The Last Kiss Goodbye (36 page)

Which was why, when Michael joined her in the restroom, she was braced for him to be ticked off at her. And she already knew that, his anger notwithstanding, she was going to hold to the course she had chosen, and not back down.

She was choosing Tony, and Michael was simply going to have to live (or not) with that.

So now Michael was in the bathroom scowling at her. “You got him thinking he’s going to get lucky tonight.”

Finishing with her lipstick, giving herself a final check in the mirror, Charlie turned to face him. No point in beating around the bush. The thing about it was, with Michael attached to her like a tail to a kite there no way he wasn’t going to know. Not only about Tony, but about everything she ever did in her life from that point on until either she died or he disappeared. The knowledge was unsettling. No, terrifying. But all she could do was find a way to deal with it—him—on terms she could live with.

“Maybe he is.” She gave him a level look. “I’m thinking about it.”

“What?” To say Michael looked astounded was an understatement.

“At some point, if my relationship with Tony continues, we’re going to have sex. I’m thinking about making it tonight.”

Astounded gave way to flabbergasted, which was replaced almost instantly by plain mad.

“The hell you are.”

“You don’t have anything to say about it. I’m telling you as a courtesy, so you can stay out of the way. In other words, if I go into a hotel room with Tony, you stay outside, got it?”

“In your fucking dreams.”

“I thought watching wasn’t your thing.”

“Baby, I’m telling you up front that if you go into a hotel room with Dudley with the intention of having sex with him, that’s going to turn into the most haunted hotel room you’ve ever been in in your life.”

Her brows snapped together. “Guess what, Casper: since I’m the only one who can see or hear you, if I simply shut my eyes and tune you out there’s nothing you can do.”

“Try me.”

“Oh, I’m going to. I get to have a life.”

His eyes narrowed at her. “You got turned on, didn’t you? In the bedroom earlier. I turned you on, and now you’re wanting to get your rocks off with Dudley. Just so we’re clear, that ain’t going to work for me.”

“You’re disgusting,” Charlie hissed at him, her cheeks flaming. She started walking toward him, because she wasn’t wasting any more breath arguing, and he was blocking the door.

“It’s the truth and you know it. I’m the guy you want to fuck, not him.”

“Get out of my way.”

He folded his arms over his chest. “Uh-uh.”

Her blood boiled. What he seemed to forget was that she could walk right through him, which was what she did, and the electric tingle be damned. Yanking open the door, she realized a couple of long strides beyond it that she was stalking instead of walking, and moderated her gait. By the time she reached the table, she was able to smile at Tony, who was signing the check and handing it back to the waiter, like all was right with her world, and never mind Michael’s honey-infused voice at her back growling, “You ever try eating a turkey sandwich when what you really want is a pizza? When you finish the sandwich, you’re still craving that pizza.”

Of course she didn’t reply.

“In case that went over your head, I’m the pizza.”

Oh, she’d gotten it, all right. And she still didn’t reply.

“Damn it, Charlie,” Michael said, planting himself in front of her. Narrowing her eyes at him, she veered around him. Walking through him was possible, as she’d just proven, but the truth was it was something she didn’t like to do.

“Hey.” Tony stood up as she reached the table. “This was dinner,” he said, smiling at her, and she remembered that they’d agreed to dinner as a first step in their take-it-slow pact. “Want to try for a dance before we go up?”

There was a cleared area on the far side of the patio, over by another ruffle of potted palms that almost hid the solid brick wall behind it. Couples were dancing there, eight or nine, ranging in age from young professionals to grandma and grandpa. Nothing fancy, no
Dancing with the Stars
glitz, simply all of them holding each other close as they swayed and turned and circled the floor to the music.

“You don’t want to do this,” Michael said.

“I’d love to,” Charlie told Tony with determination, and when he smiled at her and took her hand she followed him onto the dance floor and turned into his arms.

She had danced with him before, but only as part of working on a case. It had been a careful and formal dance, under the watchful eyes of Kaminsky and Buzz and a camera. This dance was different. This was her plastered right up against Tony, with his arm tight around her waist and his body hard and unmistakably masculine against hers. It was personal. It was romantic. It was
real.

“You look good,” Tony told her, his mouth close to her ear. “You smell good, too.”

“Thank you,” Charlie said. She tipped her head back to smile at him. The moonlight made his eyes seem very dark as he met her glance, and highlighted the lean hard bones of his face. He looked good. He
felt
good. He
was
good. Really, what was not to fall in love with?

“You actually think you can have a relationship with him? You can’t even tell him about the things you see,” Michael spoke in her ear. “You’re afraid to tell him that you’ve got a voodoo priestess friend who’s saying you’re in danger. He has no idea that you’re looking at a ghost over there in the corner who’s got half his head blown away. And we both know you’re sure as hell never going to tell him about me.”

Of course Michael was going to be a pain in the ass. So what else was new? Yes, she did see the spirit in the corner, a young man standing over an upscale-looking sixty-ish couple talking earnestly over dinner, who clearly had no idea he was there. But so what? She saw ghosts all the time, and this particular one was keeping his distance, and that meant he was none of her business. Just like what she told or didn’t tell Tony was none of Michael’s business.

As a movement of the dance turned her around, she glared at Michael over Tony’s shoulder. And mouthed
, “Go away
.”

“So tell me how you came to be an FBI agent,” she said to Tony. Manhunting 101: get the guy to talk about himself. It had been a while, but she remembered the drill. Anyway, he knew all (well, almost all) about her from the damned background check he’d run on her. If she was going to start a real relationship with him, it would probably be a good idea to learn a little more about what made him tick.

“It was either be an FBI agent or a lawyer,” Tony said. “What would you do?”

She laughed. “FBI, definitely.”

His arm tightened around her waist. They were swaying together, turning a little, basic box step stuff. His cheek—she thought it was his cheek, but it could have been his lips—brushed her hair.

“There you go,” he said. “They lured me in with the great government salary. And the hours. Then they clenched the deal when they told me that occasionally people might shoot at me with a gun.”

She laughed again. She
liked
him. And she felt safe with him. Those were two sturdy pillars on which to begin to build a relationship
. I can do this,
she told herself, as the prospect of the normal life she had always wanted but been afraid to reach for shimmered tantalizingly in her mind’s eye. All she had to do was keep her mouth shut about the woo-woo stuff in her life, pretend it (most especially Michael) didn’t exist, and she could build her own future just the way she wanted it.

“So did you pick your own team, or were Buzz and Kaminsky assigned to you?” Charlie asked. Tony’s hand slid down below her waist, not quite to her butt but getting there. He wasn’t quite as tall as—he was tall enough so that they weren’t crotch to crotch, but she could still feel what was going on below his waist, and registered it with an interested tingle.

“Didn’t your mama ever tell you that classy women don’t let men feel them up on the dance floor?” Michael’s drawl had an edge to it. He was behind Tony again, so all she had to do was look over Tony’s shoulder to see all six-foot-three infuriating inches of him.

She turned her head instead to admire the clean line of Tony’s jaw.

“Crane was assigned to me,” Tony told her. “Kaminsky was a cop when Crane recommended we use her for a case because she speaks fluent Bulgarian, which we needed. She did an amazing job, not only with the language but with everything. So I told her that if she joined the Bureau, I’d hire her. She did and I did.”

Those were definitely Tony’s lips brushing her ear, Charlie thought, and then nuzzling the hollow below it. The sensation was pleasant, and as she closed her eyes to enjoy it she could feel herself warming up inside. Sliding her hand along the width of his shoulder, she enjoyed that sensation, too. Beneath the smoothness of his shirt, his shoulder felt muscular and firm to the touch, just like the body she was pressed against felt muscular and firm. She moved a little, wriggling experimentally, and as her breasts pushed harder into his chest she felt a pleasurable little throb.

“Babe, you shouldn’t ought to have to work that hard to get turned on. Why don’t you give up and admit that Dudley ain’t lighting your fire tonight?”

Charlie’s eyes shot open. Michael was behind Tony, watching her like a hawk hunting for rodents. His tone was mocking, but the skin over his cheekbones was hard and tight as he focused on her face.

She glared at him. Then she turned her face into Tony’s neck and pressed her lips to the smooth warm skin there. It felt good. She was
definitely
getting turned on.

“Charlie,” Tony whispered huskily, and she lifted her head and he kissed her mouth. Not a full-out kiss, because they were, after all, on a dance floor, but more of a tasting.

She liked it.

Crash.

The noise was so unexpected that Charlie jumped. So did everyone else, including Tony, whose arms dropped away from her as his hand shot behind his back toward where, she imagined, he had stashed his gun, probably in his waistband. Looking through all the moving shadows that played across the patio, she saw that one of the hurricane lanterns had fallen from its stand to shatter into a million ruby red shards on the stone at the edge of the dance floor.

She saw, too, that Michael was standing next to the stand where, seconds before, the lantern had flickered. Her eyes widened. Was it possible that he had … ? As she remembered the remote he’d learned to work, and the computer he’d managed to operate, and the two or three occasions when he’d actually manifested for a few seconds in solid form, her blood pressure skyrocketed. Yes, she grimly answered her own question, it was possible. In fact, knocking that hurricane lantern from its stand was exactly what he had done.

“Yo, babe.” Seeing her eyes on him, Michael gave her an insolent little wave.

With Tony able to see her, there was no possible response she could make.

“Whoa,” Tony said. His hand had never actually reached his gun, and now it slid around her waist again. “I didn’t realize the wind was that strong.”

“Me either.” Charlie only registered that her tone was acerbic after the words had left her mouth. By then, there was nothing she could do.

The music, which was piped in rather than live, hadn’t stopped, and as a server ran off, presumably for a broom, everybody started dancing again. Tony pulled her back into his arms, and Charlie nestled there, determined to re-establish the sensual buildup exactly where she’d left off.

Tony seemed to be on the same page. “You’ve got the softest skin,” he murmured, dropping a kiss on her shoulder.

Crash.

Charlie didn’t even jump this time. She’d been expecting it. But Tony did, at least enough to let her go and look around at the second hurricane lantern to crash to the ground.

The dancing stopped as everyone around them once again stared at the broken glass.

“I can do this all night long,” Michael called to her.

Every muscle in Charlie’s body hummed with tension. She caught herself glaring at him, and instantly forced the anger from her face.

Two can play at that game,
was the thought she sent winging Michael’s way.

“It
is
getting windy. Why don’t we go on up?” she said sweetly to Tony. And took his hand.

The flaring of Tony’s eyes was the ocular equivalent of a
hell, yes
fist pump: as Michael had so maddeningly put it, Tony thought he was about to get lucky. It was only there for the briefest of instants, but Charlie saw it and was conscious of feeling slightly nettled. She knew masculine sex-on-the-brain when she saw it, and Tony was exhibiting classic symptoms.

Which, she told herself, was exactly what she wanted.

“Good idea,” was what Tony said, his voice perfectly bland, his eyes now no more than warmly encouraging.

Men,
she thought savagely, and smiled at him as they walked hand in hand to the elevators.