“We’re leaving,” Cassandra said flatly. “I’ve seen enough.”
Jules looked Dec up and down, and took his grandmother’s elbow protectively. “Are you the same Declan Mancini written up in the paper not too long ago? The paranormal investigator?” He glanced down at his grandmother. Cassandra’s lips thinned more than ever.
“That’s me. A pleasure to meet you.” Dec extended his hand, but another look at their expressions and he dropped his arm to his side.
“I understand what’s going on here.” The anger in Cassandra’s voice echoed in the hallway. “The howls of wind, the thumps on the floorboards, the fireplace, that photo. Now a so-called paranormal investigator. All of this is quite familiar. I suppose you thought I believe in ghosts. How dare you, Dr. McGarry? I didn’t fall for this tripe decades ago and I certainly won’t do so now.”
“Mrs. Jameson! That’s not—”
Cassandra held up a hand, regal as any queen. “I can’t imagine what you hoped to gain with this charade. Leo, get my things. We’re leaving.”
They swept past, Jules stopping long enough to say quietly to Richard, “I’ll call you in the morning.”
Richard closed the door and turned to Tia. “If you were unhappy in our relationship, all you had to do was say so. There was no need to put both of us through this ridiculous scene.”
Tia’s head shot up. “This isn’t about our relationship!”
Richard flicked his gaze at Dec, then looked away dismissively. “I was hoping to do this privately, but since you’ve obviously picked up where you left off with Mancini, I guess there’s no reason not to say it here. Tia, I think we should see other people. We’ve both outgrown our relationship—actually, judging by tonight, you seem to be regressing—and, quite frankly, I’ve had doubts for months about your academic seriousness. You’re a publicity hound. That lightweight self-help stuff is your kind of thing, and I’m sure whatever you and Mancini have cooked up will be just as fitting for daytime television. In the meantime, I’m replacing you on the research project.”
Her mouth fell open. “You can’t do that. The proposal is based on my work.”
“I’m lead on the project. I can do whatever I want. You’re out. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
“Why you—you,” Tia sputtered. “You pompous ass.”
“Exactly the kind of juvenile remark I’d expect from you.” Richard crossed to the coat rack, shook out his jacket and put it on. “Goodbye Tia.” He didn’t acknowledge Dec.
“The man certainly knows how to make an exit,” Dec said when he was gone.
Tia stumbled into the living room and flopped onto the couch, one arm crossed over her face. “Well. There goes my career.”
“Wait here.” Dec’s voice came from somewhere above her. She didn’t bother to look. “I’ll be right back.”
From the tangle of her thoughts and emotions, Tia pulled out the fact that Richard had just dumped her. All she felt was a pang that she’d have to start over finding someone with whom she had so much in common, someone with whom she could build a life. That was it. A little pang—and a sense of exhaustion.
The point was, she didn’t feel the utter desolation she’d had when she’d thought Dec had betrayed her. When she’d walked away from him and ignored every one of his phone calls and emails. She’d told herself she wouldn’t cry over a short-term mistake like Dec, and instead she’d cried rivers of tears.
Tonight her eyes were dry.
Dec’s footsteps echoed in the hall and then he was in the room, lifting her feet and sliding his body underneath her legs. “I brought you chocolate,” he said.
She let her arm fall from her eyes. He sat there with a delicious slab of the dark chocolate cake she’d planned to serve for dessert. “How’d you know I had that?”
He forked up a generous bite of cake. “You always have chocolate in the house.”
He guided the fork to her mouth, and she snapped her teeth around it. The rich sweetness melted like a snowflake on her tongue.
She gave a blissful sigh. Chocolate always made the bad stuff seem bearable, even though the logical part of her mind knew she was confusing food with comfort. “Thanks. So do you think my great-uncle will be back tonight? And why did he disappear instead of finishing his grand entrance?”
“No idea.” Dec took a bite of cake. “This is good. That lasagna you were serving, though…”
“Mrs. Jameson didn’t like it either.”
“I’m surprised you cooked.”
“You know I don’t cook.”
Dec cooked. Not only had his parents blessed him with the great genes that made him look the way he did, his mother had taught him to cook like a pro, thereby ensuring he was utterly irresistible to the female population, and part of the male. When they’d been together, they’d fallen into a routine of Dec cooking a mouthwatering dinner at his place or hers, then Tia returning the favor by cleaning up. Eventually.
He fed her another bite of cake. “Richard cooked?”
“Take-out. Richard lacks your culinary talents. And your other talents as well.”
She froze when she realized what she’d said. There was a long silence, and then he leaned across her legs to put the cake plate on the table. He sat back and pulled off one of her black flats. “Good to know.”
She pushed up onto her elbows. “Hey, that wasn’t an invitation.”
“Relax. This isn’t a proposition.” He had her other shoe off and was rubbing his thumb in lazy circles on the arch of her foot. She sank back onto the cushions and tried not to groan out loud. “Just a friendly foot rub between friends. What are you going to do about Richard?”
His strong hands molded her feet, and the tension seeped out of her body. Liquid heat spread up her legs every time he squeezed. “I’m going to grovel.”
He stilled for a moment. “Grovel?”
“I’ll tell him that my grandmother’s death affected me more than I realized, and that’s why I’ve been acting so strangely. But I’m dedicated to this research as much as he is, and we’ll succeed better together. I need his neurology expertise and he needs my psychological interpretation.”
Dec circled her ankle with his thumb and forefinger. She shivered.
“I meant,” he said, “what are you going to do about your engagement?”
She pulled the throw pillow from under her head and put it over her face. “We weren’t engaged.” The pillow muffled her voice, but Dec must have heard.
He laughed softly. “I figured that when Dickhead acted like he’d never heard the word fiancé before. Why did you lie about it?”
She kept the pillow over her head, too chicken to face him despite the need to confess pushing words out of her mouth. “Because I thought if a relationship between us was off-limits, I wouldn’t be tempted by you.”
Silence fell as he pressed the exact right spot on the arch of her foot and she bit back a moan.
“Richard’s mad now, but he’ll take you back. He’d be a fool not to.” Dec’s voice was flat, utterly expressionless, giving her no clue to what he was thinking.
“I don’t want Richard back. He was a mistake.” If only she could figure out what had gone wrong with her perfect plan, she could figure out how not to make the same mistake again.
Suddenly, the pillow was yanked off her face and Dec loomed over her. His movement shifted her legs, his hard thighs slid under hers, and she was breathlessly aware that they’d moved from a friendly foot-massage position to something much more intimate. Every nerve ending in her body fluttered to life. She met his dark eyes, her skin heating when he flashed that grin at her again. This time so close that if she raised her head, she could kiss him, taste him.
He was like a double chocolate gelato dipped in sin and she’d been stuck with nonfat tofu ice cream for far too long.
He snaked an arm under her back, lifting her a few crucial inches. “It’s probably tacky to make the moves on a woman who was dumped less than an hour ago.”
“Totally tacky.” She coiled her arms around his neck, playing her fingers in his hair. Just one kiss and then she’d stop. Even as the thought flitted through her mind, she knew she was as bad as any addict going back for one more hit. Except her drug of choice was a Dec-induced dopamine rush.
“I have to move fast with you,” he whispered. “No doubt you’ll find another boring idiot to marry by tomorrow.”
And then his lips were on hers and all thoughts of biochemical madness scattered. She wrapped both arms around him, the taste of his mouth making everything in her world disappear but the thrum of wanting pulsing through her. That was why she’d gone to bed with him on their first date. Their goodnight kiss had gone from light and polite to hot and hungry in an instant, and then he’d bet her a night she’d never forget, and she’d let him all the way in.
Dec pulled off her glasses, tossed them on the coffee table, and bent his head back to her to run his tongue lightly across the seam of her lips. She shuddered, parting her lips and he deepened the kiss. He lowered her back down to the couch, following her with his body so his delicious weight pressed against her breasts. Would it be so bad if she let him in again?
One of them moaned, maybe her. He trailed his fingers down her back, hesitated an agonizing moment at the hem of the silk shell she wore, and then his warm hand slipped under the material and moved up her stomach. His thumb grazed her breast, heat flashed in the pit of her stomach, and fireworks boomed in the distance.
Fireworks?
Her eyes flew open and she blinked at the blurry darkness. All the lights had gone out.
“Looks like now’s the time to ask what your intentions are toward my grand-niece.”
Dec came to his feet in one powerful surge of motion. All the warm parts of Tia went cold at his absence. She sat up slowly. The cold might also be because the temperature in the room had dropped ten degrees. She found her glasses and shoved them back on.
Her great-uncle sat cross-legged on the hearth, grinning like a leprechaun.
“You!” Tia was on her feet next to Dec in a second. “What on earth were you trying to do tonight?”
His smile dimmed. “Just having some fun.”
Dec shook his head and strode to the window, drew back the curtains to peer out into the darkness. “I think he blew a transformer.”
“Oh good,” Tia said. “I thought I was imagining fireworks.”
Dec quirked his lips at her and she whirled on Billy. “What do you mean you were ‘having some fun’? You tried to terrorize my guests!”
“Pfff. No one was scared. I must be losing my touch.” He tried to grin again, but his mouth drooped.
“Christ.” Dec shoved a hand through his hair, his breathing still not back to normal, sexual frustration etched in his tight features. Tia’s knees went a little weak. “What’s up with the giant power draw? You didn’t need to knock out electricity on the whole street to manifest.”
“I was distracted,” Billy said defensively.
Tia narrowed her eyes, remembering Cassandra’s frozen shock when she’d stared at Billy’s photo on the mantel. “Mrs. Jameson recognized you. Spill it, Uncle Billy. What’s going on?”
Her great-uncle pressed his lips together and suddenly a tiny gold key appeared in his hand. He turned it on his lips then threw it over his shoulder. The key disappeared before it hit the red bricks of her fireplace.
Tia crossed her arms. “I’ve got all night,” she said as menacingly as she could.
“You owe her, Billy.” Dec put his arm around her. Despite herself, she burrowed into his warmth.
The ghost sighed. As he expelled air—or whatever happened when a ghost exhaled—his body rose, still cross-legged, a few inches off the brick hearth. “Of all the haunted houses in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”
“Spare me the Bogart,” Dec said. “You told me a million stories last night, but not this one?”
“It’s personal.” Billy drew himself up, as though giving himself an internal pep talk. “All right. Here goes. Remember I told you I met a girl the night The Maltese Falcon came out? That was her. Cassie.” Apparently interpreting their blank looks correctly, Billy continued. “Cassandra Howard Jameson. We fell in love that night.”
Tia tried, and failed, to picture a young, lovestruck Cassandra.
The creases in Dec’s forehead suggested he was struggling with the same image. “I guess she wasn’t always a hundred and five.”
“She’s ninety-one, ya mook. And show some respect, will ya? She’s had a hard life.” He fell into a brooding kind of silence, apparently reliving some memory or other.
“Hard life?” Tia was incredulous. “She married an extremely wealthy man and, by all accounts, they lived happily ever after. Six children, eighteen grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren popping up. She wanted to fund my work—incidentally, a big step in my career that you destroyed—because she believes in the benefits of long-term, stable marriages.”
Billy’s lower lip edged out. “It broke her heart when I died. She moved on. She loved that husband of hers enough, but it wasn’t like what the two of us had.”
Tia snorted. “Is that why you’re still here? You think she hasn’t gotten over a broken heart in, what is it? Seventy-something years?”
“Nice, Tia. Romantic to the core.” Dec gave her a disgusted look and took a seat next to Billy on the hearth. He slapped him on the back, his hand sinking into Billy’s iridescence and making no sound. “Ignore your grand-niece. She doesn’t believe in love.”
That was so unfair. “I most certainly do. But I happen to understand that what we call love is only a biochemical response that evolved to ensure the perpetuation of our species.”
“You can do better than this pill of a woman,” Billy said to Dec. His shoulders sank. “She wouldn’t recognize love if it slapped her on the can.”
Dec met her gaze and his dark eyes danced in amusement. “I’ll have to try that.”
A sudden image of Dec slapping her ass flashed into Tia’s mind. Her mouth went dry. She wasn’t sure if she was turned on or outraged.
Billy glanced between the two of them. “About those intentions—”
Dec cut him off. “Why’d you show up here after Tia threatened to drop you in the ocean?”
Billy’s lightning grin replaced his brooding expression. “No way she’d make good on that threat. And if she tried, you’d stop her. You’re not the first glory-hound ghost hunter I’ve met in the afterlife, buddy. I’ve got your number.”
An uneasy feeling crawled its way up Tia’s spine. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Lover boy thinks I’m his big chance to prove to the world that ghosts exist. He’s not going to stand around and let you scatter my soul to the wind, even if you were mean enough to try it, which you’re not.”
“You think Dec is playing me.”
Dec’s face turned to stone.
“Like a trumpet.” Billy leaned back against the fireplace bricks, crossed his arms. “And you’re letting him because you’re in love with him, no matter how much psychobabble you use to deny it. That’s what love is. It reaches into your chest and rips your heart out and you don’t care because your heart doesn’t belong to you anymore. You’ve given it, and everything else you’ve got, to someone else.”
“We call that codependency,” Tia said, and Dec gave a bark of laughter.
Her unease melted away now that she recognized the unhealthy thought patterns Billy clung to. She wasn’t in love with Dec, and she didn’t see how he could be playing her unless you counted using her for sex, but that was pretty much a mutual thing. One she wasn’t gong to discuss with her great-uncle.
“Yeah. I’m a lovesick sap of a ghost.” Billy sighed. “When they brought my body back, I tried to contact her. But she’s as bad as Tia when it comes to repelling ghosts. Couldn’t do much more than slam a couple of doors and give her a chill. Got a medium to visit her house with a message from me, but she threw the man out. Called him a fraud and threatened to have him arrested.”
Dec glanced at her. “Two of a kind,” he murmured.
Unable to meet his gaze, Tia busied herself plumping the throw pillow on an armchair. “That’s why she said she wasn’t going to fall for those tricks again. When you were pulling your juvenile stunts earlier, you reminded her of what happened all those years ago.” A sudden thought straightened her spine, pillow clutched in one hand. “Oh my God, she thinks I was trying to con her?”
“Sucks, doesn’t it, sweetheart?” Dec looked entirely too smug.
“I’ll never get used to men using that kind of language in front of ladies,” Billy said sadly, and the smirk fell from Dec’s face. “Listen. I need your help. You’ve got to get Cassandra back over here. I meant to pop in on your guests, but I didn’t expect her. Shocked me silly to see her, and I blew it. But I want to talk to her. I need to talk to her, after all these years.”
Tia’s heart pinched. She sank into the armchair. “Uncle Billy, I don’t think there’s any way I can get Cassandra back here. She’s deeply suspicious of me already.”
Dec pushed the plate of cake to her and rose to pace in front of the fireplace. “There has to be a way. This is what Billy’s been waiting for all these years. This is what will allow his soul to move on.”
“Dec, even if we got her over here somehow, we’d probably give the poor woman a heart attack. She’s not exactly young.”
“I’ve never seen anyone have a heart attack from encountering a ghost.”
“My Cassie’s strong. Her heart’s not going to give out.”
Must Love Ghosts Page 6
