Page 33 of Crazy Spooky Love

“No,” I say, swiping my cheeks with the heels of my palms. “It’s nothing like that.

Just a hard couple of days in the office.

” I could elaborate. I could say I spent yesterday morning locked in a dark cellar and then have been immersed in Agnes Scarborough’s grief ever since, but I don’t because I can’t face going over it all again now.

She looks for a moment as if she might be about to say, “I told you so,” but if she was, she thinks better ofit.

“No one said it would be easy,” she says, and then she places her hand briefly on my cheek. It’s enough to sootheme.

I amble back up the cobbled alley at the side of Blithe Spirits a few minutes later, warmed by the late-evening sunshine on my back and the comforting thought of a deep, hot bath.

Lestat can’t get to me in the bathroom. I’m miles away, planning how best to manage the night so that I get some proper, contented baby sleep, and I don’t notice that there’s someone leaning against my office door until I’m almost standing in front of them.

In front of him. In front of Fletcher Gunn.

“Cute dog,” he says.

I stall for a second, confused. If he is trying to compliment me, then he needs to go back to dating school because that was actually quite insulting.

Then I remember Lestat, but he is a long way from anyone’s definition of cute and he’s not even here; I left him snoozing in the office while I nipped round to return Mum’s dish.

Then, finally, I remember the video clip I texted to Fletch, of the dog relieving himself on Fletch’s face.

“You seemed to require evidence that I have a dog so I sent you some.”

He’s doing that lounging-against-the-door-with-one-foot-up thing again. He must be fresh from work because he’s rocking that sexy, end-of-a-hard-day, ruling-the-world-with-the-rolled-up-shirt-sleeves look he excelsat.

“I got you something.” He pulls a lime-green pooper-scooper from behind his back and holds it out to me. “In case your dog gets the urge to shit on my face next time.”

Maybe it’s because I’ve had a traumatic day, but I’m as touched as I am annoyed. “You old romantic,” I say. “I’ll think of you every time I use it.”

He studies my face and frowns. “Have you been crying, Ghostbuster?”

“No.” I roll my eyes. “I just took part in the world onion-chopping competition. I won.”

“Congratulations. What’s the prize?”

I cast around for an answer. “A year’s supply of shallots. I’m going to pickle them.”

He laughs softly under his breath. “You’re a terrible liar,” he says.

“And you’re a terrible gift-giver,” I say, looking at the neon plastic scoop.

“I can be more romantic,” he offers, and I just look at him because I absolutely cannot read his expression.

His eyes are shaded by the long, evening shadows cast by the building, but something about the sigh that leaves his lips tells me his day has probably been as trying as mine.

I don’t move a muscle when he reaches out and strokes the back of his fingers along my jaw.

I can’t move a muscle, because he’s rendered me temporarily catatonic with lust. As long as he stops there, it’ll be okay.

I’ll recover the power of speech in a second and we can both forget this ever happened.

I can hear cars down on High Street in the distance and catch enticing wafts of take-away restaurants firing up for the evening, but back here Fletch and I are suspended in our own little world.

“I knew your skin would feel like that,” he says. “Too soft for all of your hard edges.”

I frown. “I don’t have hard edges.”

“Yes, you do. You’re all sharp edges and sarcasm and trouble, but your skin isn’t playing your games. It’s smooth and warm, and it likes me much better than the rest of you does.”

And he says I’m trouble? “My skin dislikes you every bit as much as the rest of me does,” I say, but it’s a lie.

It’s not even a white lie for someone else’s benefit, certainly not for his.

It’s an outright lie to myself. Not that it’s very effective, because he’s just opened his hand and cupped my jaw and my skin feels like it is actually sparkling.

My skin is swooning. My head isn’t, and my heart isn’t, but my skin is experiencing a severe sensory malfunction.

It’s flirting with Fletcher Gunn like a dog in heat.

“What about your mouth, Bittersweet?” he says.

Jesus, I think I’ve just stepped closer to him. I look down at my feet in alarm and issue them a direct order: Fall back, you fools! Fall back!

He runs an experiential thumb across my bottom lip.

I consider biting it, but he might be one of those people who gets excited by rough stuff and will drag me upstairs by my hair, or something.

So, instead of biting him, I sort of sigh and part my lips, which to him probably looks like an invitation to carry on, when I intended it to signal boredom.

It surely doesn’t signal boredom, because as he’s already observed, I’m a terrible liar, and I’m not bored at all.

“What about my mouth?” It sounded forthright and challenging in my head, but it slides from my lips on a breathy whisper.

Fletcher Gunn just turned me girlie. I am Marilyn Monroe on my own doorstep, and he’s just splayed his hand on the small of my back and swayed me into him.

Oh my God! My body is against his, and he’s dipping his head, and I know I should call a halt to this, but reading Agnes’s diary has left me raw and vulnerable, and right now this gentleman definitely does not prefer blondes in white, flippy dresses.

He favors short, snarky brunettes in jeans and Flintstones T-shirts.

I’d stop him, but he’s holding my face between both of his hands now, and it is so suddenly incredibly sexy that I feel as if all of my bones have just melted into my Converse.

I want him to kiss me. I want to kiss him.

He’s so close his breath mingles with mine.

I close my eyes and lay my palm flat over his heart; I can feel its steady beat beneath the smooth cotton of his shirt.

He’s quite a lot taller than me, and there is something in the way he bends his head to my level, in how the muscles of his shoulders bunch as he cups my face that makes me the one who closes the space between our lips, not him.

I stretch up on my tiptoes to meet him, and the kiss he gives me in reply is so very, very slow and sensual that I slide my other hand around the back of his neck and stroke his hair.

He barely moves, as if he is containing himself.

It’s the stillest of kisses; he opens my lips with the briefest brush of his tongue and lowers one warm hand to cover mine on his chest. His heartbeat quickens, and when I slide my tongue between his lips he makes this little moan in his throat that is hands-down the hottest sound I’ve ever heard.

It’s guttural, and primal, and he isn’t so still anymore.

His fingers slide around my head and fist in my hair, and the uptick in tempo makes me want to climb him like a tree, to wrap myself around him and stay there.

He tips my head back to drag his lips down my neck and—there’s no other word for it—it’s masterful.

I’ll think of a better word for it later because that is entirely too bodice-ripper for a badass businesswoman like me, but masterful covers it perfectly because he overwhelms my senses with his mouth and his hands and his low, sexy moans.

“Bittersweet?”

He says my name and I sink my teeth into his bottom lip. From the way he cradles my head I’d say he liked it, and his shallow breathing tells me that he’s just as into this as Iam.

“Hmm?” I can’t form words, because he’s kissed them all away.

If he asks me if he can take me to bed, I am absolutely going to say “Yes please, do it right here and now, my bedroom is just this way.” I’m already pulling him upstairs in my head.

“Your dog is humping my leg.”

I open my eyes, my lips now bereft of his kiss, and I repeat his phrase in my head until the words make their way through the kiss-fog he’s breathed into me.

“Your dog is humping my leg.” My dog is humping his leg.

Fucking Lestat! I slowly look down and, sure enough, there he is, on the cobbles, merrily banging away at Fletch’s shin, his beady eyes rolled back in his flat face in pure, delirious bliss.

Get off him, you hair-shedding, one-eared monster-mutt from hell!

This isn’t a bloody orgy, this one’s mine!

I belatedly notice that the office door has swung open behind Fletch, and I vow to kill Lestat in a really nasty way.

I’m going to stake him through the heart with silver while he sleeps, just for the pleasing literary symmetry ofit.

“I’ll let you get away with kissing me this one time, but only because that onion-chopping competition clearly made you overwrought.”

I put my hands on my hips and curl my just-kissed lips into a sneer as I look up at him.

“You kissed me. You could see I was vulnerable and you took advantage.”

He pushes his hand through his hair and laughs, looking toward High Street and shaking his head. “You are the least vulnerable woman I’ve ever met.”

“And you’re the most annoying man on the planet,” I say as I shove Lestat’s fat ass back inside the office and slam the door.

The dog’s interruption had a similar effect to a bucket of iced water being thrown over me from a great height; it’s well and truly broken the sex spell and made me wonder what the hell I was doing.

“Well, I’m glad we got that sorted. You’re tough as nails and I’m irritating as hell. I still think we should lay our hostilities aside for the evening and have crazy sex, because I can still taste you on my lips and you’re delicious.”