Page 43 of Deathtoll

Her couch wasn’t the best, yet it was still better than sleeping in a truck.

Shecouldinvite him in.

Chapter Sixteen

Murph

Murph lifted the recliner destined for the West Street Mission, doing his best not to show how much it hurt his aching back, but inside, he was swearing like a sailor who stepped on a rusty nail on deck. If he’d needed a reminder that he was no longer twenty, spending the night in his pickup had done the job.

He carried the old piece of furniture out, loaded it, then paused for a minute to roll his shoulders and stretch his muscles. Did not help. He was damn near limping on his way back inside.

Emma was still working in the back of the house. Linda wasn’t coming after all. She had some emergency church meeting about an upcoming prayer retreat. But she’d written out what would go where and had given detailed instructions.

“I’ll take this next.” Murph grabbed the old-fashioned, solid-oak coffee table, but before he could lift it, Kate yelled at him from the kitchen.

“Stop! Wait.” She wiped her hands on her jeans, pausing from finishing up the pantry. “Come over here.”

He was never going to say no if she wanted to be closer to him. No-brainer. He went.

“Sit.” She pulled a kitchen chair out for him. “Backwards. You can rest your arms on the back of the chair if you’d like.”

He followed the order, and in a hurry. He knew that position and knew what was coming.Thank you, God.She was going to help him.

When she put her hands on his shoulders and dug in, he could have cried with relief.

He remembered the first time she’d done this, taken away his pain. And then afterwards… It’d been the first time he’d kissed her.

“I saw you out there last night,” she said in a quietly pissed tone, clearly not strolling down memory lane. “For the hundredth time, Ian McCall is not going to come here to hurt me.”

Murph didn’t say anything. For one, he was afraid she’d stop massaging his stiff muscles if he started arguing. And also, Ian wasn’t even the only possible source of danger he was concerned about, but he wasn’t sure how much he could pass on about what Bing had told him about Betty’s autopsy.

“Mmm.” They could talk later.

“Why do you do this to yourself?” She dug in deeper. “I don’t need a bodyguard. Please don’t come here again like that. Okay?”

“Mmm.”

She stopped.

His muscles protested.

“Okay,” he said.

Her strong fingers moved lower on his back.

He fell into a daydream where she kept going. Where her hands then went around his waist to the front, under his shirt, up his chest. She hugged him from behind, her breasts pressed against his back.

She kissed his neck and bit his ear. And then he turned around and she straddled him and…

He groaned just as Emma sailed into the kitchen.

“Am I interrupting something?” Then, barely taking a breath in between: “Hey, did Kate tell you I saw a ghost the other day?”

Murph pulled out of his bliss long enough to respond. “I didn’t realize sixties’ ranchers had them. I thought you had to live in a Victorian mansion to meet things that go bump in the night. Any theatrical moaning? Chain rattling? Dire predictions?”

“Very funny. Go ahead. Laugh at me. But I saw what I saw.”

He liked Emma. He didn’t want to offend her. Anything was possible, right? “Whose ghost was it?”