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Calum didn’t want to go in the attic. And he definitely didn’t want to hang out in another basement. He’d spent a decade in string of “D” adjectives—dark, dank, damp, dirty, dingy, and he could throw in disgusting and despair and that about summed up his career.
So why he was following Walker Kent’s firm, round, posterior up several narrow flights of stairs into a one-hundred-year plus attic made no sense to him. He’d come to Marietta to... well, he wasn’t exactly sure. It had called to him in some indefinable way. He told himself he wanted to reconnect with his former crew mate and friend, Laird Wilder, to find out how he’d gotten off the crazy merry-go-round of a hit cable show that gobbled up his time and soul to reboot his life. But he suspected there was more to it than that.
Calum rolled his eyes at himself. He had to get out of his head right now—hence the whisky, though he never drank when he was working.
Not working.
So, what was he doing here? He hated to think he was jerking her chain. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to cut this short—whatever this was. He couldn’t quite say thanks but no thanks.
“So, did you change your name legally before or after you thought of doing a ghost show?” Walker asked ahead of him.
“Huh?”
“You changed your last name,” she stated, rounding the landing on the first long staircase. “I wondered if Calum Quest—nice alliteration by the way—is a pen name or if you really changed it when you thought up the name of your show.”
“Why do you assume I changed my last name?” That was only one of the many reasons he was sick of this life. The show had chosen him. The life had chosen him. All the losses—his mother and father, his gran, his friend, then Lexi—they’d chosen him. Taken from him. The name was something he’d lived with since birth.
“Why would you ask that?” he was puzzled and oddly hostile. “Did you change your name to hide something?” He shot back because she unnerved him with her beauty, sexual potency, and woke something deep inside him that he wasn’t sure he wanted roused.
His quick reflexes honed from years of doing martial arts and kick boxing and surfing and rock climbing kept Walker from face-planting when she stumbled on the next stair. Calum caught Walker around her small waist, and then his forearm slid up the center of her body to lift her back up. Two things happened simultaneously. One, he could feel the two softly rounded mounds of her delectable breasts cradling his arm in her cleavage, and two, he smelled the faint whiff of orange blossoms that had always calmed him and reminded him of his youth growing up on his grandmother’s small estate, in the hills above San Clemente in Southern California. Why hadn’t that scent reached him earlier in the bar? He’d always been so sensitive with smells.
Then a third thing happened. His body reacted. He gritted his teeth and breathed, hating himself for reacting like an animal. The last thing he should have to a woman he didn’t know well was a physical reaction when they were alone in a stairwell. She had no reason to trust him. Usually, he had much better control. And, lately, far less interest.
He made sure she had her feet under her before he slid his arm away from her, and tried to ignore the way she’d felt so briefly in his arms. He ran a hand through his hair.
Play it cool.
Like he always did. Nothing mattered. Nothing got to him. But something had gotten to Walker Kent.
He forced himself to suck in a breath that was redolent with warm woman, something lightly floral and spicy and then the hint of orange. He had to stifle the urge to pull her into a full body embrace and breathe in her warm, welcoming scent and let some of her heat soak into his cold bones. He needed to get out of here. She’d have him up for assault, and why was he having such a visceral reaction when he’d felt nothing, absolutely nothing about anything or anyone for well over a year?
“Thank you,” Walker said, her voice low and the husk that had so disturbed his breezy equilibrium earlier at the bar, was more pronounced.
Calum was a step below her. Politeness dictated he take a step back, but this way, with her one step above, they were equal height. And he liked that because he could look into her eyes.
Walker Kent was hiding something.
He felt the cool chill at the base of his brain that hummed and shivered down his spine when he was close to a mystery, and Walker Kent was a mystery. He’d never ignored a mystery before. Ironic that after being bored for over a year and finally vowing to walk away, his work unfinished, he found another mystery that tempted. But he was done with that life—searching for answers he’d never really have, trying to prove something that didn’t definitely exist.
He wanted to life a different life now. Simple. Fact based. Easy. Tangible. That was why he was here in Marietta, wasn’t it?
“After you.” He waved his hand gracefully and followed with a bow, knowing she thought he was being more than a bit of a jerk.
It was stupid to be so affected; Walker bitched herself out. Yeah, he was handsome, but she’d seen and done and worked with lots of handsome men. It was something less visual and more visceral. His raw, masculine, and sexual energy was tangible and threw her off her game, not that she had much game left after this past year. He was so... different from the men she was used to—no designer suit, no power tie, no expensive haircut, manicure, or artful spray tan and no pressured speech or one-up-manship. He seemed ethereally comfortable in his skin, which made him mysterious, almost magical. She’d never known a man who seemed so comfortable with who he was, and who didn’t pretend to be someone he thought he should be in order to gain something.
She wanted to kick herself for her fantasy. He chased ghosts for a living. That hardly screamed real. And he had a bit of a bad boy vibe going on, and she’d never been into that, even when she’d been sixteen.
“You’re smiling.”
“Thinking.”
“About?”
“Probably not wise to tell you.” She reached the top of the attic and reached out for the light switch but his hand was there, stilling the action.
“Now I really want to know.”
His voice was low in her ear and the tone swept through her making her overtly aware of her body. He was so close. Her breasts still tingled from where his arm had brushed her. She’d been so hyperaware of their differences—he was hard where she was so soft.
“I’d like to tell you some history of the Graff.” She dragged her mind away from his closeness and the attraction that sizzled between them.
Not that she was well versed. She’d only been here a few days and hadn’t boned up on anything before her brainstorm of having the Ghost Quests team come. She’d thought she’d have time to plan to make up the sightings depending on what parts of the hotel she wanted to highlight.
“History is for later.”
“Why?”
“First, I want to get a feel.”
Her heart surged to her throat. She was alone with a man she didn’t know, except from a partial episode of his rather silly cable show that she’d forced herself to watch. His Ghost Quests had far higher ratings than the other shows that featured hauntings or paranormal activity. She was not his demographic and didn’t watch TV unless it were news.
“A feel?” She repeated faintly, remembering how his arm had felt between her breasts as he hauled her back onto her feet. His arm hadn’t even lingered so she couldn’t pretend that he too was attracted.
“Relax. And don’t knee me in my family jewels,” he murmured low in her ear. “I want to get a feel for the room.”
“Oh.” She released a shaky breath. “Of course. Not me.”
She felt stupid and vain when she was neither. And more than a little embarrassed.
“I didn’t say that.” His mouth was so close to her ear, she could feel the warmth of his heated breath. His laugh was quick and low and danced down her spine. “Don’t turn on the light.”
She waited a beat. “Why?”
“Just listen. Feel.”
“Feel what?” All she could feel was him—well not him exactly. He wasn’t touching her, and yet having her body caged so near the wall by his, and his hand, so much larger than hers, hovering over hers and all this faux physical closeness in the dark was making it one of the most intimate experiences of her life.
She felt... she felt...
Something deep within her woke and stirred, hungry. She ached, and the ache felt alive. Thrashed in her core and her legs trembled.
“This is stupid.” She’d dropped her voice to a whisper.
Dumb. There was no power in a whisper.
“Is this some weird flirty thing you do with women on your show?”
She spun around to confront him. Big mistake. Her breasts, already feeling sensitized by his closeness and his everything else, brushed across his muscular arms and his chest. She sucked in a quick, shocked breath. He was packing some serious abs and everything else a woman could want in a man.
What was wrong with her? She was not hook up material!
Was she? Since losing her career, her professional reputation, her condo, her financial and emotional security, her friends, her confidence, and her fiancé, she was completely unmoored. The past few months she’d felt like she’d been tossed in a raging, class-five rapids that just tossed her further and further downstream and she’d stopped trying to swim to shore and now only wanted to keep from hitting the jagged rocks or getting sucked under.
Walker tilted her head back to confront him, but he was shrouded in the dark. There were the five shafts of light from the small sky lights up near the roof line on the opposite side of the attic, but they were narrow almost like spotlights. The shape of his body was silhouetted by the wash of the dim light behind him, like he needed any help in that department.
“Why the dark?” she asked again, curious and trying to control her rapid heart rate and fast breathing so he wouldn’t notice and draw the wrong conclusion.
Well, the right conclusion, but ultimately the wrong one because she was not and never would be fling material. Like Jared. A lump clogged her throat, but she swallowed hard. Pretended it hadn’t hurt. And didn’t hurt now.
“Heightens my senses. Less sensory input. My mind can settle and sort. I’m very visual. The dark lets my other senses talk.”
She was not expecting such a clear-cut, almost scientific answer. Nor in that tone. Factual. Professional. Removed almost as if her were not paying much attention to her. Oh. God. She so totally affected by his... his hot everything, but he was focused on getting a feel for the room. Was she only one more thing to ignore? Humiliation warred with some feminine chutzpah she didn’t know she had anymore. She balled her fists to pull the lapel of her jacket further closed, and her knuckles brushed his abs.
Yup. Tighter than a drum. Her fingers actually flexed to feel more. Those did not feel like gym muscles. Really? What was wrong with her? Channeling her inner hussy, who had yet to make an appearance in thirty-two years, was not going to happen with a ghost cable show host. It was coming up on a year since her long and tummy-dropping fall from grace had started. Was this going to be her final, messy splat on the ground of reality? Seducing a cable host of a ghost show in the attic of her last stand to rebuild her professional life?
It was laughable, but Walker had never felt less like laughing.
Her personal life was likely beyond repair and who cared? She’d realized as she’d plummeted down, she hadn’t had much of a personal life to start with. It had all been work. At least she was still honest with herself and had been even as everyone around her had lied to themselves and everyone else, especially to her.
“Ghosts don’t just appear in the dark?” Walker fought to distract her morose thoughts.
Ghosts. There were plenty things alive that haunted her, she didn’t need to add ghosts into the mix except for publicity.
Ugh! She was a PR hack.
Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.
Not like DC hadn’t revolved around image and so much of that had been hers to cultivate, craft, and present so no need to get picky or squeamish since she still had legal debts and student loans from graduate school up to her eyes and beyond.
“No.” His breath slid past her cheek. “Ghosts don’t prefer the dark.”
“You’ve asked them?”
“We’ve chatted once or twice.”
His voice sounded like a smirk. Walker rolled her eyes and bumped gently back to earth. Let him do his job. She needed to do hers. Nothing personal to see here.
“I hope the Graff ghosts are chatty day or night,” Walker said flipping on the light with a flourish. An orange, golden glow illuminated the attic. Yes, she’d changed out the bulbs to start decorating for Halloween. She was practically going to be Martha Steward with the Graff’s Halloween decorations and festivities.
She who hadn’t had a potted plant in her condo or in her office was going to professionally morph into someone unrecognizable.
“What the hell, Walker?” His voice went hard and interrupted her from her imagining herself effortlessly becoming creative and crafty. “How did you...” He stepped away from her and strode across the bare wood floor, his motorcycle boots—that in some weird way had been turning her on the minute she’d noticed them hooked on the rung of the barstool when she’d first approached him—hitting with hard, sexy authority.
“Where did you get this quilt? How could you have possibly known?” He plucked a blanket off what she thought of as the creepy winged back, old man chair and held it away from his body like it was offensive.
The whisky bottle dangled between two fingers of his palm.
“I do the research on potential sites. Me. Don’t try to play games with my head because you won’t win.”
Walker’s troubled gaze ping-ponged between Calum and a sky blue quilt that looked like it was made up of birds. She had no idea where it had come from, and she was trying not to feel a little freaked out that the chair no longer faced the back wall where there were dusty crates and boxes piled up. It now faced the stairs where she and Calum had been standing having some flirty moment that they shouldn’t have had because she was working, or trying to if he’d stop distracting her.
“There is an explanation for this,” she murmured to herself, eyes on the chair and then back on the quilt. She had no idea what significance a random quilt that had inadvertently been left on the chair could have. At least she thought it had been inadvertent.
Of course it was.
What the heck was happening to her? Why was she having an imagination like a girly preteen, screaming in the dark at a mirror after chanting “Bloody Mary” three times.
“What?” His eyes narrowed and she imagined if this were a scary movie his eyes would be shooting blue sparks. “I’d like to hear it.”
“Someone from housekeeping came up here,” she mumbled to herself. “And they moved the chair.”
Why, she couldn’t imagine because that sucker was heavy. She knew because she’d tried to move it to see if the sliding sound she’d heard had come from the chair. She hadn’t budged it much, and she wasn’t so far from her life in DC that her muscles had completely deteriorated from her predawn, trainer-designed workouts to keep her hips somewhat at bay.
“Not talking about the chair. I want to know why you put a baby quilt on the chair. And how did you know about the raptors?”
“The what?” She dragged her gaze from the chair back to Calum.
How did he even look hotter with a small quilt in his hand? Somewhere, deep inside, an ache bloomed that kicked up her heart rate. No. No. No. She was not going to be that girl. Biological clock girl. Never. Jared was gone. They’d been a couple for five years, and she’d never once had an ovary egg-popping twinge. And she wasn’t going to start thinking along breeding lines in Marietta and certainly not with a ghost host in black, kick ass motorcycle boots with treads like tires, silver buckles and a silver star detail and black denim that hugged his thighs and did spectacularly criminal things to his backside. Not a chance.
“Was this supposed to be a spooky home touch to draw me in?”
She swallowed hard.
Don’t look at the chair. Someone moved it when you went downstairs.
Who or why eluded her. She found the I’m slightly amused, but you are still on thin ice supervisor smile she’d cultivated during her ten-year reign in the political arena. She didn’t know what his deal was, or anything about a baby quilt, but he had no right to be upset with her or accuse her of anything. She was still trying to grapple with the humiliation of trying to persuade a ghost guy to feature the Graff on a cable show. Let that be enough personal drama for a while.
“We are touring the hotel,” she said coolly. “I’ve done a little research naturally before I contacted you, but you just said you preferred to do your own research so, no, I do not have a list of ghost stories accumulated over the years from staff and guests.”
Actually, she had nada. The hotel had only been restored a few years ago, and Halloween and hauntings hadn’t been a promotional tool. Yet.
Walker to the rescue.
She was now reduced to mocking her thoughts.
“Don’t play me. You haven’t answered my question. I’m not stupid.”
“Didn’t think you were.” Walker shot back, although the fact he’d based his career on hunting ghosts made that debatable.
It was hard for her to take him or his profession seriously. And his bad boy, surfer hot vibe wasn’t helping either. He made it impossible to concentrate when he should be the last—absolutely dead last—man she was attracted to, and her body had to get on board with that knowledge about half an hour ago.
He was younger than she was.
So what? A little devil piped up.
Great. Now her brain had ADHD as if being subpoenaed before a grand jury twice, vilified, stalked, tried, and skewed by the press, fired, involved in a criminal case that was eventually dismissed, and betrayed professionally and personally by her lover, her boss, and several former colleagues was not enough excitement for one year.
“I don’t like games,” Calum said, his voice hard and cold and far more revealing of his state of mind than she was used to. DC operatives kept thoughts and emotions under wraps at all time or they’d been eaten alive.
That snapped her spine straight.
“Says the guy who makes up ghosts for a living.”
He dropped the quilt and strode for the stairs. Wait. What? Was he leaving? Ugh her mouth! She never lost her cool.
Walker scrambled after him. He was faster than her former boss, Senator Wickham, who competed in ultra-marathons and who was notorious for how fast she traversed the halls of power in heels. Screw this. After the first flight down, Walker perched on the banister and slid. Considering she had ricocheted like a doomed pinball on a hell-hound and demon bound pinball machine this year, it was a dangerous thing to do, but she and her twin, Rafe, used to belong to a kid’s parkour after school club in elementary school before their parents had split and her dad had taken Rafe and her mom had taken her and her “oops” sister Whim to different points on the globe.
Walker should be able to handle one downward slide. Only she needed to complete two. And that was her downfall. Her skirt hiked and she grabbed the hem to halt the wardrobe malfunction. Her attempt at modesty off balanced her just as she caught up to him.
“Ooof.”
And a couple of swear words were spit out, hopefully not by her as she was technically on the clock. She hit him sideways into the wall of the narrow back stairs that the employees used to get around unless they were carrying something heavy. He had one hand available to break their fall, but it wasn’t enough as she clutched his shoulders instinctively. They slid down the last few steps of the hard wood stairs. Thump. Thump. Bang.
“Ummmm, sorry.” Walker breathed out when their movement stopped.
“For what part exactly?” he questioned.
His breath feathered along her cheek.
“Pretty sure all of it. Pissing you off and then my stunt woman move in a tight skirt.”
“Not sure you need to apologize about that last bit.” He ran one hand down her shoulder, arm, and then again down her back. “You okay?”
“Debatable.” Walker tried to assess, but she wasn’t really sure where she left off and he began.
She was aware she was straddling him, and the skirt she’d been so worried about was now more like a belt around her waist. She still held his shoulders and their chests bumped.
“A little bit like a game of Twister that went awry,” he said.
His eyes were the deepest blue. Not fair to females that he’d been given the gifts of the body, the height, the tousled hair, the cheekbones and the blue eyes, and of course because the universe sucked when divvying up gifts, long lashes. He also effortlessly rocked a sexy, insouciance with a hint of bad boy that she’d seen in movies but had never brushed up against—again, being literal—in reality.
“I’ll try to move if you close your eyes.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
“You could pretend to be a gentleman and give it a try,” Walker suggested. “Holding on to you makes me feel like I’m rock climbing and I better not look down.”
“I think I detect a compliment in there.” His eyes warmed and the corners creased. “And you’re worried about me being the gentleman.”
Their breath mingled, and Walker’s heart seemed to trip. She could feel the line of buttons in his jeans dig against her most feminine spot, and she didn’t know how she was going to move without it being suggestive.
The door that led to a hallway outside the administrative offices swung open and light footsteps tapped toward them.
“Hello.” A low, southern voice like honey drawled. “Am I interrupting or do you need a little help?”
“Help.” A hot flush rush over Walker, and her voice strangled.
“Sure?”
Walker looked up. The woman was tall, slim, with a boyish body like Walker had always wanted, and her platinum hair was intricately braided. She had a black tank on and a black and white open flannel shirt and a bright turquoise slouchy knit beanie that matched her eyes. She also had a huge musical instrument in a case strapped to her back. She slid her arms out of the straps and carefully tucked it in a corner.
“That an upright?” Calum asked. “You play?”
The woman nodded then laughed. “May want to hold onto your skirt.” Then she reached out one arm, snagged one of Walker’s hands, and easily tugged Walker to her feet as if her weight were inconsequential.
Walker took a shaky step back. Calum popped to his feet, clearly less fazed.
“There’s my whisky.” The new arrival plucked the bottle from Calum’s hand. “At least you know the best bottle to steal and how to hang on to it in a crisis.”
“I’m good like that. Didn’t want to waste a good thing,” Calum said, and licked his hand where presumably a bit of the whisky had spilled during the tumble. His eyes clashed with Walker’s. “Never know when you’ll be assaulted and trapped.”
Seriously, that was what he led with? Then he looked at the newcomer and stuck out his hand. His smile could only be described as a shit-eating grin, and Walker stifled the urge to kick him. Stupid. He wasn’t hers. And he wasn’t exactly flirting. He was just being him.
“Calum Quest. Enjoyer of history and spirits—the kind I can drink and the ones I can communicate with.”
“You got good taste,” the woman said.
“I do,” Calum smiled nice and easy and his gaze turned pointedly to Walker. “Exceptional.”
That blatant double entendre Walker should have seen a mile away, and it should not make her heart bloom. She was a long way from fourteen.
“Shane Knight. Bartender in about five minutes. Don’t raid my bar again.” Her blue eyes were fierce. “You work here?”
“Nah, just enjoying the scenery.”
“That’s two bad lines in one conversation.” Shane rolled her eyes and turned towards Walker. “You need to give this guy some pick up line pointers,” she shook her head and then held out her hand to Walker. “You must work here. Suit’s a dead giveaway. You my boss?”
“Don’t think so. Walker Wi... Kent.”
“I don’t know. Why Kent?” Shane repeated.
Walker wanted to close her eyes, take a deep swig of that bottle Shane now cradled against her body, and start the day over from waking up. She’d wanted to do that most days during the past year, but today was especially trying because of the way the day continued to devolve was her fault.
“Walker Kent,” she said firmly and shook Shane’s hand like it was a strength contest. “Events coordinator and public relations Graff Hotel.”
“PR. Figures,” Shane looked at an elegant, but masculine watch on her wrist. The face was black with what looked like a swirl of stars with a moon and points of the compass. “I gotta...”
“Is that a Patek Philippe? A Grand Complications Celestial?” Calum asked awed, reaching for her wrist.
Shane twisted her delicate wrist and pulled away. “My shift starts. See you, Walker.” Shane turned on her heel and exited down a back hall that lead to the restaurant and bar.
Walker watched Shane’s tall, slim figure retreat. Her blonde, fishtail style braid hung thick down her straight back. Her walk was quick and athletic. No nonsense. No hip sway to indicate she knew a man was watching and admiring.
Walker hated the burble of jealousy that had bubbled up when Calum had easily flirted with Shane. It wasn’t like he was hers or ever would be. She didn’t even want him. His easy, laidback, casual charm didn’t appeal to her. She didn’t even like him. She was even trying to deceive him that the hotel had haunting stories, although a hotel this old, there probably were stories. Fingers crossed, although she hadn’t much luck this past year.
But she’d had enough deception personally and professionally over the past year for one teasing comment to have the warning wattage of high beam headlights. And a woman who dated a man who traveled the world wielding a handheld “spirit vox” while earnestly asking questions of the air in the dark likely deserved the heartache headed her way.
Walker was done with trust. Took her a long time, but she’d finally figured out and accepted that everyone was lying about something. Probably even Shane had a few lies up her plaid flannel sleeve. Inwardly, Walker cringed. She could hardly point fingers. Now she was the one lying about more than a little, and the guilt didn’t sit well on her shoulders or in her stomach.
“That was unexpected in a lot of ways,” Calum said, stretching his rangy frame up on tiptoes and reaching his arms up fingers wide as if he could touch the ceiling.
Walker tried and failed to notice that a strip of his tanned, very toned stomach teased her self-control.
“Do you flirt with every woman with two legs?” She demanded, irritated that she had enjoyed his flirting and had even taken it personally.
That was not what she’d meant to say.
“Sometimes it extends to the four-legged variety and don’t even get me started on spiders,” he said, placing his fist over his heart and making an exploding motion. “Love them.”
Walker pressed her lips together. She would not laugh. She would not smile. She would not encourage him. And she definitely wasn’t going to fall under any spell he casually and probably instinctively wove for women.
Walker leaned back against the wall. Her tailbone stung a little from hitting the stairs. Her stomach burned, but that had been present for a while. Her knees throbbed from where they’d banged on the concrete, but her poise was more bruised. And confidence. She angled her chin up and her shoulders back.
Don’t give up. They win.
Always the faceless they. Them. Others. The enemy. And why did a woman like her have enemies? Like her. Walker would have laughed, but she feared it would sound like more of a sob.
“You okay?” Calum asked into the silence humming silence.
“I really wish she hadn’t taken that bottle.”
Calum laughed. “It’s five o’clock somewhere.” He teased.
And for the first time Walker relaxed enough to smile.
