Maddie and Wyn (21 page)

Without a pause in his step, Wyn wondered, “Could it be Nico?” and cast a raised brow in her direction. “I haven’t been able to look into him too deeply yet, but maybe he’s resentful of his father selling you the house and part of the business.”

“No, I don’t see it.” From where she sat, Maddie followed Wyn’s trek around her room. “Nico has a piece of the company already,” she explained. “He’s not interested in more, or in having any say in how it’s run. I Skype with him every so often to keep him up to date about what’s going on with the garage, and honestly, he’s minimally interested. It’s just not his thing. And Mr. Corsini has already established that of what he still owns, he’s going to split between me and Nico upon his passing, and Nico is fine with it.”

“Maybe not.” Rushing around the bed, Wyn swooped in and sat next to her, animated now. “Maybe out front Nico is trying to save face. Maybe he’s actually very resentful of how close you and his father are.”

Maddie’s stomach roiled with those words, but she swallowed down an automatic
“No,”
response. Too many discoveries about her home weren’t adding up. “I suppose anything is possible,” she conceded, “but I just don’t think so. If Nico had shown any interest in the shop or living in Redemption this would all be his. He didn’t want it. He hasn’t his whole life.”

“Maybe reality felt a little different.” Wyn’s tone remained conversational, like they were partners, not challenging or combative. “Once Nico essentially became a silent partner, maybe he decided the percentage he was given wasn’t enough.”

“Then why doesn’t he express interest in the garage when we talk?” Shifting to face Wyn fully, Maddie pulled her leg up and folded it in a butterfly against the mattress. “He doesn’t. And that’s because he only wants to know that we’re in the black and doing the best we can, because he’s a numbers guy. As long as the numbers are good and he’s making money, he’s happy.” Wyn’s face remained unreadable, so Maddie shrugged. “Check him out all you want, but if you want my gut opinion, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

Wyn zeroed in on Maddie, and his features actually, finally softened. “I trust your gut, Maddie, don’t for a second think I don’t, but it’s my job as a cop to verify.” He reached out, his hand inches from her thigh, but abruptly curled his fingers into a fist and shot back to his feet. “Meanwhile I’ll keep an open mind about other possibilities.” He strode across the room, back to the door.

Springing up too, Maddie called out, “Then open your mind about this. I do have a ghost, and it’s Mrs. Corsini.”

Wyn spun on a dime and instantly found her gaze. “How are you so certain who the ghost is now?”

Heart racing, Maddie rushed to him, stopping less than a foot away. “Because she was
this close
to me when I was in the garden.” She held her hands up less than a foot apart in front of her. “I saw her. She touched me. She touched my head and my cheek.”

“No shit.” Wyn wiped his hand down the rough lines of his face. “You’re serious?”

“Yep.” Maddie almost grabbed Wyn’s hands, but locked hers at her side at the last second. “But here’s the weird thing.” Excitement still thrummed through her, and she couldn’t keep from bouncing on her tiptoes. “She wasn’t scary or creepy. She was…warm.”

“No shit,” Wyn repeated, shook his head, and looked toward the heavens. “Damn.”

“I know.” Her chest swelling, unbidden, Maddie ran her fingers over her hair and cheek where the spirit had put hands on her, and the tightness in her chest expanded into a lump in her throat. “I didn’t expect gentleness and warmth, as if she understood me and was trying to offer a motherly touch.”

His stance widening, Wyn studied Maddie with a sudden spark in his eyes. “And you say she led you to the shed?”

A new lightness skipped through Maddie’s belly, and this time she couldn’t stop herself from grabbing Wyn’s arm. “Are you saying you believe me about her now?” Old hope, trapped in her heart, pounded against her sternum, desperate to break free.

Rocking on the heels of his bare feet, Wyn shoved his hands into his pockets, and more of that new gleam in his eyes made him downright sexy. “I’m saying I’m now open to your original thought that we have two separate things happening here. I think maybe we do have a ghost and a squatter—although now it seems not a permanent one for the second, maybe because I’ve moved in and cramped his style.”

“You truly think so?” Maddie couldn’t keep the hope and need out of her tone.

“I have to think we’re both right for the simple fact that as of yet you haven’t seen the ghost open gates and unlock doors, so we have to have a real person at work here too. Yet now you’ve seen close up something you know wasn’t corporeal, a person you knew to be real who is now deceased. Maybe they’re connected.” Lines pulled between Wyn’s eyes. He pulled his hands from his pockets and started making those waves with his fingers again. “There has to be a reason she led you to the shed and all the Corsini history in there.”

“But that would lead you back to Nico,” Maddie pointed out, feeling like part of a team again, like they used to be. “And less than a week ago I Skyped with him and he was at his apartment in New York. He wasn’t here in Redemption leaving candy wrappings under my guest bed.”

Lips tightening, Wyn circled away from Maddie. “I have to consider a family angle with the ghost being Mrs. Corsini.” He glanced at her, flashing a wry grin. “It becomes the most obvious connection and makes the most sense.”

“At least you’re not discounting my ghost sightings anymore,” Maddie murmured, raising a brow back at him.

On top of her in a second, Wyn stood so close Maddie had to bow back to look up into his eyes.

“Look, I’m not completely dense.” As Wyn made the admission, pink warmed his face. “I know I can be an ass with you sometimes. I try to speak openly and explain myself, but for some reason I step on my tongue a lot with you.” His jaw ticked, and he swore under his breath before taking her hand loosely in his. “All I can honestly swear is when I screw the pooch with what I say, it’s never meant to diminish you or cause harm. I swear.”

Her hand tingled, so alive where he touched her, but their fight and the discord between them still sat heavy like bad food in her gut.

With her whole body screaming a denial, Maddie pulled her hand out of his. “Maybe we’re fighting against a truth that we’re not compatible, and it’s time to finally let us go.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” Wyn replied, lightning fast. “There’s nobody more right for me than you.” Threading his fingers in her hair, he gently tugged her to him, exposing the light glints in his dark eyes, and brushed the gentlest of kisses against her lips. “Good night, honey. Sleep tight.” He backed up to the door, out into the hallway, adding, “And if you see the ghost again, this time yell for me before you go after her. See you in the morning for breakfast.”

In a stupor, fingers on her lips, Maddie kicked into gear and ran to the door. “I have meetings!” Too late, Wyn had already entered his room and shut the door. Euphoria draining out of her, Maddie shut the door and slid down the wood to the floor, finishing to herself, “I’ll probably be gone before you get up.”

Exhaustion suddenly crashed into Maddie. She folded her arms against her bent knees and dropped her head to rest on them.
What in the heck just happened?
She was surprised her neck didn’t need to be in a brace as a result of whiplash. In such a short amount of time she’d gone from the highest of highs that had come from connecting to Wyn so deeply sexually, to then dropping into the deepest pit in the ocean as the aftermath had dredged up the most awful day of her life.
His betrayal
. Then she’d swerved to the ghost and the temporary joy meeting it had brought, to then another fight with Wyn, and his admission that he’d been celibate since that terrible night—of which made her heart flutter whether she wanted to admit it or not. Then, finally, upon thinking about how much power she’d given him, she’d dropped straight back into desolation. But she also couldn’t ignore that they’d actually talked about the ghost and the shed as equals just now, hashed out a problem together without fighting. She could not deny a big part of her like embracing that invisible tug toward being partners with him again.

Her feelings about Wyn and this whole situation, and what it should mean to her life, had bounced back and forth more than a tennis ball at Wimbledon. This flighty, fractured girl Maddie had become was exactly the kind of female character she couldn’t stand in television shows and films and books. The kind of girl who loved a guy one minute and hated him the next, the girl who couldn’t decide who was really good for her and who was bad news for her heart. The kind of girl who wouldn’t just make up her damned mind and then act on it.
I hate that girl
. Maddie growled into the sleeve of her robe.
Then stop being her.
The voice in her head, giving advice she knew she needed to take, swamped her to her bones.

Maddie reached up to grab the door handle to help pull herself to her feet, but just as her fingers closed around the brass, a soft
tap tap
sounded from the other side of the door.

A grin automatically splitting her face, Maddie jumped up, saying, “What is it now, Ashworth?” and swung open the door.

Nobody stood on the other side.

What?

Maddie stepped out, looked both ways, but Wyn was not there. His door was still closed; she could hear soft strains from the small television she’d bought for guests to use coming from his room. The bathroom door was still open, and the water was not running in the toilet, as it had a tendency to do for a good thirty seconds after it was flushed, so Wyn had not just recently used the bathroom and then knocked to prank her before running back to his room.

Wait.
Maddie spun again, this time going full circle. Two taps. Two
knocks.
Could it be Mrs. Corsini? In the shed Maddie had asked the spirit to knock to answer her question—one knock for yes, two for no—but Wyn had interrupted before Maddie had gotten a response.

“Mrs. Corsini?” With the most careful of steps, Maddie reentered her room. “Is that you?”

An even softer tap, just one, sounded from near the door.

It’s her.
Although she could not see an apparition, Maddie’s heart raced, and she spun to face the door. “Were the two taps your answer to my question from before?”

Even fainter, almost non-existent, one more scrape against the wood.

Yes.
So that meant her previous answer to the original question had been no.
“Do you want me to bring back your husband?”
So she didn’t want her husband to come back to Redemption. That wasn’t why she was here. Thank goodness. Maddie really would not have known how to deal with an angry ghost, and that’s what she likely would have had on her hands with a refusal to drag her old boss back to town.

“What do you want?”

Just the strains of Wyn’s TV floated through the air.

Shoot. Of course.
Maddie rephrased to a yes or no question. “If I ask specific questions, can you tell me your purpose for being here?”

Nothing.

“Are you still here?”

No response.

She’s gone.

The crazy pumping draining from her chest, Maddie threw herself in bed, her mind a jumble once again. Whatever was going on with Mrs. Corsini, Maddie would have to wait until the spirit showed herself again or started tapping on the walls. Maybe she could only generate enough energy to manifest with sight or sound for short periods; maybe communicating as a ghost on cue wasn’t a matter of choice. Maybe she couldn’t always reply when she wanted to.

It’s as good an answer as any, and seems is the best I’m going to get tonight.

Maddie sighed. With a chat with a ghost indefinitely on hold, her thoughts instantly turned back to the roughly handsome giant of a man sleeping down the hall.
Wyn.
They couldn’t keep going on the way they had been the last few days. They would both end up popping a gasket or going outright mad. Maddie didn’t want that for either of them. And she never wanted to behave or become a person who jerked someone around, whether emotional or physical or mental. That wasn’t cool. Yet with the way she daily psyched herself up to get distance from him, only to then succumb to his charms when close to him, she was coming dangerously close to doing exactly that. She had to make a decision and then move forward decisively.

She had one night to sleep on it and figure out her next move.

Better get started right now.

Maddie closed her eyes and began counting sheep.

The fluffy creatures turned into Wyn leaping over fences, and Maddie drifted to sleep with a soft laugh and a smile on her face.

* * * *

Shadows from the TV playing across the white ceiling above, Wyn tucked his arm under his head and stretched out in bed.
Fuck.
He’d never felt so inadequate intellectually and emotionally while also so satisfied physically in his life. He’d ached for Maddie for years—he hadn’t lied about his four-year stint with celibacy—and finally sinking into her wet heat had spun him into the stratosphere. Never in his life had he felt so connected to someone while merged with their body; never had he come so fast and hard and then just known he would be able to keep going and come again.
It’s Maddie.
Wyn rubbed his bare ass against the bedding as his dick pulsed with blood, signaling it would happily get lost in Maddie again.
Maddie is why it was different.

Wyn growled, silently telling his body to go back to sleep. The truth was, he might not be able to have Maddie again anytime soon. If ever.
Fuck.
He snarled again, the rage aimed squarely at himself. Tonight was the first time Maddie had spoken aloud of her hurt and the deep sense of betrayal she’d felt the night she’d caught him with another woman. Back then she’d run, gotten pissed, and then had treated him as if they’d never become friends or grown close during the previous three years. They’d effectively become combative strangers who unfortunately still had to cross paths frequently in each other’s worlds due to Ethan and Aidan’s relationship.