Abby's Christmas Spirit (3 page)

“You tell me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t remember that.” She didn’t remember him at all. She tried to picture what he would have looked like at twenty, standing in her grandmother’s parlor, but it was a blank. She couldn’t visualize that. Her abilities didn’t go backwards, only forward.

“You knew my name. I thought you were a weird kid. It stuck in my mind.”

Darius was almost on top of her, his masculine body consuming her space, forcing her to take a step back. “Yeah, well, I was a weird kid. I’m still weird as an adult. That what happens when you’re psychic.”

“You’re not psychic.”

He was flashing the damn light in her face again. And he was dismissing her. Abby yanked the flashlight out of his hand. “Stop shining that in my face. It’s a power trip and it’s annoying me.”

“Sorry, it was an accident. Maybe I should turn on the lights.”

“And the heat,” she couldn’t help but add.

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered, pulling away from her as rapidly as he’d entered her space. “A psychic. Christ.”

“What, you don’t believe me?” she asked, hoisting her backpack up higher and brushing past him, using the flashlight to lead him down the stairs. “Then how do I know that you’ve been dreaming about me?”

Darius stumbled on the stairs behind her.

“Fuck!”

Abby turned in time to realize that he was falling down the stairs and was about to crash into her. She let out a terrified squawk before he collided with her and they both went crashing the few remaining steps to the landing. Stunned, she bite her tongue on impact and wasn’t able to protect her elbow from smacking hard on the floorboards.

Taking a few deep breaths when they stopped moving, she assessed herself. Nothing broken. All good.

“Are you okay?” Darius asked.

“I think so. I just bit my tongue.” She’d dropped the flashlight in the fall but even though she couldn’t see him particularly well, she was very aware of the fact that he had fallen on top of her. His head was somewhere in the area of her hip and his legs were straddling hers.

Even with the stinging in her elbow her body reacted to his closeness. Her nipples were being twin sluts again, poking out to get his attention. She shouldn’t be attracted to Darius. He was a shyster who had cheated her sister out of this house.

Yet given the number of times she had dreamed of him over her, pushing inside her welcoming body, his eyes glazed with passion, she couldn’t help herself. She was beyond attracted to him. She was drawn to him. She was a big ball of wet want.

“How about you?” she asked him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Sorry, that was totally my fault.”

She waited a second, expecting him to move, but he didn’t. He was just sort of pressed against her, the heat from his body moving through her jeans. Then he was moving, but not in the way she expected. He moved up, not down. Closer, not away from her. His body that she was so aware of, moved to cover her chest, his arms on either side of her shoulders. She was still twisted sideways, which protected her from totally being pinned completely by him, but it still wasn’t the direction she needed him to go in if she was going to keep her clothes on.

“You’re on top of me,” she pointed out to him, just in case he wasn’t aware of the fact that he was practically humping her. They probably looked like an exciting night on
Animal Planet.

“So how did you know that I’ve dreamed about someone who looks a lot like you?”

Abby sighed, sorry she’d said anything. He might be on top of her, but she refused to squirm. “It’s not someone who looks like me. It’s
me
. It’s because I can insert myself into other people’s dreams. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid.”

“That’s impossible.”

Skepticism was nothing new to her. But she admittedly didn’t have a whole lot of patience with it. “Obviously not. Now can I please stand up?”

He didn’t seem to hear her. “I don’t get it. You look
exactly
like her.”

She understood it was a hard one to grasp but she wished he would do it three feet away from her instead of sprawled out on top of her. “I am her. I can tell you what’s happened in some of the dreams if you’d like. But first, you need to get off of me.”

The front door opened and a flashlight beam bounced directly up the steps. “Are you serious, man?” a guy’s voice said. “I saw her first, Darius.”

The other man’s presence seemed to jar Darius out of his trance of disbelief. He sat up, removing his body and all its hard warmth from her. “We fell down the stairs, Trent. Can you turn the damn lights on, please?”

“Yeah, right.” There was a lot of stomping down the hallway and doors slamming.

Abby decided to sit up before somehow Darius could invade her space again. Her backpack had shifted and she felt a little like a toppled turtle. In the dark she didn’t see his hand coming to help until it brushed against hers. “I’m fine,” she assured him quickly as she sat up on her own. No touching was better for her mental health. And her resolve.

Might as well have him join her off-kilter though. If she had to be uncomfortable he should too.

Brushing off her knees, she told him, “Last night you dreamt that you were walking in the airport. O’Hare, I’m guessing. You got to the gate and I was waiting there, by the gate agent, with a hot pink rolling suitcase. Sound familiar?”

Darius made a strangled sound in the back of his throat.

The lights went on.

Giving her a clear view of his snow-white face and expression of utter horror.

Call her sadistic, but it was mildly satisfying.

“I really dug the hat you were wearing, by the way. You were rocking that fedora.”

“Jesus H Christ,” he said.

Abby tried really hard not to grin.

She wasn’t successful.

Chapter Three

DARIUS WAS PRETTY
damn sure he was having a heart attack. How could this woman know he had dreamed of her the night before? In the airport. Wearing a fedora. While she rolled a hot pink suitcase.

It defied logic to the point that he was fairly certain his brain was melting.

She seemed to find it funny, which pissed him off. Anger he understood, so he clung to it. “I’m not sure why you find this so damn funny. You’re breaking and entering and you’re playing some kind of game with me. This needs to stop. You need to leave.”

He might sound a little old man but he was so freaked out, he needed to hold on to something, and her trespassing was the one fact that was irrefutable at the moment.

“I’m not leaving until you agree to sell me the house. We’ve gone over this already, so let it go.”

She stood up and Darius took an involuntary step back. He couldn’t help it. When he was within touching distance of her, he felt an incredible compulsion to have any or all his body parts in contact with her. He had laid on her way longer than was socially acceptable, but he’d been stunned both by her words and the fall. Not to mention that the minute they had collided, he’d been blasted with a spray of red-hot lust.

All of his life, Darius had worshipped logic. He had lived his life on the basic principle of creating a plan, and following it through. He’d gone into the ghost hunting business because he’d seen the popularity of it, and had correctly interpreted it as having a high profit margin. He’d been right. But he didn’t believe in spirits, really, and he didn’t believe in psychics. From all his years of encountering people in the paranormal world, he’d yet to meet anyone whose statements couldn’t be explained in a rational way. Same for all the bumps in the night.

But Abby was telling him something that he couldn’t explain.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here,” he said, feeling bewildered. There was a solution to every problem, yet he was having a hard time visualizing a solution to a madwoman who appeared in his dreams and refused to leave his empty house.

“You don’t have to do anything. Just keep on doing what you were doing and I’ll just chill in the parlor.”

Darius was saved from having to respond by Trent reappearing.

“So… would you like to tell me what’s going on here?” He eyeballed Abby with bold curiosity. “Because I’m a little confused.”

“This is Abby Murphy. I bought this house from her sister.”

“Well, hello, Abby,” Trent said, sticking his hand out to shake. “I’m Trent and I run
Ghost Tracker
s. Damiano is just the eye candy.”

Darius rolled his eyes.

“Nice to meet you.” Abby took his offered hand and shook it. “I’m a witch.”

Yeah. She was nuts. Darius felt like sighing. Why was it that his life was so orderly and well regimented, but he was constantly attracted to insane women?

To his credit, Trent never even raised an eyebrow. He just said, “Well you’ve certainly cast a spell on me.”

Oh, Christ. Darius told him, “I think I just threw up in my mouth. Now will you go fix the damn cameras? We have to start filming all over again.”

Frustrated with both of them, he muscled past Trent, the world’s dorkiest Don Juan, and the witch/psychic/dream infiltrator. She couldn’t just pick one title, she had to be greedy and go for three.

Both of them ignored him as he jogged down the steps.

“Would you like a ride home?” Trent asked Abby. “I didn’t see any car outside.”

Darius turned to glared at his producer. “You’re working.” And he wasn’t getting paid to flirt.

“Oh, I’m not leaving, but thank you.”

Feeling a bit of satisfaction that she wasn’t budging for Trent either, Darius paused in the foyer to hear Trent’s reaction.

It wasn’t what he was hoping for.

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day. Are we filming you?”

“No,” Darius answered for her, pleased that his voice projected confidence and power from the bottom of the stairs. “We’ll just edit her out.”

“You’re giving in?” she asked her, the glee in her voice like ten thousand pins being shoved into his scrotum all at once.

The little manipulator thought she had won.

No way in hell.

Darius turned fully and stared up at her, wanting to impress upon her that he may be done with the argument for the immediate future, but he wasn’t going to play her game, whatever it was, indefinitely. “I never give up. I just wait for the right moment to strike.”

She stared back from the landing, head held high, regal and confident, her eyes locking on his so boldly, that he felt a hard-on grow thick and uncomfortable in his jeans.

“I’m going to go to sleep. Care to join me?”

An erotic shiver danced across his spine and he was more turned on than he would have ever thought possible. He knew what she was referring to. The way he had kissed her in his dreams, the way they had torn clothes off until their naked bodies were entwined, his fingers running through her thick hair. The very hair that he’d seen flowing over her pale shoulders while she took his cock deep into her mouth.

Shit. His erection throbbed painfully. He either needed to get the hell away from her or kiss her.

“I have work to do,” he said, in what was arguably the lamest comeback ever in the history of his life.

Shaking his head both at himself and her, he spun on his heel and headed towards the kitchen, grateful the camera was off in there so he could adjust himself in his pants.

“SHE’S
crazy, isn’t she?” Trent said in a low voice as they sat in the kitchen watching Abby sleep on the video monitor.

They had moved Trent’s equipment inside so that neither of them had to hang out alone. The recording for the episode was ruined for the night and they intended to have a do-over the following night so while they were recording, it didn’t matter what kind of footage they got.

“Yep, it looks that way.” They could have gone to a hotel for the night, but Darius didn’t want to leave Abby alone in the house. She had been true to her word and hadn’t left. She had just retreated into a bedroom and was sleeping on the floor, using her backpack as a pillow.

“All the interesting ones are, I’m telling you.”

Trent seemed as fascinated by her as Darius found himself, and that was annoying. Almost as annoying as the fact that he couldn’t stop staring at her on the monitor, her legs curled up in a fetal position, prayer hands tucked against her cheek. She was honestly one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen and he was no stranger to women. His money had opened doors to a world he had only imagined as a kid, and he had both partied and slept with supermodels, actresses, heiresses.

But none of them had ever made him feel the way he did when he looked at Abby. When he saw her, he was in awe. Things inside him melted in ways that couldn’t be good, and he was aware of her on a molecular level.

He’d had girlfriends over the years but like the supermodels he had encountered on the club scene, they were pleasant enough on the surface, but there wasn’t much substance. What he had always wanted, what he had bought this house for, was true, deep, breathless, life altering love. He wanted to look at a woman the way his father looked at his mother. He wanted to spin her around while she laughed and swatted him with a slotted spoon in a warm and fragrant kitchen.

Why his dreams had fixated on this house, this woman, he didn’t understand.

It was giving him a headache. “Do you have any ibuprofen?” he asked Trent, rubbing his temples.

“No, sorry.”

Abby shifted on the camera in front of him. She must not have been sleeping yet. Half sitting up, she rustled through her backpack. She held a little bottle out towards the camera then set it down next to her on the floor.

“Is that aspirin?” Trent asked in awe. “What, does she have robotic super hearing?”

“Help yourself,” she said, before rearranging her makeshift pillow and laying back down.

Darius swallowed no. “I guess.” Either that or she was psychic.

Neither made any sense whatsoever.

“She looks cold,” he told Trent. “I wish I had a blanket or something.”

His produced gave him a sidelong stare. “Don’t fall for the crazy girl. Seriously. That’s never a good plan.”