopeful tone, it was so obviously said with no expectation of having her take him up on it that Charlie smiled.

  “No,” she said.

  “Got it. We’re taking it slow.”

  They had reached her room by that time. Tony waited while she unlocked the door and walked inside.

  “See ya,” he said,
smiling at her, the memory of that kiss there in his eyes.

  It had been a very nice kiss. One she wouldn’t mind repeating.

  She smiled back at him.

  “Good-night,” she said, and he nodded and turned away. Then she closed the door—right in the face of her pissed-looking ghost.

  Of course, she should have remembered that unless he wanted it to, closing a door on Michael did absolutely no good at all.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  He walked right through it.

  The look he gave her when he did should have made her shiver. It should have made her quake in her sneakers. He was in full badass mode, all hard-eyed and hard-jawed and radiating barely suppressed hostility. Add an orange jumpsuit and some chains, and he would have been every bit as scary as the death row convict she’d first met.

  Only he was Michael to her now, and whatever he had or had not done in the past, and however menacing he might look in the present, he and she were way past the point where he could actually scare her. Tam’s warning about having the wool pulled over her eyes notwithstanding, she was now as sure as it was possible to be that the threat Tam had been warning her against didn’t emanate from Michael.

  In fact, Charlie realized, she was absolutely convinced that he would never hurt her, even if he could. At least, not physically.

  In other ways? Well, that was a different matter.

  He stopped just inside the door. With the next item on her agenda being a shower, she had moved no farther than the bathroom doorway. As he came through she turned to face him, so that they now stood way too close to each other in the narrow space that marked the entrance to the room.

  She didn’t like being reminded of how tall he was, of how much bigger he was than she. She didn’t like having to look so far up to meet his gaze.

  Her first impulse was to take a couple of steps back, so she wouldn’t have to tilt her head so far. Then she thought, To hell with that, and stood her ground.

  Chin up, arms folded, challenge in her eyes, Charlie waited for him to fire the first (verbal) shot. He didn’t say a thing. Instead he simply looked at her.

  With grim eyes and a tight mouth.

  “I can do whatever I want. I don’t need your permission,” she snapped. And knew as soon as she said it that she should have kept her mouth shut and gone into the bathroom without a word. But she hadn’t been able to do it. Something about the way he was looking at her made her feel guilty, like she needed to defend herself.

  Which was complete baloney.

  He still said nothing.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Just so you know, I’m going to be dating Tony for the foreseeable future.”

  Still nothing.

  “Damn it, you and I are not a couple. If I didn’t have this horrible cosmic curse, I wouldn’t even be able to see you. You wouldn’t be here. Because, you know, you’re dead.”

  “He turn you on?” Michael’s voice was perfectly even. Without that gravelly undertone, from his voice alone she wouldn’t have even suspected he was mad.

  “Yes,” she answered defiantly.

  “If he turned you on, you’d be sleeping with him already.”

  “What, did you miss that part of Tony’s and my private conversation? We’re taking it slow.”

  “Oh, is that it?” He smiled. She knew what that mocking smile meant, and it sent fury sizzling through her veins.

  “Okay, so maybe I didn’t take it slow with you. Big deal. Bad decision. Anyway, I’m not even sure that the sex we had was real.”

  His smile got nastier. “Oh, it was real, Doc. Every little thing about it was real. You were on my side of the barrier that night. Remember how my shirt got wet when Laura leaned against me? That’s because she and I are both as solid over here as you are right now over there. Remember me taking that knife in my back for you? That happened because I was able to cross the barrier for a second and be solid on the same side of the barrier as you. So yeah, when I fucked you, when you made that bad decision, you and I were both solid and on the same side of the barrier and it was real. And it was a big deal. Remember how many times you came? I do.”

  Lucky for her she wasn’t prone to blushing, because, yes, she (unwillingly) remembered that, too. She also noticed something: he had called her Doc, which he rarely did now. Only, she deduced as she thought back, when he was seriously bent out of shape with her.

  He added: “You really think Dudley can make you come like that?”

  “Yes,” she lied, caught herself as she was about to wet her lips, and clamped them together. His eyes were on her telltale mouth and some of the grimness had left them as she put an end to the (useless, infuriating) conversation by saying, “I’m going to take a shower.”

  Turning on her heel, she walked into the bathroom and closed the door. Gently. When what she actually wanted to do was slam it.

  He stayed on his side. Not that she’d expected him to come barging in after her, but she was relieved when he didn’t.

  Too bad she had forgotten to bring her nightclothes into the bathroom with her. When she got out of the shower, she wrapped herself in a towel and studied her reflection in the mirror for a moment, less than pleased at what looked back at her. Then, because she knew he was out there, because sharing a room and a life and a sizzling, unwanted attraction with a man (?) meant that she actually cared what she looked like when she was around him no matter how much she might want to pretend to herself (and him) that she didn’t, she muttered a curse under her breath and whipped the towel off her head and blew her hair dry until it curved soft and smooth around her shoulders. She rubbed lotion into her thirsty skin. She brushed her teeth, and even applied cherry Chapstick because she wanted her lips to be smooth in the morning (and, yes, all right, to give them a little flattering color). After that, after there was nothing left for her to do that wouldn’t look too obvious, was when she discovered that she had the option of putting on her sweaty workout clothes again, or of walking into the bedroom wrapped in a towel to retrieve her nightgown and robe from her suitcase.

  For a moment she hesitated. Then she thought, Screw it.

  When she walked into the bedroom, it was to find Michael stretched out fully dressed on the bed closest to the window. He appeared lost in thought, and whatever they were he didn’t seem to be enjoying them particularly: he was frowning, and his mouth was tight. His eyes flicked her way, widened. She had on a white hotel towel, standard issue, and it was wrapped around her in perfectly adequate fashion, covering her from approximately the armpits to the tops of her thighs. He would have seen more of her if she’d been wearing a bathing suit. Still, there was something about slim tanned legs and a hint of cleavage and bare shoulders and arms emerging from a towel that made her feel ridiculously self-conscious. His eyes stayed glued to her, and his frown smoothed away. She didn’t say a word. Instead she walked (as opposed to stomped) to her suitcase, which was on the little folding suitcase stand at the foot of her bed, opened it, and started digging down for her PJs.

  She couldn’t help it if she could see him perfectly well even if she wasn’t deliberately looking at him. She couldn’t help it if the damned man (?) was drop dead sexy enough to make thoughts of doing him almost impossible to keep from popping into her mind at odd moments (like now). She couldn’t help it if said thoughts made her body tighten and burn.

  But she could get mad at him all over again.

  The merest suggestion of a smile touched his mouth. “You want to make nice with me, you could try dropping the towel.”

  She shot him a withering look. “In your dreams.”

  His smile widened. But she didn’t care, because she’d found what she was looking for. Turning her back on him, she retraced her steps to the bathroom. She could feel his eyes on her every step of the way.

  It was unfortunate that her favorite blue bathrobe had been too bulky to fit in her suitcase. Because the silky pale peach one that matched her silky pale peach nightie was a lot slinkier than
she had realized when she packed it. It had long sleeves instead of the nightie’s spaghetti straps, and it ended at mid-thigh instead of at the tops of her thighs like the nightie did, but the shimmery silk was thin, and clung because she was still faintly damp, and when she tied its silk ribbon of a belt around her waist it left way too little to the imagination.

  When she’d been packing her PJs, she hadn’t yet totally gotten her head around the concept that the ghost from hell was going to be seeing her in them on a nightly basis.

  Reality bites.

  Her only option was to wrap a towel around herself over the robe, and that was too ridiculous even to think about.

  She thought Screw it again, and walked out into the bedroom

  Michael’s eyes slid over her. As she headed around the end of her bed—i.e., the one he wasn’t on—she watched them go dark and hot, and to her annoyance felt herself going all dark and hot inside, too.

  The good news, she told herself savagely as she started to pull the covers back prior to climbing into bed, was that no matter how worked up either one of them got, sex wasn’t going to happen.

  “Okay, you’re killing me here.” His voice was husky. His eyes hadn’t left her since she’d walked out of the bathroom. It occurred to her as she saw the look on his face that when she’d turned her back to him and leaned over the bed to free the far side of the covers, then tossed the decorative pillows to the floor, maybe he’d gotten more of a view than she’d meant to give him.

  The possibility made her cross. “So close your eyes.”

  “Feeling a little bitchy, babe? I’ve noticed before that kissing Dudley has that effect on you.”

  “Ever think it might be you who has that effect on me?”

  “Nah. We both know what kind of effect I have on you. You ever have phone sex?”

  That was so unexpected she shot him a suspicious look. “No.”

  He had turned on his side and was watching her with his head propped on a hand. “That’s where I tell you all the dirty things I want to do to you and you tell me all the dirty things you want to do to me and we both get off without either one of us laying a hand on the other,” he explained helpfully.