The Last Kiss Goodbye (2 page)

The thought steadied her.

“Where have you been?” If there was a snap in her tone, he had earned it, simply because he had somehow managed to make her care about the answer. Still, afraid her question might reveal how stupidly involved with him she had become, she would have taken it back if she could have.

“Missed me bad, hmm?” Garland swung his long legs off the couch and sat up. Under other circumstances, Charlie would have given a dirty look to the scuffed cowboy boots that he hadn’t seemed to have any qualms about planting on her pristine couch. But ghost boots—she was pretty sure that they didn’t leave marks.

Anyway, the smirk in the grin he directed at her was way more annoying than the boots on the linen, so she directed her dirty look right into his twinkling baby blues before turning on her heel and walking away.

“Nope.” She hadn’t missed him one bit, she told herself. She threw the reply over her shoulder as she reached the hall and headed toward the kitchen, past the old-fashioned staircase that led to the second floor. Standing up, he followed her. She was wearing nothing more exciting than a silky white sleeveless blouse and a pair of well-tailored black slacks with heels, a little dressier than her usual attire because Tony had been taking her out to dinner but nothing special. Still, she could feel Garland’s eyes on her, and strongly suspected that he was watching her trim backside with appreciation as she walked. Casting a quick, suspicious glance over her shoulder, she tried to catch him at it, but he was (a) too quick, (b) too wily, or (c) just too damned lucky to get caught. As their eyes met, he grinned at her.

“Liar,” he said.

She snorted, shaking her head in firm denial. Terrifying to think that having a ghost following her made her feel more fully alive than she had in days. Even more terrifying to realize that what she really wanted to do was turn around and walk right into his arms.

Which she couldn’t do, because he had no more substance than air. And which she wouldn’t do even if she could.

Because she truly wasn’t that self-destructive. She didn’t think.

Moonlight pouring through the kitchen windows—a tall, wide one that took up almost all the back wall behind the eating area, and a smaller one set into the top of the kitchen door—illuminated the white cabinets and stainless steel appliances and hardwood floor. She’d left the curtains in the front of the house closed, so no one could see in from the street. The kitchen blinds were raised all the way to the top of the windows, because there was no one living behind her to see in, and because she liked the view. As she stepped from the hall’s gloom into the silvery light, Charlie saw her reflection in the big window’s dark glass. Her chestnut brown hair hung in loose waves around her shoulders. Her fair skin was, as usual, pale, but her denim blue eyes looked kind of sultry because she had deliberately played them up with liner and shadow, which she almost never wore, and an extra coat or two of mascara. Her wide mouth looked full and soft, but more vulnerable than it should have, given that right after dinner she had freshly applied deep red (vampy) lipstick. That softly smudged look would be because, she realized belatedly, Tony had subsequently kissed all her lipstick off, so her lips were now both slightly swollen and bare. She was five-six, slender and fit at age thirty-two, and over the years a lot of guys had told her that she was beautiful. If she remained skeptical, it was because most of the time those same guys had been trying to talk her into the sack. Tonight, the makeup plus the three-inch heels made her look, um, sexier. Ordinarily she wore low-heeled, sensible shoes because the last thing she wanted to do was give off any kind of look-at-me-I’m-hot vibe. This almost daily exercise in discretion owed a lot to the fact that her usual work was carried out in a prison full of incarcerated men. Which was also why she customarily wore her hair up and minimal makeup. But tonight, for Tony, she’d made an effort. With, yes, the thought that she might allow their relationship to progress to the next level, as in, sleep with him. Because Tony was way handsome and because she really liked him and because she badly needed a normal, uncomplicated man-woman relationship in her life.

And because she’d feared—thought—that Garland was gone for good and she was determined to eradicate any lingering memories of him. Of
them
.

In the end, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to invite Tony in.

She’d already been sending him on his way when the blasting of her should-have-been-silent TV had reached her ears and caused her heart to swell with hope and hurried things along. Sex with Tony, she had decided somewhere between dinner and her front door, was something that just wasn’t going to happen. At least, not yet.

But Garland didn’t have to know that.

In fact, she wasn’t about to let Garland know that.

He was way too full of himself already.

Charlie suddenly realized that hers was the only reflection that she saw in the window, but Garland was right behind her. A lightning glance over her shoulder confirmed it: he was still there.

But to judge by what she could see in the window, she was alone. His reflection didn’t show up. And that would be because, in the physical world in which she and every other living creature existed, he did not.

Only she could see him.

“Admit it, Doc: you were worried about me.”

Charlie closed her eyes.

Worried about him.
That vastly understated the case. Truth was, when he had not shown back up after materializing for just long enough to take the killing blow meant for her, she had been sick with fear over him. Afraid that he had been sucked up into Eternity, and that she would never see him again.

The pain that had accompanied that fear had shown her how very vulnerable she had become where he was concerned. Now that he was back, she was determined to better guard her clearly way-too-susceptible heart.

Falling in love with him was not an option. In life he’d been the baddest of bad men, the convicted murderer of seven women, sentenced to death for horrible, brutal crimes.

And as sexy and charming as he might be, he was the exact same person in death.

That’s what she had to keep reminding herself of, even if some too-stupid-to-live part of her refused to accept it.

He claimed he was innocent. All the evidence said otherwise.

Even if, for the sake of argument, she allowed herself to believe in his innocence, believe that the exhaustive police investigation and all the evidence and the courts and the entire criminal justice system were plain wrong in his case, she still wasn’t about to let herself go where she feared their association was headed.

She wasn’t about to commit the ultimate folly of letting herself fall in love with him. No way, no how.

Bottom line was, he was dead, she was alive.

Whatever their relationship was or wasn’t, the hard truth was, there was absolutely no future in it.

If she let herself forget that, she deserved every bit of heartbreak that would be hurtling her way.

So get over being so ridiculously glad to see him already
.

Charlie opened her eyes. There she still was, looking at her own reflection in the kitchen window, with not so much as a glimmer to indicate that a gorgeous (dead) guy was standing right behind her.

“I was actually very comfortable with the idea that nature had finally taken its course with you.” She spoke over her shoulder, admirably cool, as she crossed to the light switch beside the back door and flipped on the kitchen light. A round oak table with four slat-back chairs stood in the eating area in front of the window. Because she had been away, the table was piled high with mail. Beyond it, out the window, she could see the tall, nodding shadows of the sunflowers that grew in a patch along her back fence. Backlit by moonlight, they were striping the grass with shifting lines of black. Beyond that, a thickly wooded mountainside formed an impenetrable wall of darkness as it rose to meet the night sky.

This old-fashioned, two-story white clapboard farmhouse with its gingerbread trim and wide front porch was the first real home she had ever had, and she loved it. Located on a quiet street at the edge of Big Stone Gap, Virginia, a coal mining town deep in the heart of Appalachia that was still reeling from the recession, it provided her with a much-needed respite from the daily grimness of her work at the prison, which perched like a vulture at the top of the mountain, overlooking the town. Decorating and furnishing it had been a project that she had enjoyed.

Until right this minute, when Garland’s presence suddenly seemed to fill it to bursting, she had never recognized that, with only her in it, the house had sometimes felt empty. No, strike that: lonely.

“Bullshit,” he said without heat, and the inescapable fact that he’d hit the nail on the head there made her lips tighten. Ignoring him, she crossed to the table with the intention of checking out her mail. He stopped in the kitchen doorway and, folding his arms over his chest, propped a broad shoulder against the jamb.
“Thank you for saving my life, Michael.”

His mocking falsetto earned him a narrow-eyed glance. But truth was, he
had
saved her life, and she was grateful.

“Thank you.” She turned her attention to the mail. Nothing like a fat stack of bills to provide a distraction.

“Michael,” he prompted. She could feel his eyes on her.

Ostensibly busy flipping through the pile of envelopes, she said nothing. The last time she had called him Michael—well, she wasn’t going there. She was going to forget that whole mind-blowingly sexy episode.

Yeah, right
.
Never gonna happen as long as you live.

Well, she was going to try.

“So, you shack up with FBI guy while I was gone?”

The question annoyed her. Actually, he annoyed her. Greatly.

In the process of tearing open an envelope, she flicked him a look. And lied. “Yes.”

“Your nose just grew, Pinocchio.”

“If you’re not going to believe me, why ask?”

“Good question.” He shrugged. “So why
aren’t
you shacking up with FBI guy?”

“Because, believe it or not, I don’t sleep with everything in pants,” she snapped before she thought. As a slow smile spread across his face, she felt like biting her tongue. Because, of course, she had slept with Garland. Sort of. As in, ghost sex. Again, it was complicated.

But whether or not it had been, in the strictest sense, real or not, it had definitely been the hottest sex of her life.

And she was not going there. Not again. Not even in her thoughts.

“I do believe it.” He crossed the kitchen to stand across the table from her. His big hands curled around a chair back. His steady gaze made her uncomfortable. She concentrated on the mail. “Thing is, I think I’m starting to know you pretty well. I think you’re a one-man woman, Doc.”

Her eyes snapped up to meet his. At what she saw for her there, she felt a wave of heat.

God, don’t let it show.

“You might be right,” she said with a false cordiality of which she was justifiably proud. “And if ever I find that man, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

His answering look made her foolish, reckless heart pick up its pace. Afraid of what he might read in her eyes, she let them drop to the square brown packing box that had been the next item of mail to come within reach of her hands. Damned tape—the box was swaddled in it. Clear and shiny, it was stubbornly resistant to all her attempts to breach it. Reaching for the small pair of scissors she kept along with items like pushpins and paper clips in a basket on the sideboard behind her, she cast another glance at him. She was just in time to watch him fade into translucence. Eyes widening, hand tightening convulsively around the scissors, she registered with a tingle of shock that she could absolutely see the rest of the kitchen through him. Even as she stared, he wavered, then started to solidify once more.

She was still struggling to wrap her mind around what she was seeing when he did it again.

“Might want to close your mouth, Doc. Damned if you don’t look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

That at least had the virtue of snapping her out of total immobility. Her lips met and firmed. Her eyes collided with his. “Funny.”

He seemed to look at her more closely. Of course, it was hard to tell when he was once again as diaphanous as smoke. “So what’s up?”

“You—you’re flickering.” Her mouth had gone dry. Wetting her lips, she tried to swallow.

He was returning to being almost—
almost
—solid-looking
. Oh, God
.

“Flickering?” He glanced down at himself. Seeming to notice nothing amiss—okay, he looked solid again, so why would he?—he lifted his eyebrows at her.

“Fading in and out. Like—like Tinkerbelle at the end of
Peter Pan.
You know, the Disney movie. When Tink was dying, and the children had to clap to bring her back.” The comparison made Charlie feel cold all over. She was so rattled that she was hardly making sense, she knew. Her eyes stayed glued to him: he’d started fading again as she spoke, and was now as insubstantial as a layer of chiffon, and rippling like one, too, if said chiffon had been caught in a breeze. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen an apparition flicker, but it was definitely the first time that the sight had made her heart lurch and her blood drain toward her toes.