“I give it away.” She waved the knife in the air. “Neighbors. Play dates. Friends. Every Monday I bring dessert to my mother’s house for our big family dinner. And normally, I don’t bake this much. The last few weeks have been really stressful.”
A rumble from the home theater vibrated the floor. Celia was in the basement watching Pirates of the Caribbean because, as she’d said, “Johnny Depp is totally hot.” The twins were upstairs, peacefully, innocently, sweetly sleeping. Completely unaware their apathetic father was most likely a crook.
Lawe swiped more apple bits. She bent over the cutting board, the strong line of his thigh invading her peripheral vision. Before they’d hacked into Paul’s offshore account, she’d have jumped at the chance to be alone with him. Would have jumped him.
Instead, she chopped apples like a maniac and tried not to throw up.
“I called the police earlier,” she said. “Spoke to the detective who investigated Paul’s accident. He thought I was nuts, asking if there was another car involved. Maybe one with the same paint color. He very kindly, very patiently explained to me there was no evidence of anything other than my husband losing control on a mountain road and going over the side. Then he gave me the number of a therapist.”
“Paul may not have been murdered. Celia’s not the most reliable source.”
She dumped the apple bits into a stainless-steel bowl and mixed in raisins. “I believe her. She was right about Paul and Jake being up to something big. Two million dollars big. And that’s just what we found in Paul’s account. Doesn’t include what he spent or what Jake’s take was. I’m afraid to go to the police with nothing more than a bankbook and a stack of mortgage applications. They already think I’m a grief-crazed widow inventing wild theories about my husband’s death.”
“So we wait. My friend in San Francisco will get back to us in a day or two. Money always leaves a trail, and he’s the guy who can follow it. Took him less than five minutes to notice all those mortgages were for people who work at the same company.”
Mountain Sun Business Technologies. Same company, same mortgage broker. Maybe it meant something. Had Paul and Jake been ripping off all those people? Getting kickbacks? Two million bucks’ worth? And why kill Paul when their scheme—whatever it was—seemed to be going phenomenally well? None of it made sense.
She pulled a carton of eggs from the fridge and didn’t meet Lawe’s eyes. She didn’t want to say this. Didn’t want him to leave. But her need to not be alone couldn’t outweigh his safety.
“Thank you. For everything you’ve done. If I’d suspected Paul had gotten himself into something as deep as this, I would never have asked you to stay. It’s not fair to you. You should go, get as far away from this mess as possible.”
She put the eggs on the counter, still not meeting his eyes, and rummaged through a cabinet for a clean bowl. His long silence made her scalp tingle.
A thud sounded on the hardwood floor. He’d hopped down from the counter.
“Come here,” he said softly.
When she didn’t move, he took her gently by the shoulders and turned her around to face him. He smiled down at her, sure and confident and strong, and her heart hitched.
“I’m not leaving until this thing is settled.”
She put a hand on his cheek, ran her thumb across his prickly stubble. “Why? We’ve gone way beyond exorcist duties. I was awful to you at the graveyard, yelling at you about your fear of commitment. On the first night we met, no less.”
He kissed the inside of her palm and she shivered. “You were right. I’m lousy at relationships.”
“But you’re still here. Helping me solve a crime that has nothing to do with you. And I’ve been, well, you know…” She dropped her hand to her side and closed her eyes. The words tumbled together in her throat and heat flooded her face. She must be turning red as a cranberry, but she had to say this. Forcing herself to meet his eyes, she felt her skin go even redder. “I’ve been trying to get you into bed. For a short-term fling. The irony of that isn’t lost on me, that I lectured you about not committing, then turned right around and decided to…to use you. For sex.”
Lawe went still, not a flicker of emotion crossing his face. “You’re using me for sex?”
It sounded even worse when he said it. “Sort of. Or at least that’s the plan, since we haven’t actually slept together yet.” Humiliation burned the back of her throat. “Not that I have a plan plan, like something I’ve plotted. I mean, I’m attracted to you and you seem to be attracted to me, so I figured we’d naturally, you know, act on that.”
“So I’m your boy toy?” His tone was thoughtful.
“No! I like you, I really do. I feel more comfortable with you than with anyone I’ve ever known. You’re definitely more interesting than anyone I’ve ever known. That ghosts thing…wow. And you’re helping me when there’s nothing in it for you. Well, besides the paycheck, but you could do another exorcism for that and it’d be a lot easier. You backed me up today when we ran into Jake. I don’t know how I’d have made it through that without you. I selfishly took advantage of your willingness to help, and then I propositioned you in the car.”
Lawe hooked a finger in one of the belt loops on her jeans, urged her a step closer. His thumb slipped under her shirt and skimmed her belly button. If she took a deep breath, her chest would brush his. Her nipples hardened and she felt even worse.
“Thanks for being so honest,” he said. “It’s never easy to hear you’re being used. There’s just one thing I’m wondering.”
“Yes?” she whispered miserably, staring at his mouth so she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes.
“When you launched your nefarious plot to get me into bed, did you have anything specific in mind? Locations, positions, props…sex toys?”
“Well, I…”
His lips quirked.
She glared and stepped back. “You’re making fun of me.”
“Hell yes.” His teeth flashed in a grin. Taking her hands, he laced his fingers deep with hers. One tug and the space between them disappeared. “You’re adorable when you’re nervous and babbling.”
“I’m serious. I feel really bad about things.” Although, pressed up against him, bad wasn’t the sensation that came to mind. Not when she could feel the rock-hard evidence he was A-okay with the situation. Still, there was something she had to know. “Why are you staying? Why are you helping me?”
His hands moved to her back, caressing. “Because it feels right.”
He lowered his head and kissed her, gently this time, his lips sweet and comforting against hers. She sighed and wrapped her arms around his waist, opening her mouth to him. This was what had been missing in her relationship with Paul. This physical give-and-take of caring and support and friendship.
And maybe something more.
Anxiety gave way to heat. The taste, the feel of him worked as a heady distraction from her simmering fears.
Music threaded into her awareness. High-pitched. Loud. Annoying.
Her phone.
Lawe groaned. “Another interruption. I’m sensing a pattern.”
Heart hammering, she grabbed the phone from the counter and answered without glancing at the number. This latest interruption was for the best. Something about their conversation had unsettled her, and not just in a sexual way. Maybe jumping into bed with a near total stranger wasn’t her best idea.
“Holly. Did I catch you at a bad time?” Jake said.
Her breath drew in sharply and she locked eyes with Lawe. “No, Jake. Now’s good. What’s up?”
Lawe’s eyes narrowed at Jake’s name. She could almost see his ears straining to hear the other side of the conversation.
“I was thinking about you.” Jake pitched his voice lower, and revulsion crept down her spine. Had she once found him charming? He had the smoothness of a reptil
e. “Are you free tomorrow night? I’d love to take you to dinner, catch up, talk about selling your house.”
She opened her mouth to refuse, but stopped. What if she went out to dinner with him, engaged him in conversation? In her experience, both Paul and Jake loved to talk about themselves. He might say something revealing, something that would lead them to enough evidence to take to the police. Something they couldn’t dismiss as her wild imagination.
“Holly?” Jake said, breaking the long silence. “You there?”
“I’m here.” She turned her back on Lawe, knowing he’d think her idea was harebrained at best and dangerous at worst. But it was dinner in a public place. What could happen? “I’d love to have dinner with you.”
Lawe didn’t say anything, but the small hairs on the back of her neck rose. Even the sound of his breathing was charged with tension.
“Fantastic, love.” Jake’s hearty voice clanged against her nerves. “Bring the kids. It’ll be fun.”
Holly raised her eyebrows. Theo and Sadie at a grown-up restaurant where dinner took more than ten minutes? Not likely.
“Thanks, but evenings aren’t their best time. I’ll drop them at my sister’s house.”
“Fantastic.”
Jake wanted to pick her up, but she hadn’t completely lost her mind, so she agreed to meet him at Bistro Ten Twenty the next night. Same restaurant where she’d been pastry chef, where she’d met Paul. Somehow that was fitting.
She disconnected and tossed the phone on the counter. Dreading the imminent argument, she got busy measuring flour and salt and baking powder into a bowl.
“You did not agree to have dinner with a man who may be a murderer.” Banked fury heated his voice.
She whisked the dry ingredients together. “Maybe he’ll slip and tell me something to help us figure out where Paul got two million dollars.”
“And then what? Maybe he’ll try to kill you too?” His voice flared and she cast an anxious glance at the baby monitor on the counter. If Theo woke up, it would take forever to get him back to sleep.
“Keep your voice down. The twins.”
His eyebrows slammed together. He had no trouble infusing a ton of fury into his whisper. “You’re not doing this.”
“I am. You don’t get to tell me what to do. I’m not married to you, and even if I were married to you, you wouldn’t get to tell me what to do. That ended when Paul died. I’ve wised up.”
The M-word landed like a venomous spider between them. A black widow, maybe? She hadn’t proposed, but the phrase if I were married to you carried a charged meaning when they were kinda-sorta carrying on.
Fortunately, he let that comment slide though he looked a teensy bit poleaxed. “Fine. I don’t get to tell you what to do.”
There. Best way to scare a man into backing down was to allude to marriage. She rolled her eyes and measured out the vegetable oil and vanilla.
“But you’re not doing this alone,” he said. “I’m coming with you.”
Her head shot up and she faced the determined set of his chin. “No, you’re not. Jake’s not going to say anything useful in front of you and you know it.”
“I’m more concerned about keeping you safe than what that asshole has to say.”
Her jaw unclenched. There were worse things in the world than a man who wanted to keep her safe. She patted his cheek, releasing a puff of flour from her fingers. “That’s sweet.”
“Holly…” His hand clenched the edge of the counter as he worked for control. “Promise me you won’t confront him directly. He may have killed once, and he’ll do it again to protect his secrets.”
“I’m not stupid.”
The dubious look he gave brought her anger frothing to the surface. But before she could respond, Celia’s head and shoulders emerged from the hardwood floor, right between the dishwasher and the center island.
“You got any popcorn?” she asked.
Holly stared at the glowing ghost head on the floor. Her life had jumped light-years beyond weird. “I don’t think eating popcorn is in your skill set.”
Celia brought a hand up, tapped her fingers soundlessly on the hardwood. “No kidding. I don’t want to eat it. I want to smell it. Movies aren’t the same without the scent of popcorn.”
Holly sighed and pulled a bag of microwave popcorn from the pantry. The first kernels were popping before Lawe spoke again. He sounded almost not mad.
“Remember Declan, the paranormal investigator who did the initial investigation on your case? He wants to come over tomorrow morning to do some readings on Celia. And I’m hoping to find out if she can possess him.”
Celia squealed. “Oh my God, that guy was gorgeous. He can investigate me anytime.”
Holly bit her lip. She didn’t want her kids exposed to ghosts and ghost hunters. It’d been hard enough to explain that their daddy was dead and not coming back. But Lawe had given a little on the issue of dinner with Jake, so she could give him this. It was his life’s work, after all. “Okay,” she said slowly. “You guys use the basement. I’ll keep the twins occupied up here.”
Celia disappeared into the floorboards. When the microwave dinged, Holly dumped the popcorn into a bowl and brought it downstairs to Celia.
She returned to the kitchen to find Lawe wearing his lecture imminent expression. He’d probably been up here marshaling his arguments against her dinner with Jake, so she cut him off.
“Exorcism’s not an entirely accepted field, right?” she said. “Probably more than a few people assume you’re a fraud.”
“Is this supposed to make me feel better?”
“Let’s compromise.” She picked up the bowl of wet ingredients and whisked them together. “When we’re at dinner with Jake, how about I tell him you’re an exorcist I hired because I believe Paul is haunting me? We throw in a few details about some money I found, thanks to you communicating with Paul’s spirit. Jake will pick up on the fact that the money had to come from whatever he and Paul were up to with those mortgages. I’ll mention you have some ideas on how I can invest the money, making it sound like you’re about to rip me off and I’m too dumb to realize it. Then you get him alone, one crook to another, and he confesses everything.”
Lawe dragged a hand across his face. “Why the hell would he confess anything to me?”
She dumped her dry ingredients into the wet. “Because he likes to brag about himself and he’ll be lulled into a false sense of security with you, a fellow thief.”
Lawe was quiet for a minute. “I hesitate to mention this, because it’s only going to encourage you…Dec and I ran a scheme like that once.”
She stopped stirring. “No kidding. Tell me.”
“An old man died, but stuck around to protect his wife. Her worthless nephew wanted her declared mentally incompetent so he could get power of attorney and drain her bank accounts. The dead husband’s efforts to protect his wife backfired because the old lady admitted to talking to his ghost. To most people, that spells mental incompetence. Fortunately, she called Dec, who called me. The nephew got panicky when we began poking around. He assumed we were con men, and we convinced him the three of us should work together to rip off his aunt. He told us where he’d fenced the old lady’s jewels and antiques, and the police nabbed him.”
A grin lifted the corners of her mouth. “So you’re totally a hero.”
He shook his head. “No. We got lucky.” He was silent for another moment, then sighed. “If we’re going to do this, your plan needs some serious work.”
She stirred cake batter and ducked her head to hide the triumph lighting through her. “Then let’s talk about it.”
They hammered out a plan and Lawe left soon after. Either the mood had gone or he too had second thoughts about the wisdom of going to bed together. He kissed her goodbye, tasting of residual annoyance and possessiveness and yummy
Lawe-ness. Afterward, she started up the stairs, but paused on the bottom step, one hand on the railing as she gazed into the darkness. Her empty bedroom held no appeal.
Taking the baby monitor with her, she went down to the basement to watch the rest of Pirates of the Caribbean with Celia. Her irritating ghost was right. Johnny Depp was totally hot.
“Let’s try again.” Swallowing a laugh, Lawe adjusted the focus on the video camera.
Dec’s socked feet sank into the plush white carpet in front of the wet bar. He raked a hand through his dark hair. “We’ve been at this for an hour. It’s not working. And I think I’m getting frostbite.”
Sunlight slanted into the basement window wells. To Lawe’s right was the home theater, with its projection screen the size of a small bus. Paul’s office and a small exercise room opened to his left. The tripod was set in the space between, a big open area with an ornate mahogany pool table in its center. More money had gone into this basement than most people spent on a whole house.
“Kind of whiny, isn’t he?” Celia smoothed her flowery skirt and positioned herself for another run at Dec. “Detracts from those chiseled good looks.”
“He’s always been a complainer.” Lawe smothered another laugh as Dec’s brows drew together.
“She’s talking about me, isn’t she?” Dec rubbed his sore shoulder. After the first try, they’d dragged couch cushions from the home theater to provide a softer landing.
“Don’t gripe. You wanted this. Said hands-on ghost research was a better use of your time than putting on a show for hotel guests. Celia, on three.”
“I didn’t expect to be the experiment.”
“One…two…” Lawe began.
Dec’s eyes widened. “Hey, wait.”
“Three.”
Celia took off at a run. When she hit the red tape X on the carpet, she leapt and launched herself headfirst at Dec.
Her horizontal body arrowed four feet off the ground, straight for Dec’s torso. She sailed past the wet bar, the glasses and bottles showing through her translucent, glowing body. Her head disappeared into Dec’s chest and her body followed, sucked into him like a handkerchief up a magician’s sleeve. The skin of his face rippled, the tremor radiating down to his socks. Then Celia shot out his other side, swearing.
The Exorcist Who Loved Me Page 7
