by Vivi Andrews
Lucy Cartwright was no sex goddess. When men described her, they used words like cute and sweet. She was adorable and domestic. And she had long since learned that the bad boys she lusted after took one look at her good-girl dimples and ran for the hills.
When she tried to be sexy, she looked and felt ridiculous, so she giggled. Sexy women did not giggle. They had throaty, sexy voices and throaty, sexy laughs. They probably had sexily scarred vocal chords from all the post-coital cigarettes they were smoking. Lucy was not a smoker—which seemed to mean both no lung cancer and no sex.
Some women were Aphrodite and some women were Martha Stewart. Unfortunately, Martha Stewart never got laid. Please God, why wasn’t Jake Cox a gigolo?
Lucy slipped past the eye-candy in her kitchen, set the timer and shoved the muffin tray into the oven. Then she heard him breathing. He’s allowed to breathe, dammit, she told her hormones, but they weren’t listening. They were already summoning up fantasies involving breathing. And panting. And gasping.
So Lucy gasped, and swore, as her hand brushed the hot oven rack. She snatched her hand out of the oven, mentally cursing her stupidity, and slammed the door closed.
“Did you burn yourself?” Jake demanded, stepping forward and immediately taking control.
He caught her wrist and held it up for inspection. Seeing the vivid red welt rising on the back her hand, he tugged her over to the sink and turned on the faucet with a single-minded economy of movement that was somehow indescribably hot.
Dear God, I’m doomed. Even his first aid is sexy.
He temperature-tested the tap with his own hand before thrusting her burn beneath the cool, running water. “Keep it there,” he ordered, already on his way to the freezer. He was back a moment later, a clean dishtowel wrapped around a bundle of ice. “Here, let me see.”
He gently took her wrist and drew her hand out of the water, cautiously inspecting the burn. His attention was so focused, so intent, as he brushed the soft skin around the burn with his fingertips, careful not to touch the wound itself. He bent and blew cool air on her hand before gently pressing the ice pack over it, his concentration complete. Lucy couldn’t help but wonder if he would bring that focus and intensity to everything he did. A delicious shiver ran down her spine.
“I know it’s cold,” he said, and Lucy was relieved he didn’t suspect the real reason for her shivering—she was embarrassed enough already. “You need to keep it on there for twenty minutes or so.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
Jake shook his head abruptly, rejecting her gratitude. “My fault. I shouldn’t have been distracting you while you were cooking.”
“You weren’t distracting me,” Lucy lied, knowing she was blushing. Again.
“No?” He arched his eyebrows skeptically then reached up to brush the back of one finger against her cheek. “You have flour all over your face.”
Lucy winced internally. Great. Now, not only was she as red as a turnip, she had the distinction of being a blotchy, flour-coated turnip with a propensity for burning herself. Oh yeah, he wasn’t going to be able to keep his hands off her now.
She waited for him to laugh at her. She waited for him to turn away, writing her off as ridiculous. She waited…until he tipped her chin up, forcing her to meet his eyes. Eyes that didn’t look mocking or superior, but rather curiously intent.
Oh my.
He brushed at the clinging flour on her cheeks, his calloused hands tentatively caressing. Lucy gazed up at him, trying to remember how to breathe, or think, or do anything other than stare at him with her heart in her throat and her stomach down around her toes. They were standing near the oven, but Lucy had a feeling the burning sensation rippling along her skin had more to do with the mountain of solid muscle in front of her than the oven behind. He smiled gently, his hands still cradling her face. “Even without the flour, you look pretty damn edible,” he murmured, his voice low and intimate.
The world slowed and tightened until they were the only two people in it, and time was frozen in that thick moment when she knew he was about to kiss her. She stood paralyzed, hopeful, but not allowing herself to hope.
He bent toward her slowly, his gorgeous black eyes shuttered by thick black lashes. Lucy’s eyes fell closed and she held herself perfectly still, desperate, waiting. When his lips finally touched hers, it was like putting a spark to a fast-burning fuse. A fuse attached to a stick of dynamite.
Lucy dove recklessly into the kiss, arching against him shamelessly. The first tentative brush of his mouth instantly became an urgent, open-mouthed exchange. She wound her arms around his shoulders and he gripped her butt in both hands, lifting her to get a better angle on her mouth, a better angle of her body pressed against his.
As soon as her feet left the floor, Lucy looped her legs around his waist, locking her ankles at the small of his back. Jake took two steps across the kitchen and pinned her against the refrigerator, the cool, smooth surface teasing her exposed shoulder blades where the spaghetti straps of her sundress left them bare. Lucy gave a little groan of pure, unadulterated lust, her hormones throwing an orgiastic party when Jake immediately echoed it. Now, this is how a gigolo behaves.
Jake grabbed the knees squeezing his waist with both hands and shifted her slightly for better access. The combination of his fingers teasing the sensitive skin at the backs of her knees and the sudden, grinding friction of his jeans where she wanted it the most was nearly enough to send her off right there. Lucy let her head fall back against the refrigerator, her eyes closing in anticipation of bliss as she sent a little prayer of thanks to the gods of nookie.
Jake immediately took advantage of the exposed line of her throat, his hands sliding slowly up her thighs as his mouth slid deliciously down her neck. Lucy dug her fingers into his muscular shoulders as his hands found their way beneath the skirt of her sundress. Deft fingers teased her through the soaked fabric of her panties and Lucy heard bells. She’d always thought that hearing bells was a metaphor, but apparently she just hadn’t met Jake Cox, because the ringing in her head was very real. And loud as hell.
He stilled, his mouth pressed against the pulse point at her throat and his hands teasing the gates of heaven. His muscles clenched and he groaned, sounding pained rather than pleased. “Lucy.”
“Hmmm?” Lucy tried to shimmy her hips to get him back into action, but he wasn’t moving, and since he was the only thing holding her up, neither was she.
“Shit, Lucy,” he groaned, bracketing her hips with his hands to keep her still as his forehead dropped to her shoulder. “We need to stop this.”
“Mm-hmm,” Lucy moaned agreeably, grabbing his head and pulling his mouth back to hers for another kiss. She sent her tongue exploring, every ounce of willpower she possessed focused on making Jake forget whatever had made him stop. When he broke away, they were both breathing hard, the sound of their panting pierced by the shrill ringing of Lucy’s imaginary bells.
Then she smelled the smoke. She knew that Jake was hot, but surely even he couldn’t set kitchens on fire with just his presence.
“My muffins!”
With a dismount worthy of an Olympic gymnast, Lucy launched herself across the room, pausing only to grab an oven mitt before throwing open the oven door. “Crapadelic. They’re burnt.”
Jake was still standing with his arms braced against the refrigerator door. Lucy turned off the timer, whose persistent ringing had derailed them, and dropped the slightly crisp muffins onto the cooling rack. She ducked under his arm and slid between the mountain of warm, coiled muscle and the cool refrigerator door.
Lucy placed her hands on his chest and slid them slowly downward. “Where were we?”
Jake caught her hands before she could get to anything good, pulling them off his abs and holding her in front of him so the only point of contact was his hands manacling her wrists. “No, Luce.”
His words landed like a slap. Lucy flinched. “No?”
Jake groane
d, closing his eyes. “I’m glad the buzzer went off,” he ground out. “God knows I needed something to stop me. Karma… I shouldn’t have… We shouldn’t have...” He shook his head abruptly, as if trying to clear it. Then suddenly he released her, quickly moving to the opposite side of the kitchen. “I’m sorry,” he bit out sharply. “It won’t happen again.”
“It won’t?” Lucy knew the pathetic, desperate whining tone had crept back into her voice, but she couldn’t help it. She wanted it to happen again. She needed it to happen again. He couldn’t just get her all hot and bothered and then walk away without fulfilling even one little fantasy. Could he?
Apparently he could. He turned and headed toward the living room, pausing in the doorway, but not even turning to face her as he said, “I think it’s best if we aren’t in the same room. Just come find me when Mellman shows up.”
“Jake, come on,” she called, but he was already gone. “Crap.”
Lucy stood in the middle of her kitchen, glaring at a pan of overcooked muffins, the refrigerator she would never be able to open without having sexual frustration flashbacks, and the timer that had ruined her afternoon. A few minutes later, her agitation calmed enough that she was able to think again.
Her first coherent thought was that she had just tried to mount her boss’s brother in the middle of her kitchen while he was sort of on the job. Her sexual frustration had officially reached pathetic levels. With her luck, he’d probably report back to Karma about the attack of the nympho medium.
Lucy moaned. “Just kill me now.”
Chapter Five: The Accountant Nightlight
At two-twenty in the morning, Lucy lay in her bed trying to think of the Buddha. Or other Zen thoughts that did not involve stripping out of her navy silk pajamas and running naked into the living room, where Jake had crashed out on her couch. Attacking the poor, unsuspecting PI in a lustful frenzy probably wouldn’t go over well. Even if it would be a great—sweaty, orgasmic—way to pass the time until he could interrogate her sex-crazed ghost.
The Buddha was not helping.
Lucy twisted around in her bed, silk rasping sensuously against her skin and definitely not helping with her persistent hormonal urges. She should have slept in jeans. Or cargo pants. Anything that was not slippery and oh-so-easy to slip out of.
Lucy rolled over and punched her pillow, burrowing down under the covers and wondering exactly how long she was going to have to suffer before Eliot Mellman arrived to put her out of her misery.
She didn’t have to wait long.
A thump sounded in the darkness of her room. Lucy sat up and spun toward the sound, half expecting—hoping—to see Jake. Ghosts couldn’t thump. At least, most ghosts couldn’t. Moving physical objects was beyond most of them.
Eliot Mellman, it turned out, could thump things.
He hadn’t been very big in life; his image was rail thin and not quite five and a half feet tall. His posture was apologetic, as if he couldn’t be more aware of the unwelcome intrusion his presence would always be. In death, he still wore thick glasses and his hair was parted down the middle and flattened down with gel in what was possibly the least-flattering style ever invented.
Eliot stood at the foot of her bed, looking sheepishly at the ottoman he had tripped over.
And glowing.
Lucy blinked in surprise.
Only the strongest of ghosts gave off any sort of illumination. Eliot was better than a nightlight. He was glowing brightly enough to cast eerie greenish shadows on the wall.
As a man, Eliot Mellman had been stepped on so many times Lucy was amazed she couldn’t see footprints. As a ghost, he was Godzilla.
Lucy wondered idly if all murder victims had firefly tendencies, which reminded her of Jake Cox sleeping on her couch. Time to get to work.
Lucy smiled soothingly at the newly dead man at her feet. “Eliot?”
Even if Cox hadn’t told her in advance, she would have known Eliot’s name. The name and circumstances of death just sort of came with the ghost, like a tag on a Christmas gift. In Eliot’s case, the image she got of the death was a little off—like a photo of frantic movement that only showed blurry lines of activity, red-tinted and vague. Lucy usually got a nice crisp snapshot of those last moments, but for all she knew, all murders were red and unfocused.
Eliot twitched and looked up at his name, clearly surprised to be noticed at all, let alone known. “Yes?”
When he didn’t immediately segue into a pick-up line, Lucy realized there was something different about Eliot Mellman. For one thing, he wasn’t trying to mount her.
“Do you know what has happened to you, Eliot?” she asked cautiously. Some ghosts knew they were dead. Some didn’t. She was betting Eliot was one of the latter, judging by his unchanged hangdog posture.
“I died?”
Okay, so he was in category number one. “You remember what happened to you?” Jake hadn’t told her what he needed to ask Eliot, but she figured that question had to be on the list and she wanted Eliot to be comfortable with his new phase of existence before Jake started interrogating him.
“I was murdered.” Eliot slumped a little more, pathetic and dejected. “I knew something was up,” he mumbled. “She’d never been interested in me before, but I wanted to believe she was on the level. I just wanted to believe that someone could want me, you know?”
Lucy suddenly realized why Eliot’s death had been a blur of frenzied activity. She felt her face heating in a blush, but managed to keep any trace of her shock and embarrassment out of her voice. “So, she, uh, she…” Lucy coughed and cleared her throat. “She…that is…ah…”
“Fucked me to death like a praying mantis. Murder mid-coitus. Bitch didn’t even let me come first.”
Lucy choked. This was a whole new level of sexual frustration. “So, you, uh, you know who did it?”
“Who murdered me? Big Joe Morrissey, probably.”
He said it so matter-of-factly that Lucy was momentarily taken aback. Like he was talking about the results of a ballgame that was of no personal interest to him. It was only his murder, after all. Then she realized what he had said.
“Joe?” Something wasn’t adding up here.
“Yep,” Eliot said mournfully. “Candy never opens her legs without Big Joe’s say so. I thought he was rewarding me, but I guess that was just wishful thinking. Poisoned pussy.”
Lucy felt her eyes bulging out. “Poisoned?”
“Figure of speech,” Eliot assured her. “She stabbed me with this needle thing she pulled out of her hair.” He continued before she could formulate a coherent sentence. “It sucks, I guess. Being dead.”
Lucy pulled herself together, blocking out the Fatal Attraction film reel running in her mind. “Right. You’re right. It sucks. And I’d like to talk to you about that. Um, in a minute. Right now, there’s someone else who needs to talk to you. About Big Joe Morrissey.”
Eliot heaved a dramatic sigh. “I figured you were only talking to me because of Big Joe. Just like her.”
Lucy hadn’t ever been compared to a murdering fuck-puppet before, but she tried not to take it personally. Death could be very trying, so she gave Eliot the benefit of the doubt. She smiled sincerely and swore, “Eliot, it isn’t like that at all. You are my primary concern. It’s just there is someone else who needs your help. With Big Joe.”
“Uh-huh.” Eliot muttered, clearly not believing a word of it. He eyed her forlornly. “I should have known a super-hot girl like you would never be interested in me for me.”
Lucy knew that she should not have been flattered by that comment. She should have been immune to ghostly flattery, laughed it off and called Jake in.
That’s what she should have done.
Instead, she blushed and smiled and toyed with the sheet that had fallen across her lap. There was something inexplicably appealing about Eliot’s compliment—rooted as it was in his own depression and insecurity. She wasn’t usually moved by her ghosts’ attempts to
woo her, but then she didn’t usually spend her days lusting after ridiculously masculine men who were not, in fact, gigolos sent to pleasure her senseless. She was horny. She was frustrated. And her self-esteem needed the boost.
So instead of calling in Jake and getting down to business, Lucy preened and said, “What a silly thing to say, Eliot. You seem like a wonderful man, er, ghost. I’m sure if we had time to get to know one another then I would find you far more interesting than Big Joe Morrissey.”
Eliot wandered over to stand at the side of her bed, running ghostly fingers along the lampshade in an endearingly timid way. “Really?”
“Really.” It wasn’t even a lie. The murderer-pimp didn’t really sound like her type.
The change in Eliot was immediate. The melancholy accountant pulled back his shoulders and shot her an oily smile. “So, what’s your name, baby?” he asked in the same too-slick tone she had heard coating a dozen pick-up lines from countless dead businessmen.
But instead of rolling her eyes, Lucy smiled at the clueless accountant. “I’m Lucy. I’m a medium. I’m here for you, Eliot.”
“You don’t care about Big Joe?”
She knew she was using this sweet, pathetic ghost to feel better about herself, but she couldn’t make herself stop. What would a little harmless flirtation hurt, anyway? She was making Eliot feel better. That was her job. Sort of. And it wasn’t as if she were lying.
“I don’t care about Big Joe, at all,” she vowed. “If it were up to me, we’d just forget all about that nasty murder business and get straight to talking about you. Unfortunately, there are some other people who are real sticklers about murder and they’d like to have a few words with you.”
“I just want you,” he whispered wetly into her ear.
Lucy had been fidgeting with the sheet, feeling a little guilty about using poor Eliot, and hadn’t noticed him leaning in to close the deal. At the sound of his voice directly beside her, she looked up and found him looming over her in full Casanova mode—his neck stretched out like a turtle peeking out from his shell and his lips puckered out in a fish face.
