His mouth took hers again—hot, hungry and demanding more than just a kiss. It was asking for possession of her soul, for a refuge from life’s storms, for a dance beneath the stars. It spoke to her in words of magic that only her heart could understand. It sang to her lips, whispered to her desires and awakened some long-lost dream of wonder.
Then it was over.
As if some hidden hand had pulled a string, they moved apart. Really apart, not letting a hand, a sleeve, a bit of robe connect them. Mike looked as shaken as Casey felt. For a long moment, his unguarded eyes met hers, and she could read the shock and astonishment in them. During that eternity, anything could have happened.
If she made the slightest move toward him…
If she gave him the merest of smiles…
But then she took a deep breath and the air seemed to clear somehow. The spell was broken, their hearts freed. Or were they now imprisoned?
“I’m sorry,” he said stiffly. “I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
“I started it.” She looked away and found the strength to shut the doors to her soul and lock them tight
“You’re a guest in my house,” he said.
“Who barged into your room in the middle of the night,” she noted, braving a glance in his direction. “Look, I’m the one who should be apologizing. I don’t know what came over me, but I promise it won’t happen again.”
“It was late,” he said. “And we were both caught off guard.”
She nodded. “We weren’t thinking straight.”
“We just have to be more careful.”
“And give each other space.”
“No problem.”
“It’ll be easy.”
“Now that we know the rules.”
“And each other’s routine.”
“Right.”
“Absolutely.” She gathered up her cats and sped back to her room in record time.
“No more walks at night to look for Simon,” she told her cats.
And no more stray touches, she told herself. She was keeping her distance from Mike. She would be done with her research in a few weeks and could do her writing elsewhere, if she needed to. She was here to write a family history and that was all she was going to do.
* * *
Casey stopped in the kitchen doorway. The bright morning sunlight streaming in the far window blinded her for a moment. Or was it the sight of Mike in his blue state-police uniform? He and the handyman were deep in conversation, and Casey was able to gaze her fill of Mike. For a sweet second or two, she let herself remember the taste of his lips, the feel of her hand on his chest, the way their hearts had raced in unison.
Then she pushed the memory aside. Last night had been a mistake. One huge, gigantic, colossal mistake, and she was never repeating it.
Mike looked up, frowning when he saw her. “I thought you slept later,” he said.
“I thought you’d left already.” She would never have come down if she’d known he hadn’t.
“I had to get together with Barry,” Mike replied. “We need to get the doors fixed.”
“They should have been fixed long ago,” she agreed.
“Fun as it is to jaw with you folks,” the handyman said, “I gotta be getting home to take the missus to church.” He pulled a notebook and a pencil stub out of his coat pocket. “Which doors is it you want fixed?”
“All of them,” she said.
He looked at Mike.
“Every damn last one of them,” Mike agreed.
The handyman looked from Mike to Casey, then back to his notebook, a half smile on his face. “So we got doors popping open at odd times, have we?” he muttered, then looked up. “You sure it ain’t Simon? I heard tell he likes these kinds of tricks.”
“No, it’s not Simon,” Mike snapped.
“Even a ghost can’t open a well-closed door,” Casey stated.
“Huh,” was all the older man said as he made more notes.
It left time for Casey to glance Mike’s way, but finding he was glancing her way at the same time, she turned to gaze out the window. Everything looked as if a Pause button had been pushed somewhere. The landscape was waiting for snow to make it feel like Christmas. The trees and bushes were waiting for spring to make them feel alive.
And Casey—what was she waiting for? For someone she could trust forever, someone who would never ever leave her, she suddenly realized. Then wondered just where that thought had come from. That wasn’t what she was waiting for at all.
“So how soon can you get the doors done?” Mike asked.
Casey turned, almost relieved at the interruption. Mr. Slocum was closing up his notebook and pocketing the pencil stub.
“The doors’ve been bad for years,” he said. “What difference is another week or two gonna make?” He chuckled as he pulled open the back door. “Course, if n it’s Simon opening them, I could spend from now until doomsday fixing them, and they ain’t gonna stay closed.”
The handyman left, leaving Mike and Casey standing in the kitchen. For a moment, just a fraction of one, she considered inviting him to have breakfast with her, but then resolutely kept her mouth shut. They were going to give each other space; that was the agreement.
“I’ve got to go to work,” Mike said, and left before she could change her mind.
Casey spent the morning working on the family history—or trying to work on it—but Mike kept haunting her. His gorgeous body. His earth-shattering kisses. His careful, distant silence this morning. She finally took a stroll downtown in the afternoon, needing to escape the house.
She’d missed the pickle festival’s bratwurst-and-pickle lunch at the fire station, but various choirs were performing at the elementary-school gym and the craft fair was still on over at the junior high. Neither was really within walking distance, though, so she walked over to the historical society instead and meandered through the gift shop. Her family needed a pickle ornament to hang on their tree, and how could she not buy a few boxes of chocolate-covered pickles?
“Aren’t you staying with Mike Burnette?” someone asked her.
Casey looked up—right into Darcy’s eyes. “Yes, yes, I am,” Casey said slowly. Darcy looked to be about Casey’s own age, and like someone she’d pick for a friend. It was disconcerting. “I’m Casey Crawford.”
“I’m Darcy Middleton. Mike and I…” She stopped and then grinned slightly, her blue eyes lighting up. “Well, knowing this town, you know about Mike and me.”
“Yes,” Casey admitted.
Darcy looked around the gift shop. A few curious shoppers were watching them. “Can we take a walk?” she asked.
Casey had a sudden sense that this was a rerun. “Uh, you aren’t a Tae Kwon Do champ, by any chance, are you?”
“Tae Kwon Do?” Darcy looked totally confused. “Gracious, no. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious.”
Casey paid for her purchases, then they strolled outside. Darcy led the way around back, where a cell block of the old county jail had been restored. Law and order, cops and robbers. She couldn’t get away from them, Casey thought with a sigh. Darcy sat on a bench facing the row of cells. Sun was filtering through the bare branches of the trees and lending a faint warmth to the air.
“How is he?” she asked Casey. “I mean, how is he really?”
Casey sat down also. “Mike?” she said. That was a strange question. “Okay, I guess. I’ve only known him for a few days now.”
“A few days?” Darcy looked surprised. “But I thought…everybody said…” She sighed. “You’re not his new girlfriend, are you?”
Casey shook her head. “His aunt hired me to write a family history,” she said. “I only met him on Thursday.”
“Thursday? Bummer,” Darcy said, and kicked at a little patch of ice by her feet. “I was really hoping he was dating again.”
Casey wished she had walked to the arts-and-crafts fair rather than come here. This wasn’t a discussion she ought to be having, o
r one that she wanted to have. Darcy was too nice, and that made Mike too vulnerable. And what that really made Mike was too dangerous.
“He says he has hundreds of girlfriends,” Casey said.
“Did I really hurt him that badly that he won’t try again?” Darcy asked.
Casey truly wished she was someplace else. She didn’t want to get pulled into Mike’s life. “I don’t know,” she said lamely. “I really don’t know.”
Darcy forced a smile. “I know you don’t. I wouldn’t have dragged you into this except that I thought that you and Mike were dating.” Her smile became slightly more natural. “He is a great guy, you know. Maybe you should—”
“No, I shouldn’t,” Casey said quickly. “We do not get along at all.” She ignored that little video screen in her head that was playing back scenes when they’d gotten along just fine. “We fight all the time. We can’t agree on anything.”
“Oh.” Darcy looked disappointed as she got to her feet. “I was just hoping he’d found somebody.”
“I’m sure he will. It just won’t be me. We’re barely speaking to each other.” She got to her feet. “I really should be getting back.”
She hadn’t lied when she said she and Mike were barely speaking. It was true and continued to be so as the week progressed. Silence took up permanent residence in the house, seeping out from the woodwork and filling the rooms. She knew Mike was around; they passed in the halls occasionally, but he always seemed to be on the verge of leaving, and they rarely spoke.
Casey missed him. Well, she missed having someone to talk to; she didn’t miss the sudden emotions that would flare up between them. Though if that was true, why did her stomach get tied in knots whenever he was around? It was all too confusing, and she took to exercising Gus just to escape such confusion.
“You don’t have to play with him,” Mike said one evening late in the week when he found Casey throwing a ball for Gus. “He is my dog.”
She was getting tired of this life of exile. It wasn’t what she’d intended at all when she said they’d give each other space. “Fine.” She handed him the tennis ball. “Far be it from me to come between a man and his dog.”
“I meant it’s my responsibility.”
“I don’t see any reason to leave a dog sitting in the house when I’m here all day and both of us can use the exercise.”
Casey waited for a reply, but Mike just threw the ball toward the back fence, much farther than she ever could. The hell with him, she thought, as she stomped back to the house. Mike could hide from any and all emotions his whole life for all she cared.
He apologized the next morning. “I’m sorry I snapped at you last night,” he said as she was heading toward the bathroom and he was heading down the stairs. “You don’t have to take care of Gus, but I appreciate you doing so.”
He was gone when she came down, leaving no trace of having had any breakfast. But then he hadn’t been eating at home for days now. All he used the house for was sleeping and bathing. Everything else, even playing with Gus, was done outside or off the property. She was going to have to show him that they could coexist here without going to such extremes of avoidance.
“There’s some stew warming on the stove,” Casey told him that evening. “You’re welcome to it.”
He’d been jogging with Gus. It was starting to snow outside and both of them had little snowflake sparkles flickering in their hair.
“I told you not to fix anything for me,” he said.
“I didn’t make any specifically for you,” she lied. “I just ended up with more than I’d planned on.”
He wiped his brow, avoiding direct eye contact with her. “Thank you, but I have to shower and get back to the station,” he said. “I’ll grab something along the way.”
“Fast food?”
“Cop food,” he said.
By the weekend they’d begun writing notes to each other—short, clipped and to-the-point missives tacked with magnets to the refrigerator door.
“Faucet on kitchen sink leaking. Mr. Slocum coming to fix it.” She didn’t bother signing it.
“Thank you.” Mike didn’t sign his note, either. In fact, he just wrote on the bottom of hers.
“There’s some blueberry muffins in the bread box.”
“Thanks anyway.”
“Gus was limping this morning. I think he got ice between his toes.”
“I’ll keep an eye on it.”
“Why are there cop cars driving by so often? Do you think I’m going to steal something?”
“How do you know how often they drive by? Aren’t you supposed to be writing this family history?”
To be truthful, this had been the most unproductive week Casey could ever remember. With Dubber’s help, she’d gotten more boxes of letters and diaries and photo albums from the attic, but she’d barely made sense of a tenth of it. She just couldn’t concentrate. And Simon didn’t help. After all the trouble he’d caused, there hadn’t been a trace of him all week.
Mike must really have been hurt by Darcy to avoid even casual relationships. He reminded her of Midnight, who’d been so leery of everybody right after Casey had found the cat. But then she thought of Mike—broad shoulders, the most tempting lips and hands that promised to keep her safe. Maybe the comparison of him to her cat had been a little off, but he was still carrying scars from his hurts. She knew that much was true.
It started snowing while Mike was patrolling I-94, just a few flakes blowing across the highway, but by the time he got home in the late afternoon, there were a couple of inches covering the driveway.
In normal times, he would have just left it to shovel tomorrow—if then. The Randalls had a new riding lawnmower-snowplow that Dubber was anxious to break in. In normal times Mike would’ve used his free time to take a walk with Gus.
But these were not normal times. And since Casey was in the house Mike was out here shoveling his drive, with Gus lying at the edge of the yard relaxing and watching winter come in.
His neighbors must be figuring he’d lost it, since Dubber had already made the rounds announcing their new machine and his increased capacity to keep drives and sidewalks clean. But Mike didn’t care, not one bit.
“The whole neighborhood should learn to mind their own damn business,” he muttered to Gus.
Gus showed how well he could mind his own business by totally ignoring Mike and his words.
“Hell,” Mike said. “No one’s talking to me anymore.”
He paused a moment to straighten up and glare down the driveway. The damn thing was made of some strange, space-age material. Once a little snow fell on it, the whole thing tripled in size. If he had any brains he’d quit right now and leave the whole thing for Dubber tomorrow.
But if he’d had any brains, he wouldn’t be in the pickle he was in. He wouldn’t have let Casey stay the way he had. Or he wouldn’t let her get to him the way she did.
There was no reason to make it personal. She’d needed a safe harbor and Myrna had wanted a family history. If he’d had any brains, he would have just done what Myrna wanted—kept an eye on Casey while she burrowed through boxes and trunks, gathering her data. Watch over her but keep a professional distance, like any good cop would.
Sure, he might be affected physically by her. And he had been—slightly. Maybe a little more than slightly. But that was no reason to let her under his skin. That had been totally unprofessional.
If he’d had any brains, Mike would just put everything back to normal. Do all the things that two adults living in the same house would do. Eat together, if it worked out. Say a few words about the weather. Be polite. Be civil.
“Yo, Mike!”
Mike turned and saw Ed Kramer’s police cruiser stop at the foot of the drive. Mike sauntered down.
“Been keeping an eye on the place like you asked,” Ed said. “No sign of anything.”
“It’s been quiet while I’ve been around, too.” Maybe because he was careful to avoid being in the
same room with Casey. He shook his head to put his mind back on the right road. “Maybe Myrna was overreacting.”
“Better to be safe than sorry,” Ed said. “It ain’t no trouble to take a few extra passes down the street”
“I appreciate it.”
Ed put the car in gear. “No problem. Don’t want nothing to happen to your little lady.”
“Hey!” Mike cried. “She’s not my—”
But Ed had already pulled away. What was with everyone in this town? Couldn’t they accept the fact that there might be some single, unattached people around who were happy that way? And Mike was one of them.
He turned and walked back up the drive. “I don’t suppose you’d want to go for a walk?” he asked Gus.
His dog gave him a dirty look and let out a few low growls.
“Just a walk, big guy. A short and slow one.”
Along with a growl, Gus showed him some teeth. Damn, the dog had never been such a grump before. Maybe there was a Christmas ghost in the house; everybody sure was on edge.
Nothing had happened last year, but then he and Gus had only been in the house a few weeks before the Christmas season hit. Maybe the ghost—assuming he existed—was shy. Or else he wanted to let them settle in before he came around, whining and moaning about what a hard life he’d had.
Mike wished the thing would come out in the open, someplace where he could have a few words with him. Mike would explain how life was hard and then you died, so he should quit his bitching. Of course, Casey would leap to the ghost’s defense if he did that, saying the thing was grumpy because he’d had a true love but lost her.
“It’d take a woman to come up with some cockamamie nonsense like that,” Mike murmured.
Gus just grunted.
Hell, it might not be male, anyway. Did ghosts have genders? How did anyone know, if they couldn’t be seen? Or did people assume that since a ghost was the spirit of someone who’d lived before, it had to be the same sex it had been when alive? And if it had a specific gender, did it get the hots for a ghost of the opposite sex? Did ghosts make love? Could they if they wanted tò?
Mike shook his head and threw the snow shovel up by the side of the house. “I need to get something to eat,” he said to Gus. “My empty stomach is making me so lightheaded, I’m starting to think all weird. You want to come along?”
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