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Callie sat quietly as Carter drove up into the hills. Apparently, he lived in one of the houses that was still fighting the uphill battle against the tree line. It was dark this far out, away from the streetlights... She plucked uneasily at the camping blanket that covered her legs. With the wind howling and the rain splattering against the windshield, the darkness seemed alive. Angry.
“Is it much farther?” she asked as he followed the winding path away from the town center.
He glanced at her. “Are you all right?”
“I didn’t realize you lived this far out of town.”
“It’s probably only a few city blocks in Boston.”
“But Boston isn’t this dark.” As exhausted as she felt, adrenaline threatened to start pumping back into her system.
“Relax.”
“I’m not—”
He covered her restless hands with one of his. “We’re almost there.”
She took a calming breath. It might be childish, but she’d suddenly developed a healthy fear of the dark. With everything inside her, she wanted to crawl across the console and back into his lap. He’d taken the most direct route possible to snap her out of her panic with that kiss. He’d made her feel safe. He’d made her feel wanted.
Adelaide hadn’t wanted her around; she’d made that abundantly clear.
Callie didn’t think she’d ever forget the image of that gathering shadow... the old woman staring at her with penetrating eyes... or the sound of that strange voice echoing down the hallway...
Carter braked and turned down a road that seemed even more remote. Even more desolate. Neighbors seemed few and far between, but then he turned into a driveway.
“This is it,” he said.
Curiosity took the edge off Callie’s worries. A small clearing had opened up. A house was tucked away in the far corner, surrounded by trees like big bodyguards. The rain made it hard to see, and the trees bent and curled under the wind, but there was no battle going on here. The trees had accepted this place a long time ago. The house stood waiting for them like a haven.
“Home sweet home,” he said. He hit the garage door opener and pulled in to park. “Let’s get you inside and warmed up.”
Callie let herself out of the car as he got her things out of the back seat. The concrete floor felt like ice against her feet, and she moved quickly to the doormat next to the door to the house.
“Go inside,” he said. “Your lips are turning blue.”
He held the door for her, and she entered. They’d stepped into a laundry room, which led to the kitchen. Beyond that, she could see a living room with a huge stone fireplace taking up one entire wall.
“My grandfather built this place,” Carter said.
“Really?” She moved aside as he set her box on the kitchen table. “He did a wonderful job.”
Her attention was captured by that fireplace. Every stone fit against its neighbor like parts of a jigsaw puzzle. Some were no bigger than her fist, while others looked heavier than she weighed. “He didn’t do the stonework by himself?”
“He had to. It was a requirement of my grandmother’s if she was going to live so far away from town. There wasn’t anyone else to do it, so he knew he had to get his act in gear.”
Callie headed over for a closer look, but saw something out of the corner of her eye as she walked into the dimly lit room. Her head snapped to the right, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.
Carter was at her side in an instant. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Sorry.” She dropped her head in embarrassment. She’d been scared by a light-colored coat hanging on a hook by the front door.
He frowned when he put two and two together. Reaching out, he caught her chin. His gaze was soft but steady on her face. “Nothing is going to hurt you here. Anyone or anything that wants to try will have to go through me first.”
She nodded.
“Do you understand?”
She blinked fast. She didn’t doubt that, but she hated being such a scaredy-cat. She was an independent, self-sufficient woman... who had just happened to see her first ghost. She pushed back her hair. “I guess I’m still a little jumpy.”
He trailed his fingers across her cheek. “It’s late. You’re tired. Let’s get you situated.” He grabbed her box of things. “The guest room is this way.”
Callie followed him, feeling uncertain and out of sorts. This was not like her. She tried to approach everything with a sense of humor, but she couldn’t laugh this off. He turned into the second room on the left, and she saw a spartanly decorated but comfy bedroom with a full-sized bed waiting for her.
He set her box on the dresser and stepped away. “Is there anything I can get you?”
A spine? A Ouija board? “Some holy water?”
The light bulb went on inside her head, and she clapped her hand over her forehead. “That’s what the ‘cleansing’ was about.”
“Enough. You need to stop thinking about this.” He strode to the bed and turned back the covers. “Hop in. I can’t take the shivering much longer.”
The way he looked at her made Callie curl her toes inside her slippers. The wall of friction was down. Not trusting herself, she wandered over to look through the box of things he’d collected for her. She found clothes, her toothbrush, her blow dryer... bras and panties... Her cheeks heated. Had he intentionally picked out the sexiest and laciest lingerie she owned, or was that a coincidence? She dug deeper. She needed to change out of her damp robe before she crawled under those covers. She frowned when she got all the way to the bottom without finding any pajamas. “Uh, did you bring anything for me to sleep in?”
He went still. “Ah, hell.” A helpless look crossed his face, and he rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry. You can wear something of mine.”
She stepped aside, self-conscious, when he walked over and opened a drawer of the dresser. He pulled out a black T-shirt. “Will this work?”
She unfolded it and saw “SHADOW VALLEY POLICE DEPARTMENT” written on the front. Size large and soft from wear. His. “Yes.”
It was perfect.
“Okay. I need to call the station, but I’ll come back to check on you.”
She nodded and watched as he left. She wasn’t quite sure how to deal with him. He wasn’t the stoic, by-the-books police chief anymore—and that was the problem. She didn’t know quite what he was.
She glanced at the bed. It would be so much warmer with two...
She untied the robe and found a hanger for it in the closet. She pulled the T-shirt over her head, and it came around her like a big, warm hug. Her nipples beaded as the material brushed against her. Her thighs clenched, and she scampered to the bed. The sheets were cool, but the comforter was heavy. It wasn’t long before she heard a tap on the door.
“Come in.”
He’d changed, too. The uniform was gone, replaced by sweats and a worn T-shirt. She licked her lips. He looked good. Younger and athletic. Not so uptight, almost approachable...
Her belly tightened.
Very approachable.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Bill caught another Halloween prankster in the act—but no news about your house.”
That hadn’t been a prank, but she didn’t want to argue about it.
He looked at her sitting propped up against the headboard, and his tense stance relaxed. As big and tough as he might be, he carried a lot of stress on those broad shoulders. She drew her knees up under the covers and wrapped her arms around her legs. It felt intimate, being tucked in bed in his house, away from the craziness of town.
“Well, you look like you’re settled in,” he said.
“It’s a comfy bed.”
His lips twisted into a feeble smile, and he shook his head. With a heavy sigh, he reached for the light switch. “I’ll be just down the hallway.”
“Wait.” Her gasp and forward lunge stopped him from dousing the room into darkness.
“Callie.”
She winced, but she didn’t want to be alone. “Talk to me? Just for a little while?”
Like clockwork, he reached up to rub his shoulder. Strong and silent, her big toe. He kept things stored up like a pressure cooker. She shivered. One of these days, he was going to blow.
After what seemed like an hour of contemplation, he crossed the room and sat down on the foot of the bed. “What do you want to talk about?”
Anything. The Patriots. Daylight saving time. Pumpkin spice lattes.
“Do you believe in an afterlife?”
He stopped, hand cupping his collarbone. “You mean like heaven and hell?”
“And other places in between.”
His hand slowly dropped across his chest and down to the bed. “Are you asking if I believe in ghosts?”
She shook her head. “I know you don’t. But do you believe in energies? Lost souls? Dying has to be like everything else humans do; we’ve got to mess it up every now and then.”
His lips twitched. “You have been spending more time writing.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why do you say that?”
“It was a very Quick Kate thing to say.”
She popped up off the pillow. “You’ve been reading my column.”
He tilted his head. “I had to find out what all the fuss was about. Alice and Mamie have been on me nonstop about you.”
She went still. “And vice versa.”
“They’re trying to play matchmaker.”
Her pulse pounded in her ears. “I know.”
And why had she been fighting that so hard, again? She eased back against the headboard. “You didn’t answer the question. Don’t you think a soul could get stuck?”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Then why not this time?”
He shook his head. “Adelaide Calhoun is not in your house.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I can’t fight a ghost.”
Callie felt something flip inside her chest.
“Tell me more about your column,” he said.
She bit her lip. “I’m worried about it.”
“Why?”
She plucked at the comforter that was already warming her up. “It’s been hard to get back into the swing of things, and my world has changed so much.”
That was an understatement. Not only had she moved to a small town, she was now dealing with the supernatural. And it had affected her writing. She didn’t know if her readers would stay with her now that she wasn’t writing about her adventures in big-city life. Her new columns hadn’t hit publication yet, and she was worried and excited to see how people would react.
“Alice said you’ve been getting some mail. Do people still do that?”
“Some, if they’re older or they don’t want someone else to see their email.” Talking was helping. Or, at least, the distraction of him was. “I got a couple of good ones today.”
“Yeah? What were they about? Or can’t you tell me that?”
She smirked. It wasn’t as if she was bound by any client confidentiality agreements, but she’d avoided Alice and Mamie with the same questions. “I had an email from a guy whose teeth-whitening procedure went too well. An even better one was from a woman who discovered that the swimsuit her boyfriend bought her for their tropical cruise was too small.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her that a too-small bikini might be the best way to change a boyfriend into a husband.”
He chuckled. “Now that’s damned good advice.”
She felt herself go soft. “You think so?”
His gaze ran over her, and he cleared his throat. “How did you get started with that, anyway? The column, I mean.”
Callie was suddenly acutely aware of what she was—and wasn’t—wearing. “I fell into it, actually. I used to be a reporter. A poor one.”
“Oh, come on. You’re one of the most popular columnists out there today.”
“I said that I was a poor reporter. There’s a difference. I like the creative side of writing, rather than just regurgitating facts. My boss was about ready to fire me when one of our regular columnists got sick. He had white space he needed to fill, and he put me on it. The rest, as they say, is history.”
“It sounds like everything turned out for the best.”
“It did. The column became popular enough to go into syndication. That meant more money, and then the house dropped into my lap...”
She hesitated. He was good at this interrogation stuff. He’d made her forget what had brought her here. She plucked at the comforter again. Sometimes he really could be sweet. “What about you? What did you do before you became Shadow Valley’s chief of police?” He wasn’t the only one who was curious.
“I spent time on the beat in Pittsburgh. Then I moved up to detective in Springfield.”
She tilted her head. “I thought you hated big cities.”
“I never said that.”
“You most certainly did. You haven’t had anything good to say about Boston since I got here.”
He scowled. “It had nothing to do with the town itself. I’ve been dealing with a brain-dead bureaucrat from Boston on the task force. You just happened to catch me at a bad time.”
“Guilt by association?”
“Guilt by breaking the speed limit by twenty miles per hour.”
Agh. Was she ever going to live that down? “You could have let me go.”
His gaze caught hers, slow and heated. “Not on your life.”
Callie didn’t look away. “Is the FBI guy the reason why you’re having problems finding Morton?”
Carter sat up straighter. “Let’s not talk about that.”
“Don’t do that,” she said softly. “You always pull back when I ask you about your case. Why don’t you just tell me what’s wrong?”
“You shouldn’t have to worry about it.”
“I’m not worrying about it. You are.” She dared him to argue. The hunt for the escaped convict had crawled under his skin and set up housekeeping. She could see the dark circles under his eyes and the lines of fatigue around his mouth. She wasn’t the cause behind all of that.
“Morton’s a bad character,” he said. “He’s out there somewhere, and it’s not going to be good when he pops out of his hidey-hole.”
“But he’s got to be out of the state by now. Maybe out of the country.”
“Maybe.” He rubbed his eyes. “It’s hard to tell.”
“Carter,” she said softly, “did you at least take my advice and start delegating some of the other work?”
He sighed. “Yeah, my cop on medical leave has been helping out with some of the investigative work. It’s good training for him.”
“And Nancy’s stolen laundry?”
“Bill took it over—along with some of the other Halloween pranks.”
Some. Callie felt the friction come back into the air. She knew he wasn’t talking about what had happened at her house. He’d made it clear he was taking lead on that. So what... Oh. David.
The mattress shifted as he stood. “We both need to catch some shut-eye. Tomorrow’s going to be busy.”
Because of Halloween. Because Adelaide Calhoun had made an appearance. And because Callie Thompson had spent the night at Carter Landry’s house. The townspeople would be all atwitter.
“Thank you for letting me stay here,” she said.
“Glad to help.” He opened and closed his hands by his sides. Stiffly, he reached out and turned on the lamp on the nightstand. “I’ll be in the last room on your left.”
Callie watched him go, her muscles straining as she held herself back. He switched off the overhead light as he walked out, and her chest ached. He’d left her with a night light on, but it didn’t spread all the way across the room.
She tried not to think about it, but her gaze flashed to the corners where shadows lurked. Darkness was no longer just the absence of light. It was a different world—a world that held things some refused to see. Frightening things. Dangerous things. She tried taking deep, slow breaths, but her ears listened intently for any creaks or groans. The woods outside provided plenty.
For what seemed like an eternity, she concentrated on breathing in and out. At last, she couldn’t stand it anymore.
She crept from the bed and grabbed the pillow and the old blanket she’d never returned to him. She was as quiet as she could be as she padded down the hallway. She hadn’t made a conscious decision, but she knew exactly where she was going.
Dim light spilled out of the room she left, and she could see Carter’s door standing halfway open. She slipped inside and glanced at the bed. There was enough moonlight now to see that he was sleeping with his back to her. Just knowing he was there eased her racing pulse. She dropped the pillow onto the floor and shook out the old blanket.
“Don’t even think about it.”
She yelped when he rolled onto his back and stared at him like a deer caught in the headlights. “I... I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I heard you the moment your feet hit the floor.”
What was she supposed to do? Go back? She didn’t think she could—
Reaching over, he caught the covers and flipped them back. “Get in.”
* * *
AIR RAKED IN AND OUT of Carter’s lungs as he watched Callie in the moonlight. She stood motionless before she let her blanket—his blanket—drop to the floor. She slid in beside him, and his pulse took off.
He been doing his damnedest to be a good guy, but he wasn’t a saint. It had been a long night, and he’d been fighting his inclinations for most of it. This time, he went with them. Reaching across the bed, he caught her around the waist. He heard her inhale sharply as he pulled her across the mattress.
The tension in her body left almost instantaneously when he locked his mouth over hers. He pulled her up against him, and she pressed even closer. Threading his fingers through her hair, he swept his tongue through the sweetness of her mouth. A shudder went through him when the tip of her tongue flirted with his.
“The dark?” he asked.
She nodded against the pillow.
“Good things can happen in the dark, too.”
“Show me,” she whispered.
He rolled her underneath him. Sweeping his hands up her sides, he started to remove her T-shirt—his T-shirt—but his hands stopped on her hips. She wasn’t wearing panties, and he knew he’d grabbed some of those for her. The hard-on he’d been fighting went to steel.
God, she owned him.
He stroked his hands over the smooth skin of her waist and the sides of her breasts. She lifted herself off the pillow to help extricate herself, and then she was naked beneath him. He shoved his hands into her honey-colored hair and kissed her again.
Everything about her was sweet as honey, except for her spirit, and that had an irresistible tang.
He pushed the T-shirt aside. He wanted clear access to her. There was nothing about her he didn’t want to touch.
“Hey, I liked that T-shirt,” she said.
“Me too. It’s yours.” His thighs clenched when she settled her hands against his lower back. “It looks better on you than it ever looked on me.”
Her touch tickled his ribcage, and she spread her fingers wide over his chest. “I doubt that.”
His heart beat fast. She’d given him such a hard time since she’d come to town. Challenged him and sparred with him. Foreplay.
He wanted her more than anything.
He wrapped his hand around her hip as he kissed his way down her throat, along her breastbone, and, finally, to her breast. She was long and sleek, but she had enough curves to make him break out in a cold sweat. He licked his tongue over her already taut nipple, and she let out a cry.
She liked that? He settled in for a longer stay. He suckled at her, swirling his tongue and gently nipping with his teeth, until she arched beneath him.
Her fingernails scored his skin. “Ah, Carter!”
She tugged his T-shirt up his back. When he levered himself up to take it off, she started working on his sweats. Between the two of them, they got them off fast.
She wrapped her leg around his hip, and his erection settled in snugly between her legs. Carter’s head dipped. He had a thing for her legs. A really bad thing. He was tall, and she was long and sleek, just right to fit him.
He thrust slowly between her legs, forward and back, rubbing himself against her. She was like silk. Warm, wet silk. Her hips fell into a rhythm with his, and a groan rumbled up from his chest.
Why had he played good cop for so long?
He pushed himself up over her. Bracing a hand beside her head, he watched her as he worked his other hand between their bodies. Her stomach sucked in as he caressed her, but he kept going. Lower and lower. Finally, he swept his finger along her slit and around the secret little nub at the top. Her body bowed, her neck stretching too temptingly to resist.
He pressed his mouth against her pounding pulse as he dragged air into his lungs. He couldn’t wait a moment longer. He had to get inside her.
Reaching out blindly to the nightstand, he yanked open the drawer and found protection. He tore open the package, but nearly lost it when her hands were there, “helping him.”
“Gah, Callie.”
He gritted his teeth as she unrolled the condom over him, but she’d barely gotten it on before he lined himself up and pushed into her, driving from his toes.
Her cry of pleasure lit the room.
“Oh, God.” She clenched her thighs around his. “You’re big everywhere.”
Her breath was right against his ear, and his balls cinched up tight. The feeling of being inside her messed up his brain processes, but he forced himself to go still. “Too much?”
She rubbed her toes against the back of his knee. “How long can you hold it there? Oh, yes. Right there?”
Not long.
He failed the challenge, because his hips began pumping uncontrollably. He kissed her again, their mouths melding. From that point on, there was no talk. Only touching. And stroking. And sensation.
It was faster than he wanted, but this thing between them had been building for a while. Too long.
And, tonight, someone had threatened her well-being.
Carter lost it a little—and then he lost it a lot. He began thrusting into her, fast and deep. She cried out as she came beneath him, and the feel of her body clenching him inside and out pushed him to the brink. His hips jammed forward, and his spine locked. He came hard, and he came long.
She was limp when he sagged down atop of her, but still, she wrapped her arms around him. Her breaths slowed, and her body turned languorous. She found the stubborn knot along his shoulder blade and began massaging it.
Carter’s cock twitched, still inside her. “Mmm. Keep that up, and you’ll never sleep alone again.”
“That’s not a bad deal.” Her gaze was soft as she looked up at him. “You watch out for me, and I’ll do the same for you.”
He caught those sassy, plump lips one more time. “Done,” he murmured.
He’d watch over her for nothing.