If You Dare (2 page)

“Alone.”

“Done.”

“This Friday. The thirteenth.”

“D-Done.”

Chapter 2

After she left the bar on Wednesday night, Lily had headed home. When her head hit the pillow, she’d congratulated herself for being so cunning. So smooth. She’d just made sure to claim the trip that should’ve been hers in the first place in twelve short hours.

But her mental rounds of “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow” came to an abrupt halt at the threshold of Willow Mansion. She could see boarded-up windows on the other side of the murky living room, and half of the treacherous staircase was missing every other railing leading to the second floor. She took one final breath, steeled her spine, and stepped into the house.

The pungent aroma of waterlogged floorboards hit her first. Light eked its way through knots in the board-covered windows, showing no more than the gloomy outline of a leaf-strewn floor and a decaying fireplace. Dust particles hung in the air in the filtered sunshine, tickling her nostrils.

No, at the moment, Lily didn’t feel the least bit smart or congratulatory. What she felt was creeped out.

Something skittered up the patterned wallpaper to her right. She didn’t turn her head. Her peripheral vision made out enough of the long, shining body and waving antennae to know who she’d be bunking with tonight.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t thought to put Raid on her shopping list.

She gulped down her disgust and tossed her supplies onto the center of the living room floor. The massive space would make for a workable ground zero. She could blow up the air mattress and surround herself with the comforts of home. It probably wouldn’t even feel like an allegedly haunted mansion by the time she got set up.

She kicked a downed spindle from the railing, and it rolled and hit the baseboard at the edge of the staircase with an echoing
thud
. One last thought about the shadow-faces peering down at her from upstairs, and it was decided: downstairs would have to do. No way was she going anywhere near the second story.

Lily ventured to the doorway to her left and poked her head inside. The wide kitchen was big enough for several servants, well-lit thanks to a few large, still-intact windows on that side of the house. But the warped linoleum, bones of dead mice or rats, and door-less cabinets encrusted with cobwebs kept the room from being mistaken for cozy.

She turned back to the living room. Funny, it was charming by comparison.

A loud
bang
made her jump and a pathetic little “Meep!” exit her lips. The front door hung open, leaves kicking across the entryway. She blew out a breath of relief. It was only the wind. Likely a sister gust to the one that had dropped a shutter very near her head earlier.

Part of her entertained the idea of leaving, Hawaii or no Hawaii. Wouldn’t Marcus love that? Lily giving up after one little bump in the waning daylight… Nuh-uh. No way. He wasn’t winning this bet before it started.

Lily made one last trip outside to retrieve the rest of her supplies. As she shouldered her purse, she recalled Marcus’s smug expression as she’d pulled that same handbag over her shoulder at the bar on Wednesday.

“When you succumb to white hot terror and run screaming into the hills”—he’d tugged his brown bomber jacket over impossibly wide shoulders she’d tried really, really hard not to admire—“what do I get?”

“What, my terror and abject humiliation aren’t enough?”

“Satisfying, but no.”

She’d pressed her lips together to keep from smiling and asked, “What did you have in mind?”

He didn’t hesitate. “The annual RSD dinner.”

That was it? “I go to that every year.”

“As my date,” he’d clarified.

She doubted she’d successfully hidden her shock. Marcus had shown up to the last three Retail Space Design dinners with a different blonde du jour. His date’s duties included: laughing at his jokes, holding champagne flutes between perfectly manicured fingers, and worshipping his every footstep.

She’d pictured herself in that role and snorted.

He’d sent a long, slow gaze up and down her body and she’d sworn she felt his gaze like a sizzling brand on her body. “Do you own any outfits that
don’t
make you look like a man-eater?”

Self-consciously, she’d fingered the two buttons holding her Calvin Klein blazer closed. “I like this suit.”

He’d taken a deliberate step closer. “I didn’t say I didn’t like the suit.” That suggestive murmur, and the way he brushed her fingers aside to touch a button on her jacket drew her in. She’d found herself staring his mouth, evaluating the shape of his lips, and calculating how far she’d have to lift on her toes to press her lips to his.

Coming to her senses, albeit a bit late, she’d jerked her hand away instead. Marcus had backed off, his eyes shuttering, his smug grin locking back into place. “When I win, wear a cocktail dress.”

But it wasn’t his opinion of her wardrobe that made her jaw drop. She’d been trying to figure out why he would ask her to be his date to the dinner he likely already had a date to. He had to be messing with her. She’d shot down his advances before. Maybe this was him taunting her. Trying to put the one thing on the line that would make her balk.

Which meant he thought she had a good chance of winning.

She’d tossed her head, given him her most confident smile, and said, “You’re on. But I’m sorry to say you’ll have to call Rent-A-Bimbo again this year, Black. This is one bet I’m winning.”

Not that her proclamation stopped him from trying to psyche her out. The next morning, while she’d suffered the mother of all hangovers, Marcus swung into her office, holding onto the doorframe with one hand and gripping a crowbar in the other. “Hope the cops don’t catch you. B&Es include fines and jail time.”

If she’d been 100 percent, she would have Googled his claim to see if it were true. Instead, she’d held out a hand and accepted the length of iron.

The day after that, she’d been sipping her second cup of coffee when the e-mail icon at the bottom of her computer screen flickered.

Lil, thought you might like to know who you’re up against tonight. Happy Friday the 13
th
! M.

She’d opened the attachment, then wished she hadn’t. A scanned newspaper article, so old the edges of the periodical were torn and faded, boasted the header:
WOMAN FALLS TO HER DEATH, POLICE SAY SUICIDE
.
Lily had read through the article about Essie Mae Epson and her leap from the second-story window. The report mentioned Essie’s surviving husband, but no other family members. The article was tame compared to the rich urban legend that surrounded the place. The rumors of Essie’s suicide being a murder at her husband’s hands, the phantom voices on the property, a woman in white, and the general feeling of unease…

But that’s all they were, Lily reminded herself. Rumors. Outside of Willow Mansion, the world seemed utterly normal.

She listened to the birds chirp, the leaves rustle in the breeze, and the distant sound of cars on the highway. Standing in the warm sunlight, amidst the air infused with the fragrances of fall, the mansion appeared more abandoned than eerie.

Yes, the “Legend of Essie Mae” still looped her brain like a stock car in a race, but she found herself wondering if a woman named Essie had ever actually lived there. She had no proof the article about Essie’s suicide wasn’t Photoshopped by one of Marcus’s buddies. That sounded like him, she thought suddenly. He was the consummate prankster.

Bravery renewed, she retrieved the rest of her stash from the backseat of her car and reminded herself she’d suffer nothing worse than dust allergies during her night behind the mansion’s walls.

The grocery bag in the crook of her arm was filled with the essentials. Wine,
check
. Bottled water,
check
. iPad,
check
. Dinner from her favorite local restaurant,
check
.

At the mansion’s front door, she cast one last look at the surrounding woods and long, cracked driveway. She’d parked off to one side, behind a low-hanging weeping willow and overgrown brush. Satisfied her car was hidden from the road, she punched the lock button on her key fob and smiled at the answering cheery beep.

“Hawaii, here I come.” With that last thought warming her, she headed into the dark house and shut the door behind her.

Chapter 3

“I don’t know why I had to come with you.”

Marcus stopped climbing the weed-infested hill to glare at his recently-turned-wussy best friend. “What are you moaning about? I’m the one with Hawaii on the line.”

“Yeah, and that trip was technically mine.” Clive pointed the flashlight into Marcus’s face. “Plus, I’m the one in danger of an early grave if Joanie finds out we aren’t really playing darts at The Shot Spot.”

Marcus shielded his eyes, and Clive swept the beam off his face. “I swear you traded in your balls at the altar a year and a half ago.”

Clive only smiled. “That’s a helluva trade, considering how much sex I get.”

“Married people don’t have sex,” Marcus grumbled, resuming his climb to Willow Mansion. “Everyone knows that.”

“Yes we do,” Clive argued. “But unlike you, I don’t have to sneak out in my underwear in the morning.”

Rather than argue, mainly because Clive had made a compelling and, other than the underwear part, irritatingly accurate point, Marcus continued his stealthy approach to the mansion. As stealthy as one could be toting a duffel bag full of Halloween costumes.

He and Clive rounded the house and found a reasonably clean window that hadn’t been busted out. Marcus peeked through one lower corner and Clive through the other. He could make out a kitchen, and beyond that, a doorway. Lily’s face was lit with ambient light one room over.

Marcus swore under his breath. Clive chuckled.

“Is that…sushi?” Marcus whispered.

Lily lounged in the center of an air mattress like the queen of freaking Sheba, pillows fluffed behind her. She lifted a pair chopsticks to her mouth and Marcus’s own mouth went dry watching those plush lips close around the food, her delicate throat working as she swallowed.
Damn
.

“Mmm. Dragon roll,” Clive said, snapping Marcus out of a fantasy that’d begun brewing. “Do you think she went to Sushi Café? I love when they throw in a free crab rangoon.”

“Unbelievable,” Marcus grumbled.

The soft bluish glow that lit her face came from the computer tablet on her lap. It must’ve been tuned in to something funny. She tossed her head back and laughed, and he felt a jolt of attraction as he watched her. The same unrelenting attraction he felt for her at work. And for a woman he wanted to throttle more often than not. Made no sense.

“Yes, she looks truly terrified,” Clive said, chuckling again.

“That’s why I brought these.” Marcus dropped the duffel bag at his feet.

Clive scrubbed a hand over his sandy blond hair and shook his head. “I don’t get it, man. If you want a date with her so badly, why don’t you just ask her out?”

Clive
knew
? Marcus shot him a look.

“Yeah. I kind of figured out you liked her, like, a millennia ago.”

Marcus felt his shoulders drop in defeat. “Does Joanie know?”

“No, man.”

Relief.

“I tried asking her out,” Marcus said. When she first started working there.

“No way. She turned down
the
Marcus Black?”

“Shut up.”

Clive laughed. At his expense, if he had to guess.

“So, ask her again. She didn’t know you then.”

Yeah, well, she knew him now. And practically hated him. “Just stick with the plan, Clive.”

His buddy rolled a shoulder, as usual unfazed by Marcus’s taunts. It was impossible to intimidate the best friend who’d known him since he was a gangly fourteen-year-old. “I don’t know, man.” Clive looked through the window at Lily again. “You may not be able to scare her off, costumes or no.”

“She’s a prima donna,” Marcus said. “The moment she breaks a nail, she’s out of there.”

Harmless insults had become the norm between him and Lily over the last two and a half years they’d worked together. Marcus used to do it to get her to sling one back at him, because face it, even negative attention from her was better than none. She’d answered the call, mouthing off to him with fervor. But over the last handful of months, he’d had a harder time relegating her to role of man-eater, prima donna, or diva.

First of all, it wasn’t true. Lily worked as hard if not harder than any of them. She cared about her work, and she was a perfectionist who often achieved her goals. Secondly, Marcus had gone from simply thinking she was sexy to respecting the hell out of her. His admiration for her work trumped the admiration he had for her sweet backside. And that was
bad
.

“She’s hardier than she looks,” Clive said in her defense. “You remember the breakup with Andrew.”

Marcus ground his molars together at the mention of Andrew Lipnicky, King of the Douchebags. He didn’t deserve someone as smart and funny and attractive as Lily McIntire. Marcus didn’t think he deserved her, either, but he wished she’d at least given him a chance to prove himself. Too bad he’d burned that bridge by asking her out too soon…and had followed it up by severely bending the rules of the contest and taking the win for himself. Not his brightest move.

“She’s a princess,” he grumbled for Clive’s benefit, but even Marcus could hear the lack of conviction in his words.

Wednesday night, Marcus had been shocked to learn that Lily was coming out to celebrate with them. It was the first time he’d ever been around her outside of work or an offsite meeting. He knew she had a social life, but he hadn’t been able to wait to see how she’d react to The Shot Spot. And he sincerely doubted she frequented rundown pubs with a bartender named Curly, a fleet of mismatched chairs, and the smell of stale beer permeating the air.

He’d blown his chance to find out early on. When Lily came onboard at Cameron’s Design, Marcus had foolishly cranked up the charm to ask her out for a drink. In his defense, he’d waited until she’d worked there a few weeks, until he’d noticed how well they’d gotten along. She’d shot him down with a sharp, “I don’t date people I work with,” before tromping that heart-shaped backside down the hallway and leaving him feeling like Merv the Perv…who may or may not have been guilty of stalking his hot coworker for two weeks solid.

So. He
thought
he knew what to expect when Lily strode in behind Joanie and Clive Wednesday night, looking out of place in her fitted blazer, her heels sticking to the tacky linoleum. When she’d spotted him, she flipped her strawberry-blond hair over one shoulder and sent him a derisive look down that pert little nose of hers. Marcus had given her a pained smile and made it his evening’s mission to get her hammered.

He’d seen Lily in control, competitive, and icy. He’d never seen her sloppy and unkempt. The plan was to fill his tab with as many frou-frou girlie drinks like purple hooters or buttery nipples as she could drink. Imagine his surprise when he ordered a tequila shot and Lily held up two fingers.

“You drink tequila?” he’d asked, unable to hide his shock.

“No, but we are celebrating, right?” she’d asked, arching a prim brow. Ah, Lily the competitor, alive and well.

He’d eased her into the shot using old-school salt-and-lime training wheels rather than just chucking it back like he normally did. She’d followed his lead when he licked the salt and sucked the lime. While he’d taken a bit too much pleasure in watching her pink tongue lap the granules from her hand. And when her perfectly glossed lips wrapped around the lime wedge, he’d had a stern talking-to with the parts of him residing south of his belt buckle.

Pain in the ass
, he’d reminded himself, tossing back his second shot. But that thought brought with it reminders of the way her skirt rounded snugly over her perfect butt each time she bent over to take her turn at the pool table.

Marcus sparred with her all evening, figuring arguing would keep the hound in his pants at bay. But each time he jabbed, she’d had a sassy comeback. He couldn’t help but admire her for it. Like he admired her at work. He’d always known she had talent—no one gave a confident presentation like Lily—but he hadn’t known until that night she could be so much damn fun.

Clive’s cell phone rang and both men ducked beneath the window’s ledge and out of sight. Clive shrugged an apology and answered with a hushed
hello.
Marcus gave him a pointed glare before risking peeking into the house again.

Lily must not have heard the sound, her attention focused on the screen in her lap. And she was drinking—good God—was that
wine
?

He should have made more rules. Limited her to only the most basic provisions like water and bread. And maybe some peanut butter. Protein was important.

Marcus felt his frown deepen. She’d be a lot harder to spook while pleasantly buzzed on red wine, her stomach full of gourmet food. “I’m screwed,” he grumbled.

“So am I,” Clive whispered. He waggled his phone. “Gotta go.”

“Why? Wife gonna ground you if you don’t?” He sent his friend a smug smile.

Clive shot him a self-assured grin of his own. “Joanie called to tell me she’s drawing a very hot bath, lighting candles, and—”

“Fine,” Marcus growled under his breath. “Wuss.”

Clive clapped Marcus’s shoulder. “Let’s go, man. You wouldn’t have won anyway. And hey, maybe she’ll take pity on you and invite you to Hawaii with her. There are two tickets.”

The image of Lily in a white bikini, tiny triangles covering her most sensitive parts while she splashed in clear blue water, invaded his brain. He’d lapsed into a daydream about applying sunscreen to every inch of her smooth, fair skin when he noticed Clive was heading down the hill. Clive raised his arms as if to ask,
Are you coming?

Marcus waved him off, annoyed that Clive was leaving him. Irritated that Lily now crashed his waking dreams in addition to the ones he’d had while asleep. He returned to his perch by the window.

Trying for stealthy, Clive tracked back to Marcus, tripping over a branch and stumbling. He was more
Mr. Bean
than
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
. Stealthy, his friend was not. “Are you nuts?” Clive asked.

“It’s
Hawaii
.” And Marcus wasn’t planning on handing it over without a fight. Lily hadn’t exactly been competing fair. She’d forced his hand into building that shed to win by swooping in and signing the account he’d thought he’d secured for the win. It was
Marcus
who had sought out the senior living center on Merchant Boulevard. It was
his
sunroom design that Marjorie Beckham had chosen;
his
suggestion to add five hundred square feet to the already sprawling grounds of Sunny Acres Retirement Home. That’d been his account…in theory.

Then Lily swooped in and suggested the extras: a koi pond and a greenhouse. Marjorie had been wooed by the idea of fish and plants. Just like that,
boom,
Lily locked down the contract.

He’d been able to get her to agree she’d danced on the line of ethics by taking the account, but since their rivalry was ongoing, the move hadn’t been that much of a shocker. Still, Lily calling him out on “cheating” to win Hawaii was almost as funny as believing she’d survive the night in the mansion and succeed in taking it from him. Not happening.

“How are you getting home?” Clive asked with a frown.

“Gee, Dad, worried about me?” Marcus grinned.

“Jerk,” Clive said, but he was smiling. He backed away from Marcus. Halfway down the hill, he called in an exaggerated whisper, “Let me know how it goes!”

Marcus waved him off.

Clive lumbered down to where he’d parked the car at the base of the hill and reversed down the street, headlights extinguished. Marcus wasn’t worried about being stranded on the grounds. Once he bogeymanned Lily from the house, he was fairly certain he could coerce her into giving him a ride home. Since she understood the nature of their battle better than anyone, she probably expected him to do something juvenile to win.

Marcus smiled.
Challenge accepted
.

He’d have to try really hard not to rub in the fact that she’d be on his arm at the design dinner this year. She may do it with a look of contempt on her face, but she’d do it. Lily McIntire wasn’t the type of woman to squelch on a bet.

He figured it’d be good for him to be seen with someone as smart and design savvy as her. He was aware of his playboy reputation and that he relied heavily on his charm to make his way in this industry. But while he’d never had a problem landing a date, having just any woman warming his arm for the evening simply didn’t hold the appeal it once had.

No, this year he’d rather have Lily at his side. Her ease in social situations would put him at ease. Especially this year. How the hell was he supposed to graciously accept a Designer of the Year award when he’d be surrounded by several hundred more qualified designers? Marcus could hold a pencil and talk anyone into anything, but…
Designer of the Year
?

Part of him suspected this awards dinner was the ultimate practical joke to get him back for the jokes he’d played on his coworkers over the years. If it wasn’t a practical joke, well…that was worse. Because then he’d be expected to give a meaningful speech about his early influences, his process, his—

God.

The speech.

Just picturing the podium at the center of the room, imagining the white-hot lights beating down on him from overhead, caused his brow to bead with sweat. He pulled at the collar of his favorite T-shirt and imagined the noose-like bowtie knotted at the front of his neck. How was he going to stand in front of five hundred of his colleagues and not die on the spot when just
thinking
about the acceptance speech made him break out in hives?

A hooting owl snapped him back to the present. He could worry about the speech later. Right now, he had one mission. He knelt and dug through the costumes until his hand landed on the perfect one.

Marcus pulled the covering over his face and listened to his breath echo behind the mask.