Maddie and Wyn (10 page)

Maddie went hot fast, and her spine went stiff. “What about you, G?” She stumbled off her board and charged toward the front of the car. “It’s past closing for you too. Technically we could both leave this to work on till tomorrow.”

Giving her a quick sideways look, Garrick went back to work. “Devlin is on the overnight shift this week. I have a good excuse to get a few extra hours in while he’s spending his nights at the firehouse. You don’t.”

Maddie laughed hard and sharp. “You don’t think someone invading my home is a good excuse?”

With a sigh, Garrick put the socket wrench he’d been using in the pocket of his coveralls, braced his hip against front end of the car, and looked her in the eyes. “What I think is that you can’t avoid Wyn for two weeks. It’s better to start facing him now, get it out of the way, so that you can become comfortable with him being there. Your presence will show him that you’re not scared to be in the same room with him.” Beyond his relationship with Devlin, Garrick related to Maddie individually, as a friend, and the empathy in his cobalt stare pierced Maddie’s heart. “Do it for yourself, not for him.”

Uncomfortably on display, Garrick’s scrutiny hitting just a little too close for comfort, Maddie dropped her gaze to the stained concrete floor. “At least you’re not telling me to act like everything is normal or telling me to forgive him, like everyone else.”

Garrick reached out and tugged on the end of Maddie’s ponytail until she gave him eye contact. “Nobody else is telling you to forgive Wyn, Maddie.” His stare narrowed, and he added, “We can’t, because none of us know what happened to change things between the two of you.”

Maddie pulled a face. “Nice try.” Garrick would not lull her into revealing that ugly episode tonight any more than Devlin had years ago. “Is that the phone?” She sing-songed, not at all confident under Garrick’s watchful eye, no matter the strength she tried to convince herself she possessed. “I have to get that. I’ll be here until you leave.” With that, she beat a hasty retreat to her office and shut the door.

Sitting down at her desk, Maddie placed her hands flat on the top and worked with everything in her to regulate her breathing. Garrick was a true friend, heck, a member of her family as far as she was concerned. Like Devlin, he only had her best interests at heart. His rallying cheer of telling her to go home to prove to Wyn she wasn’t afraid of him was sweet, supportive, and sincere. The problem was, Maddie
was
afraid of Wyn. Or rather, she was afraid of cracking around him, of succumbing to the gut attraction she’d felt for him from the day she’d met him when she was barely seventeen years old.

After waking up this morning and seeing him with a full erection only a few feet away from her, she’d felt more vulnerable in her home than the first time she figured out she had a ghost. Vulnerable because she’d watched Wyn’s thick length rise against his stomach through the thin layer of his worn-down sweats, and her pussy had throbbed and dampened her underwear right there in the hallway. In a flash of mere seconds, she’d pictured herself crawling across the carpet runner—she, who’d never crawled or even walked to any man in such an aroused state. She’d fantasized about pulling Wyn’s sweats down and sucking as much of his cock past her lips as she could take. She’d wanted Wyn to fill every inch of her, for his shaft to consume her mouth. She’d wanted him to moan her name in pleasure and grab her hair and plead for her to suck and lick him so good he’d lose himself and spill on her tongue.

Maddie liked to talk a big game, liked to sometimes shock her brothers with her rough language, but in truth she had little experience with men. But from what little gossip she’d heard from her few casual female acquaintances, none of them fantasized about such raw and primal behavior. She didn’t know what to make of her primitive sexual daydreams, other than that with every minute she spent with Wyn, her own feelings would weaken her much more than anything he could do.

More than her intense sexual response to him, Maddie was positive she could already smell Wyn in her house, on her things. She’d grabbed her keys from the bowl in her living room this morning, and she swore the hint of his very light, spicy cologne lingered in her couch cushions, where he’d probably watched TV before going to bed. And just as bad, he’d showered the night before, and when she’d gotten up to use the toilet, the bathroom was still steamy from his shower. She’d always hated a stuffy bathroom before; it would annoy her to no end if she had to shower right after Devlin during the time they’d shared an apartment. But last night, she’d walked into that wave of foggy heat and the little hairs on the back of her neck had woken up and her nipples had twisted into tight points under her nightshirt. She’d imagined Wyn slick with hot water, a towel wrapped around his waist, shaving, and she’d envisioned herself stripping down to nothing, rubbing against him from behind, openly letting him feel her so-very-natural response to his beautiful body.

Where she sat now, Maddie sucked in a breath. Her cunt pulsed with life, signaling her body’s desire to make these little visions a reality. She shifted in her chair, but the pulsating in her core would not abate.

This is not good.
Mad at Wyn or not, still hurt by him or not, Maddie was not afraid of him. She was afraid of herself. So Maddie stayed in her office and did some paperwork that could have waited for the next day. She hid, and all the while called herself a coward.

* * * *

Like a Jack-in-the-box, Maddie sprang up in bed, fully awake. Moonlight streamed through her open windows. She ran to the closest one, paused for the barest of seconds to confirm what she already knew she’d see—the white shadowy figure in the garden—and then bolted out of her room.

She raced to Wyn’s door. Just as she started to wrap her hand around the knob, it was yanked open from the other side. Wyn appeared, glorious in cutoff sweats and nothing else, service weapon secured in his right hand, his short hair disheveled in tufts and spikes like a little boy hastily pulled out of bed for school in the morning.

Maddie parted her lips to say, “The ghost,” just as Wyn stated, “I heard the gate squeak. Stay here,” and pushed past her to the stairs.

Screw that.
Unlike Wyn, Maddie knew there would be nothing outside for him to find.

Only a dozen feet behind him, Maddie tore down the stairs as fast as her legs could carry her and sped through the open front door and down the porch steps. Wyn had already disappeared into the garden, calling out his presence, calmly but clearly stating anyone in the area should reveal themselves with their hands held above their head. Maddie held back outside the garden fencing, waiting while Wyn did his official search.

Only when Wyn circled back to the front did she enter the area. Following him to one of the benches, she watched as he threw himself down onto the cushioned metal. Maddie paced on the paver pathway overrun with weeds.

“Nobody there, huh?” Maddie asked, although it wasn’t really a question. Pair Wyn’s visible frustration with an obvious lack of a suspect in custody and Maddie had all the answer she needed.

“Not anymore.” Wyn’s tone was clipped as he returned his firearm’s safety to its locked position and set the gun on the bench. “I clearly wasn’t fast enough to catch him.”

With a quick look around the garden, Maddie mused, “Or able to locate the magic bendable wrought iron that would allow him to escape undetected from this garden once he entered.”

The floodlight attached to the side of the house shone down on Wyn, and he glared up at her from his seated position. “None of which makes your idea of a ghost a plausible theory, Maddie. First off, why is the trigger for waking you up the creak of the gate? If it’s a ghost—” he threw his arms wide, pointing out all the fences, “—why doesn’t he just pass through the iron the same way he would through walls? Why does he have to open the gate to get in?”

Still moving in front of him, Maddie studied her surroundings, her mind moving fast, but absently corrected, “She.”

Wyn scrunched his face. “What?”

She stopped in front of him, legs braced, arms crossed, and looked down at him on one of the rare instances where she held the superior height. “I believe the ghost is female.”

Wyn threw up his hands again. “Fine, then,
she
. The question remains the same. Why does
she
have to open the gate to get into the garden?”

Bursting to share, to talk about her ideas with someone, Maddie exclaimed, “Why must we assume that what we are told about ghosts from movies and television are all the truth there is to know? Why can’t it be possible that a spirit could somehow manifest itself in corporeal form whenever it wanted to?”

“Because whoever she is,” Wyn said back, just as passionately, “her body is buried in the ground six feet under somewhere or her ashes are in an urn or sprinkled on a beach or in the mountains after being cremated. There is no physical body left to manifest into.”

Clasping her hands together, Maddie pointed at Wyn with glee. “Unless she borrows someone else’s body.”

Just as animated, Wyn wagged his finger at her. “In which case there would be a body trapped in here somewhere for me to find.”

“Which proves my point that it isn’t a person,” Maddie jumped in for the kill, “because you didn’t find anyone. It’s a spirit.”

“Which still doesn’t give me a solid answer for why the gate keeps being opened,” Wyn countered fast.

“But you can’t explain the complete lack of logic in why a real person would run into the garden to hide, when there’s only one way out.” Adrenaline flowed fast and furiously through Maddie’s body, awakening her more fully than she’d been in years. “The logic doesn’t hold water.”

“But I can rely on the fact that I found candy wrappers with male DNA on them in your house,” Wyn answered, and dumped a bucket of water over her fire. “And on the fact that you’ve admitted a few things have been taken from the home, as well as money.”

“Small, useless things,” Maddie corrected absently, “and extremely small amounts of money.” She went cold then, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “Did you say you got answers from your tests?”

“Partial.” Wyn’s already hard features turned grim. “The person was male, but not in the system. I don’t know who he is.”

Maddie clasped her steepled hands over her mouth, and a chill drained down her limbs. “Fuck.”

Wyn’s mouth pulled down even more. “My thought exactly.”

Her legs giving out, her mind swirling, Maddie plopped down next to Wyn on the bench. “This doesn’t make sense.” Her brow knitted tightly, pushing tension into her temples and neck. She stared straight forward but mentally tracked through night after night after night spent in this house. “Just like almost every other time I’ve been woken up since I moved into this place, tonight I saw the white figure in the garden. And yet I’ve never been able to find anyone out here or inside. Not once. And I’ve been fast. Even faster than I was tonight. The odds are that I would have caught a real person at least once.”

Shrugging, Wyn replied, “Unless he’s weirdly dexterous or has some incredible leaping skills or some other way out we’re not seeing.”

“And you keep saying he,” Maddie spun sideways on the bench, facing him, “when I feel strongly that I see a female form.”

“Could be a slight or slender man. Or even a kid. A teen.”

Maddie suddenly sat up straight and smiled. “Or maybe it’s both.”

Rearing his head back, Wyn gave her another of his famous side-eyes. “What?”

The more wheels that started turning inside her, adding to the gears already spinning, the straighter Maddie sat. “Yes, this makes sense. Work with me here.” She grabbed his forearm and squeezed. “The specter I’m seeing move through the garden, who yes, somehow needs to or wants to make the gate move when she does, isn’t the same person who has been in my house. We’re looking for two completely separate things.”

Brow scrunched, Wyn frowned. “That seems farfetched.”

“Not really,” Maddie argued, clutching his arm tighter. “It actually makes much more sense, if we both believe in your evidence and in my believability as a witness.” A sudden thought pierced a hole straight through her middle. “Unless you don’t consider me a reliable witness.”

Like a majestic animal caught in headlights and rendered immobile, Wyn went still.

“You don’t believe me.” Maddie’s hand fell from Wyn’s arm, scorched, dead to her side.

“Come on, now.” Kicked back to life, Wyn tried to grab her hand. “Don’t be like that. I just think that you love things that have supernatural and paranormal and mystery to them, and so you’re more open to conjuring something of that angle being correct rather than something that might have a more pedestrian answer.”

“Wow.” Maddie felt as if he’d slapped her, and had to touch her cheek to make certain the sting of a hit wasn’t truly there. Flames flared under her flesh, slamming against her skin in an effort to break free. “What you just said was ten kinds of insulting all rolled into one.” She surged to her feet. “Good night.”

“Wait a damned minute.” Wyn jumped up and grabbed her arm. Maddie fought back, but Wyn swung her around to face him and wrangled her into his hold. His nostrils flared, and his dark stare snapped. Through a clenched jaw, he said, “Explain yourself,” and shook her. “Now.”

Up on her tiptoes, in his face, Maddie breathed fire like a dragon too. “You implied I’m easily susceptible to finding explanations in things that are entertaining rather than factual and that I lack a level of intelligence that would prevent me from applying that fantasy to real life. And on top of that you implied that I’ve done this because my life is boring, or excuse me,” she sneered, because goodness, if she didn’t, she’d cry over his judgment of her, “
pedestrian
, and thus I’m trying to pull something like a ghost into it to make it seem more exciting. And now that I’ve explained this to you—” she wrenched one arm out of his hold, “—don’t ever give me an order again.”

With every word Maddie spoke, a little more color drained from Wyn’s face. “I didn’t mean it the way you heard it.” He held her tight, each rough finger seeming to implore her to believe him. “I swear.”