Page 42 of Crazy Spooky Love
He nods. “You find me irresistible?”
“You got me.” I shrug, aware that we’re closer than we’d usually be because of the confines of the landing. “You’re a sex god, Fletch. I can barely keep my hands off you.”
He leans back against the wall beside the attic door, for all the world like the most achingly cool boy at school. I feel about fourteen.
“You’re pretty fucking hot yourself for a lying, scheming ghost hunter, Bittersweet.”
I stare at him, dumbfounded, and he stares right back. I’m temporarily silenced by his reply because it came at me out of nowhere, like a meteor across a clear blue sky.
“Well, I’m glad we got that sorted,” I say eventually, aiming for uber-cool and hitting uber-dorky.
“Doesn’t change the fact I won’t sleep until I run you out of town.”
His tone of voice says bored, but the glitter sprinkled in his green eyes tells me that he isn’t. He confuses the hell out of me, so I revert to sarcasm.
“My family has been here since before you were born, Fletch, and we’ll be here to sing at your funeral.” I smile, overbrightly, and thenI leave him there on the landing, trying not to breathe in his scent as I brush past him in case I falter, bury my face in the open neck of his shirt, and accidently snog his irritating face off.
I’m lying in the bath,a huge glass of wine on the windowsill beside me, my iPad in my hand. I want to read, to relax, to stop thinking about the fact that I couldn’t tell whether Fletcher Gunn was being genuine or not today. He blindsided me, and I don’t even want to admit this to myself in the privacy of my own bathroom, but the way he looked at me for a couple of seconds made the bottom drop out of my stomach. I’m accustomed to his barbs and his put-downs; I was so wrong-footed by his backhanded compliment that it’s a miracle I didn’t tumble down the stairs to my own untimely death. God, I’d have made it my business to haunt him something rotten.
It’s just been a crazy, mixed-up week, and in among the drama of our finding our first case and the excitement of getting the agency off the ground, my romantic life has taken a back seat. Not that it’s taken a front seat for quite a while really, not since Leo, but I’ve been considering dipping my toes in recently, for fear of becoming a crazy old cat lady who talks to ghosts.
It’s a bit of a problem to my heart that the agency is probably going to bring Leo Dark back into my orbit on a regular basis, and it seems that I’ve gone and fallen ever so slightly in lust with Fletch, which is wrong on just about every level I can think of. Maybe I should have given my mother’s tiny friend in the Muppets dickie bow more consideration. He wasn’t actually that bad when we got to talking, although anyone who lists competitive dog grooming as one of his hobbies has to be approached with a healthy degree of caution. That’s how my mother came across him in the first place; he’d been a guest on the radio show that aired right before hers, and he’d stuck around because he hoped there was a chance she’d be ableto communicate with Cleopatra, his recently deceased toy poodle. As it turned out, Cleopatra turned up at the dinner party to visit her owner. He knew instantly that we weren’t faking it because she arrived just as she’d died: primped, and painted in orange and black tiger stripes for a jungle-themed competition they’d recently placed thirdin.
So anyway, the point is that my love life is miserably nonexistent, and the agency is going to place me directly in the same circles as Leo and Fletch once more, both of them walking, talking egos. I close my eyes and allow myself to indulge in a fantasy where they’re dueling on a cliff top, all swords flashing and eyes glinting in the low, late-afternoon sunlight as they battle for my hand. It’s a hot day so I make them strip down to their breeches, and lo and behold, their bodies are gleaming with a manly sheen of sweat. Oh Lord, Fletch has amazing shoulders. I’m itching to climb up and ride him piggyback. Wait, what’s that I hear? Is it hooves? Why, yes it is. Idris Elba has just jumped down from his horse and thrown his hat into the ring for my heart too. God, this is a good fantasy, even for me. Idris isn’t even a superhero, but I know the rest of the world agrees with me that he ought to be. I don’t have a clue which of them I want to win; in fact, I think I’d prefer it if they just kept brawling. Movement in the skies overhead catches my eye, and a smile tips my lips as Superman swoops down and balls his fists on his hips in that way only Superman can before throwing himself into the fray.
“Took your time, hero,” I murmur, feeling around on the windowsill for my glass as I sink farther down into the bubbles. As I take a good gulp of wine, Douglas Scarborough strolls onto the cliff top, pristine and ready for action with his cricket bat over his shoulder.
I sigh and open my eyes, because therein lies the heart of my troubles. Real life can never measure up to fantasy.
Chapter
Twelve
We have better luck when we pull up on Brimsdale Road the following morning. Scarborough House looks quiet and deserted. “That’s more like it,” I say, relieved. “Artie, can you grab the TV from the back, please?”
Marina and I carry the rest of the stuff between us and we all troop round to the side gate and into the kitchen. As befits a house of this size, the kitchen is cavernous and lined on all sides with huge cupboards, and a black cast-iron stove fills the high-mantled fireplace on the chimney breast. A long oak table runs down the center of the room; it isn’t difficult to imagine a starchily uniformed maid prepping mounds of vegetables there for a family dinner party.
Artie cranes his neck to peer at me over the top of the large TV box. “Where do you want this?”
“I’m not sure. We need to check which room has an aerial cable.”
He lays it flat on the table and flexes his fingers. “Shall I go and look?”
“The sitting room,” Isaac says, appearing in the doorway.
“The sitting room,” I relay.
Artie frowns. “How…?” Understanding dawns across his face and he glances nervously around the room. “I’ll, um, take this through there, then.” He squats to pick the heavy box up again and crabs away.
“Marina, Isaac is here,” I say, keeping her in the loop. She digs in the bags and pulls out the box set of thrillers.
“These would be for you, then, Isaac.” She tears off the cellophane and shakes them out onto the tabletop. Flipping one over, she reads the blurb then shudders. They’re not her cup of tea at all; she’s strictly a rom-com kind of reader. “I hope you don’t scare easily.”
Isaac crosses the room and pushes the books so they all move along an inch or two, making Marina jump. A tiny smile touches his lips, probably the first genuine one I’ve seen since I met him. It transforms his face, and I glimpse a trace of the man he might have been had his life taken a different course. Had he not been, you know, accused of murdering his own brother.
“Tell her I hope she doesn’t scare easily either.”
I relay his message and she smirks. “A ghost with a twisted sense of humor. I like you.”
