Walking After Midnight (27 page)

„…
Just lie down and die
–
that’s not me Still, I am in agony.“

As the last notes died away, Deedee felt the familiar sensation of being sucked away. Vainly she tried to hold on.

She wanted to stay….

The voice boomed out of the control room.

„Hallie, honey, that was just fine! Just fine!“

Once again in control of her vocal cords, Hallie answered breathlessly, „Thanks, Bill. Something just came over me…“

But Deedee missed the rest of the exchange. She was hurtling through the maelstrom once more.

When she came to rest again it was night, and she was in a small, tidy country cemetery. Her husband was crouched beside a grave.

Perched cross-legged atop the tombstone, Deedee leaned way forward – being a ghost allowed her to do that kind of thing without falling on her nose, she had discovered – and read the inscription:

T
AYLOR

D
EIDRA
A
NN
C
UMMINS

Born
J
ANUARY
21, 1958 – Died
M
AY
15, 1992

Love Is Eternal

Mitch was crouched beside
her
grave.

Deedee regarded the bent blond head and wondered if Mitch had thought up the inscription. She guessed so; it sounded like Mitch. Certainly her mother would never have come up with anything so poetic.

She had loved Mitch desperately from the time she was thirteen until almost the moment she died. They’d had their ups and downs – some ups, a whole lot of downs – but she had always loved him.

Now she looked at him with fresh vision. Love really wasn’t eternal. At least, not in this case.

Mitch glanced up then, and for a moment Deedee wondered if he could see her. She hadn’t felt the tingling that signaled when she had materialized, and he didn’t scream or faint or even turn pale, so she guessed he couldn’t.

But she could see him. He was as handsome as ever, his blond hair wavy, his blue eyes keen, his lightly tanned features classical. He looked like he had lost weight since she’d last seen him, but then at six feet one he’d always been lean, so she couldn’t be sure.

Kneeling beside her grave, dressed in slacks and a wind-breaker, he was the very picture of the grieving widower.

Except for the fact that his hands were covered with earth. A shovel lay beside him, and her grave, while thick with grass, looked raw, somehow. Too raw for a three-year-old grave.

It had been freshly sodded.

What’re you up to, Mitch Taylor? she thought fiercely. Even as she felt the tingling, even as his eyes widened, she was sucked away.

This time, when she stopped, it was a hot, sunlit afternoon. At least, it was hot and sunlit outside. She was in a cave, floating up near the ceiling, staring down at a sleeping couple entwined in a quilt on the ground about six feet below.

The man was Steve – his face still looked like hell; the woman she didn’t recognize. But they seemed mighty cozy together.

Deedee was watching them with interest when Steve opened his eyes.

He saw her. She could tell right away. So she waved at him, just to say hi.

He let out a bellow and sat up. Startled, Deedee lost control of her atoms and vanished.

When she got hold of herself again, she was in a corner of the same cave being stared at by a weird-looking little dog. Steve was once again lying down, with the woman cuddled on his chest. Steve was awake. The woman wasn’t.

The woman definitely wasn’t Steve’s wife, Elaine.

That was kinda surprising. Except for the fling with her, Steve had always been a straight arrow. Deedee doubted if he’d ever cheated on Elaine before. She would have added „or since,“ but evidence to the contrary was right under her nose.

Despite the attraction she knew he’d always felt for her, she had had to work pretty hard to seduce old Steve. She was ashamed to admit that she had done it deliberately, to teach Mitch a lesson. Mitch, who would unzip his pants with alacrity for any bitch in heat, had sorely needed a lesson.

Her husband had been embroiled in another in his endless series of hot-and-heavy affairs when she’d decided to get even with him by getting it on with Steve. After fourteen years of marriage, Deedee had grown wise to the ways of Mitch; she knew all the signs. And she also knew that Steve was one of the few people on earth of whom her husband was genuinely fond. Mitch, handsome conniver and people-user that he was, generally stayed friends with people for just as long as he needed them. But his friendship with Steve had survived three decades. Between the two men there was a true bond.

Steve, being Steve, had lost his head over her for about three weeks, and then started suffering the tortures of the damned.

He couldn’t deal with the guilt of having cheated on his wife, to say nothing of cuckolding his best friend.

He’d always been such a Boy Scout.

Which was one reason she was so fond of him, Deedee supposed. She wasn’t in love with him, hadn’t ever been, but she loved him. Like a brother, or something.

As the song – countless songs – said, she’d done him wrong. Real bad wrong.

That, she thought with a sudden flash of insight, was why she was still earthbound.

She couldn’t go to Heaven until she had righted that wrong.

27

Steve lay facedown in kudzu, breathing in the scent of mold, feeling the damp chill of the ground beneath the vines seeping into his bones.

He was almost afraid to look up. The last time he’d checked, before he had completely lost his head, Deedee had been swinging from the branches of the huge elm just to the left of his outflung hand, hanging upside down by her knees as she gave him a thumbs-up sign.

Remembering, it was all Steve could do to repress a groan.

He
was
losing his mind. He had to be.

Or maybe his subconscious was trying to tell him something. Maybe these recurring visions of Deedee were its way of reminding him to stay focused. His mission was twofold: First, he had to stay alive long enough to figure out exactly why everybody and his brother wanted to kill him and what to do about it; and second, he had to discover how Deedee had gotten into his office that fateful night.

Getting sidetracked by a woman was the last thing he needed.

What man had ever been able to think straight when his brain was intoxicated with thoughts of pussy?

So they had had sex. Good. Maybe he’d gotten it – and her – out of his system for a while.

A soft, wet mouth nuzzled his ear. God, was she hot for him again already? Steve wondered, and felt his member begin to stiffen in response.

All right, so maybe he hadn’t gotten it – and her – completely out of his system. Maybe he was already hankering after another go-round.

He’d get over it. He had to.

Cool it, he cautioned himself sternly. At this moment, going all mushy-brained – and brick-dicked – over the woman could be the death of both of them.

He was not going to allow himself to think of sex again until they were safe.

He glanced up, scowling, to warn the temptress in no uncertain terms about the inadvisability of doing any more nibbling on his ear.

The eyes he encountered were not a warm golden hazel, but chocolate brown and bulging. As he stared into them, the mutt to whom they belonged tilted its head inquiringly, panting with execrable doggy breath right in his face. With a shudder of revulsion, Steve realized just exactly who had been licking his ear: He’d been given a hard-on by a dog!

„Shit!“ He sat upright, dug his palms into his eyes to try to clear his brain, and snuck a wary peek at the thick canopy of branches overhead.

No Deedee. Thank God.

Steve drew a relieved breath, then glanced over at the woman who was stretched out in all her naked splendor against the deep glossy green of their kudzu bed.

The least she could do was lie on her stomach, he thought resentfully as his member, under no illusions this time, rose to instant attention.

Given a taste of what it craved, the damned thing was proving insatiable.

But she did look good. Summer. The name suited her a lot better than Rosencrans, which was why he’d better stick to calling her Rosencrans. Her eyes were closed. Her lashes lay in beautiful semicircular sweeps against her cheeks. Dozing, she looked flushed and satiated and content, just exactly like a woman was supposed to look in the aftermath of passion. Clearly she had forgotten, temporarily, that they were on the run for their lives. For all the anxiety she exhibited, she could have been lying on the smoothest sheets, the thickest mattress, at the best hotel in the country.

Sex was a great stress reliever. He had discovered that for himself long ago.

It was also an excellent stress inducer, at least in this particular case. The longer he looked at the object of his desire, the more stress he felt.

The obvious answer, of course, was simply not to look at her. But he couldn’t quite do that.

Naked, she was beautiful. One arm curved up and around to pillow her head. Her armpit was exposed, white and vulnerable. The urge to crawl over to her and press his mouth to that enticing area was almost irresistible, but from somewhere he found the strength to resist.

Her dark brown hair fanned out over her bent arm to form a kind of a halo around her face. Her nose was straight, the nostrils slightly dilated as she breathed. Her lips – wide, tender lips that knew how to kiss – were parted. He wanted to press his mouth there, too, but again he managed to keep himself under control.

Her creamy skin sported numerous bruises – he felt guilty as he acknowledged them. Each one, directly or indirectly, could be attributed to him.

The discolorations emphasized rather than detracted from the sheer allure of her milky skin. Milky skin that had felt like warm silk under his hands.

With the best will in the world not to do so, Steve mentally stroked that skin with his gaze. Now that his vision was back to normal, he could appreciate properly her full womanly shape.
Voluptuous
was the only word that did justice to the jutting fullness of her breasts and the roundness of her hips, to the curve of her belly and waist and the long, delectable length of her legs.

She had small feet. He was a sucker for small feet.

Just looking at her made him so hard that he had to grit his teeth to keep from doing anything about it. What made it worse was the knowledge that she was his for the taking. He could do anything he liked with her.

She had told him so.

With a muttered curse Steve shot to his feet and snatched up his briefs.

„Steve?“ His nemesis sat up, blinking the sleep from her eyes, still as naked as a babe but a hell of a lot more enticing to look at. She made not the slightest attempt to cover herself as she watched him yank his briefs up his legs, followed by his shorts. Even though he determinedly refused to look in her direction, just the memory of her rosy nipples and mink-brown bush and all the hills and valleys between drove him mad.

„Get dressed,“ he said harshly. He should never have brought a woman along. But what choice had he had? None. The knowledge didn’t help. Gathering up her clothes in a quick grab, he tossed them at her.

„Is something wrong?“ She sounded hesitant, confused. Her voice was a throaty, sexy contralto – why hadn’t he ever before noticed just how sexy it was? – and it immediately conjured up memories of the cries she had made during sex.

Could dicks break? Because his felt as if it were going to, crammed inside the too tight shorts as it was. Keeping his back to her, he pulled at his fly in a vain attempt to relieve the pressure, and reached for his shirt.

„We’ve got to get moving.“ He knew he sounded hostile, but he couldn’t help it. He felt hostile. The whole damned situation was impossible. Here he was, facing the distinct possibility of a woefully shortened life span, saddled with a chatterbox woman and her sissy mutt, with what felt like the whole damned population of the bad-guy hall of fame after him and a ghostly vision tormenting him at every turn, and all he wanted to do was get his rocks off – again. And again. And again.

With her. With Summer.

Damn it to hell. What a hell of a situation.

„So you’re one of those,“ that sexy voice said with cold disdain.

„One of whats?“ He still had his back to her, pulling on his shoes.

„One of those wham, bam, I-won’t-bother-to-thank-you-ma’am types.“

„What?“ That did it. He had to glance around at her. She had one knee raised, the other curled beside her, and looked about as sexy as any woman he had ever seen as she sat naked among the dark green leaves and purple flowers and gray-barked trees of their bower, looking down her nose at him.

„I should have guessed,“ she said witheringly, and stood up, walking past him with regal dignity.