How To Bring Your Love Life Back From The Dead (7 page)

“Why? Because I’m round as a pumpkin
or because I eat three pieces on the way to the door each
time?”

He considered it carefully. “I
think…both.”

Both was a good answer. He could be
taught.

Walking over to her, Daniel took the
bowl from her hands and set it to the side before rubbing a hand
across the top of her very pregnant belly. “And how is Jerry
tonight? Is he telling you to eat all our candy before the kids
can?”

“Stop calling him Jerry!” She swung
a fist at him which he grabbed and raised to his mouth to kiss. Her
energy for even playful fighting melted, and she sagged against him
so he could put his arms around her and rub her stomach.

“Do you need to get off your feet
for a bit? I can take door duty.”

When she didn’t answer immediately,
he led her to the couch where she fell with a sigh and put her feet
up. Everything about her seemed swollen and achy now. It was
amazing and miserable. It was lovely and awful. Hopefully, she’d
get the little parasite—whom she loved to pieces already—out of her
soon because her thoughts never seemed to match anymore. Everything
made her happy and sad at the same time. She felt crazy…in the
sanest sort of way.

“Do you feel bad we didn’t go to
Melissa’s party this year?” She grabbed a handful of candy corn.
Their baby was going to be part candy corn with how she was
gobbling these down. Daniel couldn’t know this was the third bag in
the candy tray this week alone. And she wasn’t going to tell him.
She was keeping the mystery alive in their marriage.

“No. I agree with the doctor—with
all the preterm labor, you’re better off having a night at home.
Besides, this has been fun, and I got us a few scary movies to
watch later.”

He took off her shoes and rubbed her
feet, and she sank farther into the couch. “I’m not fragile,
though. I’ll be fine at this.” Sometimes, he tried to coddle her
because of Nadia, but she wasn’t his first wife, and she felt like
it needed to be said every so often—even if they didn’t talk about
her a whole lot. It never got easier to feel like she had to share
him with someone else, and she couldn’t even hate Nadia because she
seemed like a decent person. Plus, Nadia was dead, so Lauren was
the luckier of the two. She got to spend the rest of her life with
the man Nadia had loved. Life wasn’t fair, and it was hard to be
grateful for that.

“No, you’re not fragile.”

“It’ll be nice to get back to having
sex after the baby,” she said…and then slid a look at him. “I meant
to say that inside my head. I think this pregnancy has turned off
my mental filter.”

“I noticed that—you nearly made that
cashier cry earlier for not using the reusable bags we’d brought
from home. You kept muttering things under your breath. It was
either that or you had a Jerry or a Gollum thing going. I was
almost rooting for Gollum.”

“Well, excuse me for wanting to save
the environment for our baby!” She almost wanted to hit him again,
but she couldn’t reach past her belly that far. Plus, he was
rubbing her feet.

“No. You’re right. We should have
had the guy flogged. Plus, he stuck the hand soap in with the eggs.
That alone….”

Lauren narrowed her eyes. “Don’t
think I haven’t notice that you keep agreeing with me and then
one-upping my insanity. I’m pretty sure that’s
patronizing.”

He smiled, reached out, and touched
her hand. “Do you know you’re the smartest and most beautiful woman
I’ve ever met?”

She sighed and relaxed. He always
seemed to know the right thing to say—even lately when she was
insane from pregnancy hormones. He was perfect for her. “You know
that article you wrote way back when that I read? I made a list of
what I wanted in a spouse, and you fit it.”

“That’s good because it’s too late
for you now. I’ve got you, and I’m keeping you.”

The doorbell rang, and he pushed up
from the couch. She sat up and watched him walk to go hand out
candy. He had a point. It was sort of sweet watching him do
something so husbandly…no, fatherly. He complimented the kids on
their costume and gave them generous handfuls of candy—almost too
generous. Still, those had been some awfully cute kids. Their kid
would be cuter, but that went without saying.

It was nice to spend Halloween doing
this for a change.

Daniel closed the door and set the
bowl to the side. Plus, Daniel just flat-out had a nice
ass.

He froze and then laughed. “Did you
know you’re talking out loud again?”

“Oh. Awkward.”

“Luckily, I’d shut the door.” He
dipped his hand in the bowl and brought her back some snack-size
chocolate bars. “But it earned you treats.”

“I wish it earned me
tricks.”

“Again. Out loud.”

She popped one of the chocolates
into her mouth. “I know. I love you.”

“I love you too.” He leaned over the
back of the couch and kissed her. The doorbell rang
again.

“After this, I think you should shut
off the porch light,” she said.

“I will, and I love you enough to
pretend it’s because you want to spend time squished together on
the couch watching scary movies and not because you want the rest
of the candy.”

“That’s why I love you.”

“I know.”

The creak was just that of an old
building. That was all. The building was over one hundred years
old. Even renovations most likely left the bones of the library the
same. Bones creaked. Old buildings settled. They made noises. The
quiet of the old “Franklin Collection” room at the back of the
library made the creaking seem spooky.

Analise shifted to look around, and
the desk lamp played with her shadow and bounced it around, making
her jump. The moonlight filtering through the high windows wasn’t
helping. It was enough light to see by, but not enough to dispel
the shadows that seemed to move in her periphery, and it cast an
eerie blue tint on everything.

She and Jenny had discussed
researching the spooky history of old buildings in the area. Jenny
was hoping for ghosts. Hah! Like Seaside had any ghosts. It had
been much funnier before Ana stepped inside one of the oldest
buildings in the city.

It was not haunted.

She didn’t believe in
ghosts.

At all.

She refocused on the book in front
of her. This was the best time for research. The very best time.
Concentrate. She rolled her eyes. She’d read the same sentence in
the book five times. Five times. She was in her twenties—not teens.
And she most definitely didn’t believe in ghosts. Putting her
finger under the small print, she wedged it into her memory this
time. She was going to remember that one statistic from the Civil
War if it killed her.

The floorboard in the book stacks
creaked again. She ignored it. This was how rumors started after
all. Someone heard a noise in an old building, which had a backroom
that few visited, and it had to be a ghost. There was no logical
explanation after all. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she shook
her head. She could do this. Being the great, great granddaughter
of one of the original patrons was only good for so many nights
after-hours. She couldn’t jump at shadows.

She needed to get the information
and get back to writing the dialogue for Jenny’s Haunted History
tour. Jenny wanted “juicy” stories for it. As Ana was a co-owner in
“Living History Tours” and much better at research, not to mention
she had the Franklin family connections, she was the logical choice
to be here.

Logical—as in a decision not based
on emotions or fear…or a creaking floorboard that had just creaked
again.

Pushing to her feet, she strode
through the small room to the stacks where the noise was coming
from. “Ana, you’re being ridiculous. This is stupid and silly and
irrational.” And she turned the corner in time to see a vapory form
of a man look up from a book he was reading and regard her with one
raised eyebrow. Was it just her—or was everything all warm and
tight and black?

Ana fell in a faint that the ghost
of Shane Blythe dove to catch.

*****

Well, that was unlucky. It had been
decades since someone could see Shane unless he wished it, and the
library closed long before he stretched out his ghostly legs to
tour the room. He’d grown careless about his late night wandering
in the deserted library’s back room. All the creaking of the
floorboards must have been from her, not the settling of the
building as he’d supposed. Damn.

She was quite a fetching little
thing. Maybe he wasn’t so unlucky after all. He caught her in his
arms, managing enough corporeal strength pushed out for the ten
seconds it took to catch her and lay her down. Most nights, he only
used his energy to look through books, not catch beautiful,
fainting redheads who appeared out of nowhere.

If he vanished, she’d assume that
she’d just mistaken her eyes. She’d go on with her life…grow old,
die, go on to the place most spirits went. So, sitting down—as he
was—really made less than no sense at all. Using his dwindling
energy to brush his thumb across her lower lip was ridiculous.
Leaning down to kiss her mouth was ungentlemanly in the extreme. On
the other hand, Shane Alexander Blythe had never been a gentleman
in his entire thirty years of life, so why start in his
death?

*****

A cold frost brushed her mouth,
tickling it. Ana licked her lips, savoring the feel of soft, cold
snowflakes on her mouth. She was lying on the ground and snow was
only falling on her. The cold tasted tart like apple cider, and she
opened her mouth to taste more. More snow brushed her lips and
caressed her tongue. Mmm. Never had the cold felt so warm and
stroked her insides with fire. Desire twisted and curled and made
her squirm.

“Mmm,” she moaned. It felt like
kissing someone who’d just had a snow cone.

A deep chuckle brought it all
crashing down. Ana’s eyes flew open.

“Well, hello, little mouse,” the
ghost said from above her.

Ana swallowed. There was a
dark-haired ghost right here…with her, and she was pretty sure he’d
been kissing her. Were ghosts allowed to do that? Her eyes were as
wide as she could make them—but…this was impossible.

Clearing her throat, she said, “I’m
sorry, but…uhh…I don’t believe in ghosts.” There. They might as
well get that out there right now.

His mouth twitched, and he leaned
back against the bookcase. “Indeed? Well, you’ve wounded me to the
quick then, because I’ve always assumed I existed.”

Now that he wasn’t bending over her,
Ana sat up. “Yes.” She coughed at the dust in the air and brushed
her red curls back from her face. “I mean, no. No, I’m sorry, but
you don’t exist.”

“How inconvenient,” he said,
propping an arm on one of his knees. “I felt like I existed just a
moment ago.” He leaned forward, focusing his intense dark eyes on
her face. “You’re sure?”

His body was see-through as if she
was seeing someone in the distance in the fog. If she had to guess,
his eyes were probably brown…as was his hair. Not that it mattered
because he didn’t exist. Likewise it didn’t matter that his lanky
build and arrogance were making her breathe a bit faster. Damn her
fascination with bad boys. This is what came of being repressed.
You fantasized about sarcastic ghosts who wore old-fashioned
clothing including pants that were far too tightly-fitted. Her
imagination was disturbing and possibly unrealistic.