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For the past hour, she had watched the clock in sixty-second intervals. She changed her mind at least a dozen times.
When Jake called, she would make an excuse. She wouldn’t go.
But what excuse was good enough to miss a night in his arms? She would go.
She couldn’t go. Why start something that had no chance for a happy ending?
Why not have one perfect night, if nothing else? Go.
Don’t go. You don’t know him well enough. What if he’s the killer?
He has killer blue eyes. You know you’ll thank yourself in the morning. You gotta go, Gera girl.
She had finally decided that no, she couldn’t go. The reasons were long and many, all well thought out and perfectly rational. But they all came down to one fundamental flaw in the otherwise nearly perfect man. He believed in ghosts.
Her phone rang at 10:38 p.m.
“Hey.” His voice was low and sexy, and almost her undoing.
Stay strong, Gera girl. You’re saying no.
“Hey.”
“Sorry, I just got away.”
“No problem. I was working and didn’t even notice the time.” Liar, her mind screamed.
“I’m starved. I called for a bite to eat. You want something?”
We practiced this. Say no. You’re tired and going to bed.
“Sure.”
Gera smacked herself in the forehead. Where had that come from?
“Great. I’m going to jump in the shower. I’m leaving the door cracked for room service, so come whenever you want. I’ll be out in five.”
“Let me put things away and I’ll be over in a little while. Call me if I’m not there when the food arrives.”
“Will do.”
Gera berated herself as she jumped from the couch and checked the mirror, for what had to be the millionth time. She had worn her dress last night. Tonight, she had decided on jeans and a tee. Changed into a pair of lounge pants. Changed back to jeans. She was currently dressed in striped lounge pants, a white cotton cami, and house shoes, because her last decision—before she heard his voice again—was that she was going to bed. She wasn’t about to change again. Because no matter what nonsense she spouted to him about putting away her work and coming in a little while, she knew it would be all she could do not to take off running, all the way to the far end of the hall. She could be there in less than sixty seconds.
She took time to swig a sip of mouthwash, squirt one last spray of perfume, and run her fingers through her hair. Then she was off down the hall, her nerves tapping out a pace even faster than her feet.
Room service arrived at the same time she did. Blushing, she took the tray from the man without quite meeting his eyes and shut the door behind him. She could hear the shower still running upstairs. On shaky legs, Gera carried the tray up the spiral steps.
She stood in the middle of his bedroom, trying to formulate a plan, when the bathroom door opened. Steam escaped around him, so that at first she didn’t notice he wore only a towel at his waist. When she did notice, her mouth went dry. She almost dropped the tray.
“Hey!” he said in surprise, a smile spreading across his face. “I didn’t know you were already here.”
“I—I should go,” she said suddenly.
“Go?” he asked in confusion. “But the food is here.” He took the tray from her and turned to put it on a table in the sitting area. Muscles rippled along his back with the movement. “Aren’t you hungry?”
It was an innocent enough question, but Gera, fully under the influence of the heady and gorgeous drug called Jake, answered with a breathless, “Yes.” Her eyes devoured him, taking in the sculpted pecs and bulky shoulders. Slid low, to where the towel hung on the barest thread of decency, barely covering him.
If she had had the nerve, she would’ve been waiting for him on the bed, naked, alongside the tray. When he came into the room, she would’ve asked in a sultry voice, “See anything you like?”
But she didn’t have the nerve. The girl who punched bullies in the nose and defied the ravages of cancer and poured her drink down bartenders’ shirts lost her nerve when it came to this. She had no skills at seduction. No flirting finesse.
But she did know what she wanted.
And she wanted Jake.
“Gera?”
She met him halfway across the room. He held his arms wide and let her fall into him. Kissed her until she almost forgot her newest and most brilliant plan. Head on, Gera.
“You’re way over-dressed for this dinner party,” he murmured, just as she reached for the tail of her camisole. She whipped it off and flung it over her head.
His eyes darkened. Without his glasses, the color was even bluer than before. Gera could drown in the blue of those eyes.
Jake kissed her again. His deft hands pushed at the waistband of her pants, pushing them down to pool around her feet. When she stepped out of them, he kicked them aside and pulled her backwards, a few steps closer to the bed.
“Are you sure?” he murmured. “No lingering drugs?”
“I’m high on the best drug of all,” she said, pushing her tongue into his mouth. He tasted like toothpaste and cinnamon. “Jake Cody. This is all you.” Before she lost her nerve, she tugged his towel free.
“Then forgive me, my beautiful Gera,” he murmured against her throat, trailing his mouth lower, hot and hungry, as he disposed of first her bra, and then her underwear. “But I have no intentions of being a gentleman tonight.”
***
IT WAS MIDNIGHT WHEN they finally ate. The rolls were cold and the strawberries were warm, but they were both starving. Gera was amazed at the ease she felt, crawling naked onto his bed with a plate filled with food and eating it, right there among the tangled sheets.
They talked about everything and nothing, much as they had done before. But this time, they did it with no clothes on, and stopped intermittently to nip the other on the shoulder, or to kiss the tip of a nose, or the back of a knee, or in that sweet spot between the neck and the collar bone. And when Jake proclaimed they had talked enough and it was time for dessert, she didn’t think she could reach such heights again, but he proved her wrong. Her pleasure came in waves, washing over them both and whisking them away to a place only they could know.
He held her afterward, guiding her safely back to Earth. She came down slowly, not wanting the magic to end.
“Jake?” she murmured groggily.
“Yeah?”
“Something you said,” she said, running her hand across the muscled planes of his chest. “You said you indulge Leo and Lucy, because they’re like grandparents to you, and you can’t bear to send them away. What did you mean by that?”
His attention was on the creamy lobe of her breast, and how it fell perfectly into the palm of his hand. “Just that I let Leo do his puppet show, as you call it, because it seems to make him happy, and I go along with Lucy when she thinks she talks to my grandmother, because I don’t want her to know that I know.”
“Know what?”
“That she’s losing her mind,” he whispered, the words too painful to admit in a normal voice.
“But, if you believe in ghosts”—and this was the most difficult part, because if not for the ghost angle, she could easily fall in love with this man—“why do you think she’s losing her mind? Why don’t you think she’s really talking to your grandmother?”
“I never said I believed in ghosts, Gera,” he answered quietly.
“Yes, you did,” she argued.
“No, you said it for me. I just didn’t disagree.”
“Then you aren’t a believer?”
He stroked her ivory skin, testing the weight of first one breast, then the other. He was fascinated by their symmetry, their smooth flawlessness. “I think there is something,” he answered thoughtfully, “some... spirit. Some connection. Something that doesn’t always end with death. There are days that I think I can almost hear my grandmother’s voice. Other days I get this odd chill, and then a warm sensation comes over me, and for no reason at all, I think of my grandmother. I feel really close to her again in that moment. But that’s not a ghost. It’s the spirit of love. So no, Gera, I don’t believe in ghosts.”
A huge smile spread across her face. Her mother’s smile, the one that had beguiled her father and kept him deeply in love with his wife, even all these years after her death. Jake blinked beneath the brilliance of that smile. Swallowed hard. Forgot even to breathe, or to fondle her breasts. His heart hammered in his chest, his mind struck senseless by her smile.
“You, Jake Cody, may truly be the perfect man,” she whispered through her smile. “Definitely my very own Superman.”
***
SHE CAME AWAKE TO THE sound of his voice.
“Good morning, Lois Lane.”
“Morning, SuperClark.” She had given him the adapted moniker sometime deep in the night, when their bodies melted together for yet another time.
“I have the next two days off,” he announced with a smile. “What would you like to do? Anything you want, you name it.”
“Anything?”
Jake laughed, seeing the hungry look in her eyes. He stopped her hand before it could wander too far. “Even Superman has to have a break now and then, and Clark definitely does. And both need food. Lots and lots of food.”
“Which of us gets the shower first?” she asked.
“Ladies, of course.”
As she turned on the multi-jets in the over-sized stall and the room filled with steam, she heard Jake call out, “Want me to order breakfast in the room?”
“Sure. One of everything.” She stepped beneath the hot water and let it sluice over her body, reviving her sore body and abused muscles. Both had quite the workout last night.
She had suds in her hair when she heard the bathroom door open and shut. Jake silently joined her in the shower and adjusted one set of jets to suit him. Peeking an eye open, Gera yelped as suds trickled down her forehead and stung her eyes.
“Who else did you think it would be?” he laughed. “I thought we cleared up the ghost issue last night.”
“Can’t ever be too sure,” she said. She thought again about her initial fear of coming to the hotel, based on a slasher movie. There had been a shower scene in that movie, too.
Not that she had to worry about that now. She trusted Jake. “Did you order breakfast?”
“Sure did. One of everything, just like you said, but double pancakes and double bacon.”
“Speaking of ghosts...” She put her head under the spray and washed the suds away. “Minnie told me an incredible story about ghosts yesterday. Have you heard the legend of miner’s ashes in the steel?”
“Yeah, that’s an old local legend. My grandmother told me about it when I was a kid.”
“I hate to say it, but I do believe the part about some of the families skipping the funeral and going straight for the money.”
“Times were hard. People did what they had to do.”
“What about some sort of Executive Order, when Franklin Roosevelt confiscated all the gold and silver in the US and paid people back with devalued cash? Have you ever heard that one?”
Jake scrubbed shampoo into his scalp and rinsed it free before answering. “That’s not legend. That one is fact.”
“Really?”
“Really. Look it up.”
“I will.” She sighed as she picked up a bar of soap and absently began to lather Jake’s back. “I intended to look up all sorts of things on the internet yesterday, but at one point, everything was down, even my hot-spot. What’s up with the service around here?”
He looked over his shoulder and grinned. “You know what they’re saying. Mac.”
“So I’ll just have to pick your brain. What can you tell me about Minnie?”
“Switch,” Jake said, turning around and motioning for her to do the same. As he took his turn lathering her back, he asked, “Who?”
“You know, the old woman who lives next door.”
“No one lives next door.”
“Really? I just assumed she lived in that old run-down house. I think she might be poor. Not like starving-and-can’t-afford-to-eat poor, but like take-advantage-of-the-free-coffee-and-flower-gardens poor.”
“Who is this again?”
“The old lady I told you about, the one I see out in the garden most mornings. She was out there yesterday afternoon, and told me all sorts of great stories.”
“Well, she doesn’t live next door. It’s been empty for about ten years. I remember MiniMa told me the owner died and didn’t have a family, so the bank owns it now. Not that they’ve done anything with it.” His soapy washcloth ran along her arm as he grumbled, “I wish they would at least clean it up. At the very least, fix the holes they left in the yard.”
“You have a Mini Me?”
“Not Mini Me, MiniMa,” he corrected. His cloth slid around to her belly, causing her to suck in her breath. He continued unabashedly, “Hey, don’t judge. Some people have a Granny, some people have a Nana, some people have a Meme. I had a MiniMa.”
“I—I had a Grams.” It was almost sacrilegious, uttering her name with Jake doing the things he was beginning to do to her. She felt him press himself against her back. “I thought SuperClark wasn’t up to the challenge.”
“I was wrong,” he murmured against her ear. “You, Gera Stapleton, are my new energy source.”
