Night of the Loving Dead

by Casey Daniels

That would explain why we’ve butted heads a time or two when we’ve tripped over each other during my investigations. Of course, I could be wrong. When it comes to solving murders, Quinn’s attitude might stem from the fact that he’s a professional and I’m a rank amateur who has no business sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong. If that’s true, then I guess I can forgive him: he doesn’t know about the ghosts.

  Not that I was going to get picky about that, either.

  Not at a time like this.

  I lightly traced the boundaries of the scar on his back with the tip of one finger. At the same time, I stifled a yawn.

  “You’re awake.” On the pillow next to mine, Quinn turned his head and looked my way. His grin was as hot as it had been the night before when we found ourselves suddenly out of the restaurant where we’d been having dinner, in my apartment, in my bedroom, and yes, in my bed. “Sleep well?”

  “I didn’t sleep at all.” As if he didn’t know. He was, after all, the cause of my sleeplessness. I boosted myself up long enough to glance at the clock on my bedside table, fell back against the mattress, and groaned. “I’ve got to be at work in two hours.”

  “Me, too.” Quinn rolled over on his back, pushed a strand of inky hair out of his eyes, and rested his head on one bent arm. “We could call in sick.”

  “The morning after my birthday? Ella might be a free-thinking ex-hippie, but she’d never fall for that. She’s the mom of three teenaged girls, remember. Comes with the territory. Moms have that spooky radar thing going on. They can detect lies like I’m sick the day after I went out to celebrate my birthday from a mile away.”

  “It’s just as well. I’ve got a mountain of paperwork to fill out for a new case I’m working on.” He sighed. I liked the way the whisper of it rustled through my bedroom almost as much as I liked the feel of his body next to mine. Sure, it sounds like a page out of one of those romance novels my own mom loves so much, but just thinking about everything we did during the night...

  Well, let’s suffice it to say that I needed to push back the covers, that’s how hot I got.

  “You’re not getting up.” Quinn’s hands were large and his fingers were long. He wrapped them around my wrist. “We’ve got two hours.”

  “We do.” My smile was a response to his. “And no, I’m not getting up. I’m just hot.”

  “It’s February.” He lifted his head long enough to look toward the window. “And if I’m not mistaken, it’s snowing like a son of a bitch.”

  “Which doesn’t mean I can’t be hot.”

  “Oh, you’re hot, all right.” He tickled a hand over my shoulders, down to my stomach, and back up again, and like it had so many times during the night, his touch made me tingle from head to toe. “Makes me glad you were almost going to have to spend your birthday alone.”

  “Ella had something to do with you calling me, didn’t she?” I suspected it was true the moment my office phone rang the afternoon before and I heard Quinn’s voice on the line. “She’s such a softy! She felt terrible that she had to back out of my birthday dinner because one of the girls was coming down with the flu. She called you and told you to call me. Admit it.” I poked him in the ribs. “You wouldn’t have even known it was my birthday otherwise.”

  “How could I know when you never told me when your birthday was?”

  “You know how many traffic tickets I’ve gotten. And how many parking tickets. You keep reminding me about those. You know how tall I am and—” I gulped. “And probably how much I weigh. Whether I tell you things or not, you find them out. You know everything about me.”

  Quinn flipped to his side and propped his head on one hand. “Not everything. I do know that you can’t seem to mind your own business. But I don’t know exactly how you got involved in those murder investigations last year. Or why.”

  It was an open invitation and the perfect opportunity for me to come clean. In a purely symbolic way, of course. And if ever there was a right time to do it, this was it. Yeah, the sex was that good.

  None of which explained why I hesitated. Or why, after that moment’s hesitation, I changed the subject. Or should I say I got the subject back on track? After all, I wasn’t the one who changed it in the first place.

  “Ella’s a sucker for the underdog. She didn’t want me to be alone on my birthday. That’s why she told you to give me a call.”

  Quinn took the hint. Or maybe he knew what I knew: the morning after the night before is not the time to start an argument. Not when the night before was so good and the morning after was promising more of the same. “Ella’s a nice lady. And she got her wish. You didn’t spend your birthday alone.”

  I snuggled further into the mattress. “Something tells me this wasn’t what she had in mind.”

  “Oh, come on! Give the lady some credit. She might be middle-aged, but she’s not dead. This was exactly what she had in mind.”

  It was so far from every concept I’d ever had about Ella, I gasped. “She’d be mortified.”

  “She’d be jealous.”

  He was right. This time, I was the one who grinned.

  “So . . .” Quinn had tucked his cell phone under his pillow. Such are the demands of a homicide detective’s job. He reached for it and checked the time. “Now we’ve got an hour and fifty minutes. How do you want to spend the time?”

  Oh come on! I really don’t have to say how I responded, do I?

  Good thing I live close to Garden View Cemetery. By the time we were done, I had less than an hour to get to work.

  Freezing, I slipped into my flannel robe and stood in front of my open closet, wondering what to wear to the office, while Quinn took a shower, then offered to make coffee and toast. While he was at it, he called his lieutenant and, as casually as if it was an everyday thing, told her he’d been delayed and he’d be a little late.

  Maybe it was an everyday thing.

  In spite of myself, I wondered how many mornings he spent just like this. And where he spent them. And who he spent them with.

  Just as quickly, I told myself to stop being small-minded, plucked a pair of creamy-colored wool pants off their hanger, and went in search of the brown mohair sweater my mom had given me for Christmas. By the time I found it in a pile of clothes I’d brought home from the dry cleaner and never put away, the coffee was ready, so before I headed into the shower, I poured a cup and took a gulp. Quinn made good coffee. Quinn, I can say with some authority, did a lot of things really well.

  “Oh no.” When I turned to slip past where he was sitting at my kitchen table, he grabbed my hand. He held out a piece of toast coated with strawberry jam. “You haven’t eaten breakfast.”

  “I don’t have time for breakfast.”

  “It’s the most important meal of the day.”

  I could have argued. I would have—honest—if he hadn’t pulled me onto his lap, wrapped his arms around me, and put the toast to my lips. I took a bite.

  “See?” Quinn settled me and reached around me for his coffee cup. He must have been warm-blooded; he was wearing only boxers. His skin was still warm from the shower. I sunk back against him. He smelled like my mango bath gel. “Don’t you feel better already?”

  “I didn’t feel bad to begin with.”

  He patted my butt. “I’ll say.”

  “Not what I meant.”

  “But true, nonetheless.” Though it was piping hot, he drank down his coffee. When he spoke again, I didn’t have to look over my shoulder to know he was smiling. One night with Quinn and already, I could recognize the purr of satisfaction in his voice. “I was just thinking,” he said. “You know, about last fall. About what might have happened if you never broke down and called me.”

  Did my shoulders automatically shoot back and my spine stiffen? I didn’t like to think I was that touchy, but it was hard to deny facts. Before I said a word, I forced myself to relax. I took another bite of toast, too. Maybe the strawberry jam would sweeten the acid note in my voice. “Is that what yo
u call it, breaking down? I didn’t know this was some kind of competition.”

  “Not what I meant.” He shooed me away long enough to get up and pour another cup of coffee, but when he sat back down and patted his lap, inviting me to get comfortable again, I pretended not to notice. “I meant I’m glad we’ve been seeing each other.”

  “And we might not be if I didn’t make the first move.”

  His shrug said it all. “Last fall when you were messing around pretending to investigate the death of that ancient rock star—”

  “I wasn’t messing around. I found his killer, didn’t I?”

  “And nearly got yourself killed in the bargain.” I would have been offended if it wasn’t true. And if Quinn hadn’t risked his own life to save mine when the killer got the best of me, tied me up, and tossed me in Lake Erie.

  He washed away his comment with a sip of coffee. “I told you then that I wasn’t going to be the one to come running after you. It’s not the way I work.”

  “Oh, you work things like this, do you?” My voice was sharper than I would have liked, and I hoped Quinn didn’t notice. He never flinched, so maybe he didn’t. Or maybe that meant he did. In an effort to contain my frustration, I curled my hands into fists. “I don’t think either one of us wants to fight.”

  “Who’s fighting?” He finished the last of a piece of toast and brushed the crumbs from his hands. When he was done with his coffee, he took his cup to the sink. “I said I’m glad we’re seeing each other. There, I’m being perfectly honest and aboveboard. I’m showing my softer side the way women say men never do. Big points for me.” He did his best to smooth my ruffled feathers with a thousand-watt smile. “And hey, you have to admit, no matter what, I’m better than that dead guy you said you were dating last fall.”

  This time, I didn’t smile back. I mean, how could I? Though Quinn thought I’d been kidding the autumn before when I told him I had to pass on a date with him because I was waiting at the cemetery for a dead guy, he didn’t know I was as serious as a heart attack. In fact, the dead guy in question wasn’t just any dead guy. He was rock legend Damon Curtis, and truth be told, we weren’t just dating. We were in love. Of course, the whole dead thing has a way of ruining even the best of relationships. Damon was incorporeal. I was pining. Our romance was doomed from the start.

  But come to think of it (and believe me, I’d thought about it plenty since the day I solved his murder and Damon crossed over and left me with nothing but questions about how I could live my empty life to its fullest), what I had with him was far more real—and far more profound—than anything I’d ever had with any other guy.

  Present company included.

  The thought caught me off guard, and I gave myself a mental slap. Quinn had never lied. He never pretended this was something more than it was. What it was, was great sex and a night to remember, and back before I met Damon, that had always been enough for me. It was enough for me now.

  Wasn’t it?

  My coffee tasted bitter, and I went to the sink and spilled it out. “One too many sour-apple martinis and even the most levelheaded girl is apt to do crazy things,” I grumbled.

  Quinn frowned in return. “Are you saying you only went to bed with me because you were drunk?”

  “Maybe not drunk enough.”

  “Which means, what? That you’re sorry we—”

  “I wasn’t. Can’t that be enough?”

  “Does it have to be?”

  Even I wasn’t sure what we were arguing about; I only knew that there was some doubt niggling at my insides, chilling all the places that had been oh-so-hot just a short time before. Once upon a time, a night like the one I’d just had would have been the stuff of dreams. And now?

  Now, I wondered where we were headed, me and Quinn. I questioned whether we were suited for each other and whether we could ever be compatible for more than one night, no matter how incredible it happened to be.

  I found myself examining a conscience I never even knew I had until I started into this investigation-for-the-dead gig, and when I did, I had no choice but to face the stark truth: I could never be completely honest with Quinn—not about the ghosts or my Gift or the reason I investigated murders that most people had long forgotten—because if I was, he’d think I was a nut job. And if I couldn’t be honest with him . . . Well, then we couldn’t ever have anything that would pass for a relationship.

  My shoulders slumped. “Sorry,” I said, because let’s face it, even though he and I were talking about different things, I was sorry, and it was what he wanted to hear anyway. “I can be cranky in the morning.”

  “That’s good to know.” When he moved toward me, I didn’t back away. “I’ll be careful from now on.”

  “Is there going to be a now on?”

  He stopped in his tracks. “Is that what this is about? I didn’t think you were the kind of girl who was picky about—”

  “What? About wanting the guy she’s with to respect her? To like her? About wanting to know that he realizes she’s smart and savvy and capable of doing more than just keeping him happy in bed?”

  When he closed in on me, a mischievous smile played around the corners of his mouth. “I like you,” he said. He toyed with one end of the belt that cinched my robe around my waist. “I respect you. I think you’re savvy and capable and—”

  “Smart?” I looked him in the eye.

  “Not if it means you getting tangled up in any more of my investigations.”

  “Oh, like I really have a choice!”

  “Don’t you?”

  It was another opportunity to tell him about my Gift, and I so didn’t want to go there. There were worse things than arguing with Quinn about . . . er . . . whatever it was we were arguing about. I might be willing to bare my body and my fantasies to him, but when it came to my soul, that was another thing altogether.

  I back-stepped toward the bathroom. “I’ve got to get moving,” I said.

  “Right now?” He loosened the tie on my robe and slipped his hands inside. “You’ve got—”

  “Thirty minutes.” My suspicions were confirmed by the clock that hung above the sink.

  Which didn’t mean it was easy to ignore the thrill that raced up my spine when Quinn skimmed his hands over my hips.

  And have I mentioned that Quinn’s got a chest that looks as if it were chipped out of marble?

  “Really, I’ve got to get going.” I made a halfhearted attempt to pull away, and I wasn’t sure if I was disappointed or relieved when he let me go.

  Before I could decide—or change my mind—I hurried into the bathroom. When I turned on the shower, I made sure the water was cold.

  Even a ticking clock and the sense of obligation I felt to get to work reasonably on time wasn’t enough to hurry me. Not too much, anyway. A girl has to have standards, after all, and I’m all about tradition. I wasn’t about to start a new one by arriving at the office without makeup or with my hair a mess. By the time I walked out of the bathroom fit to be seen in public, Quinn was dressed. He was also just snapping closed my cell phone.

  “It rang just as I was walking by,” he said by way of explanation. “That was Dan.”

  I stopped mid-stride and gave him a look I can only imagine was incredulous.

  “Dan? Dan Callahan?”

  “That’s what the guy said. And get this, he said he was returning your call from back in the fall. Nothing like waiting a few months to catch up on messages, huh?”

  “Dan? Dan Callahan?”

  Quinn is not known for his patience. Which explains why he didn’t bother answering a second time. He slanted me a look. “You’re surprised.”

  “You think?” Sarcasm did not become me, and I avoided it on all occasions. Except, of course, when it was absolutely necessary. Too taken by surprise to do anything else, I flopped down on the couch. “Dan? Are you sure that’s what he said?”

  This time, he didn’t even pretend he was listening. Quinn went over to the dining
room table where he’d left his shoulder holster and gun the night before. He strapped the holster on and slipped his suit coat over it.

  “You didn’t call this Dan guy around the same time you called me last fall, did you? I mean, you weren’t hedging your bets or anything, were you?”

  This time, I got to be the one who avoided the question. “What did he want?” I asked instead.

  Quinn shrugged. “Said he’s been busy. Said he’s sorry he hasn’t had the chance to return your call. Something about being out of the country for the last couple months. He said he read about that rock-and-roll murder investigation in all the papers and he said to tell you he was glad he was able to help you solve your case.” He looked at me hard. “You had a case? And he helped you solve it?”