J Ward - Crave

He nodded and got his ass in gear. It turned out she was actually the whole third floor. The master bedroom was a sprawl with its own sitting area, fireplace, and French doors that opened to what he guessed was a private terrace.

“In here.”

He tracked the sound of her voice, going over to the walk-in closet she’d disappeared into. The damn thing was as big as some people’s living rooms, with wall-to-wall creamy carpeting and legions of clothes lined up and hanging by category.

The air smelled like her perfume.

She was at the back, shifting aside a dozen or so serious-looking suits to reveal… a four-foot-high, three-foot-wide grate that appeared to be nothing more than an old-fashioned radiator cover. But what do you know, the thing slid back and revealed a crawl space.

Little click and the light came on.

She went in first and he was tight on her going into the cramped confines-and there it was.

Holy… shit.

As they knelt down side by side, he thought, Man, good thing he wasn’t a techie type or he’d be swooning. The setup was as sophisticated as it got-no little pad with ten numbers and off, stay, or away to choose from. This was a computer-linked system that monitored the various zones in the house on multiple levels. And if he was reading it right, the only way to get at the components was all the way up here, and disarming would be tricky.

Except… “I didn’t see you turn it off when we came in.”

She handed over something that looked like the key fob to a car. “The pad is calibrated to my thumbprint. I take this with me wherever I go, and the system’s engaged now.”

As he turned the thing over in his hand, she said, “Good enough?”

He flipped his eyes up to hers. “Good enough.”

Long moment. Too long for where they were.

Way too long for who they were.

“Anything else,” she said.

Yes. “No.”

Grier nodded and worked her way around to step out of the confines. After he emerged, they put the grate back and walked into her room-go fig, he couldn’t help but look at her bed. Big. Lot of duvets and pillows. On the far side, there was a small TV on top of a choice antique table, and a bookcase lined with precisely ordered DVDs.

He frowned and went over, even though it was none of his business-because he couldn’t possibly be seeing the titles right.

Pretty in Pink. Breakfast Club. Sixteen Candles. Die Hard. Under Siege.

Even he knew these.

“That’s my nighttime viewing,” Grier said, as she came across and straightened the thin boxes even though they were perfectly straight.

“Different from what you have downstairs.” And he found it hard to believe she was a poser who wanted to be all Jane Austen in public and Jerry Seinfeld here in her room.

She picked up When Harry Met Sally… and smoothed her hand over the autumn scene on the front. “I don’t sleep well and these help. It’s like… my brain goes back to the time when they came out. I see the cars… the supermarket scenes with cheaper prices… the clothes that used to be in style… hair that no one wears anymore. I go back to when I was the age I first saw them, back to when things were… simpler.” She laughed in an awkward rush. “Cinematic knockout drops, I’d guess you’d call it. It’s the only thing that works for me.”

Staring at her as she looked at Meg Ryan, he had such an image of her curled on her side, the blue flicker of the screen playing across her features, the trip into the past calming her nerves and slowing her brain down.

Did she have a lover to watch with her? he wondered. A boyfriend?

No ring, so he assumed she wasn’t married or engaged.

“What,” she said, tugging at her beautiful black dress. He cleared his throat, hating that he’d been caught staring. “Which shower do you want me to use.”

That made her smile. For the first time.

And yeah, sap that he was… his breath caught and his heart stopped.

Grier put the movie back in its slot. “More food first,” she said as she turned and led the way back downstairs.

Jim and his boys landed in the rear garden of a three-story brick house that both screamed old money and apologized for making any fuss at the same time. Everything about it, and its neighborhood, was refined and super-well cared for… and brick. For God’s sake, the whole zip code looked like the three little pigs had gone hog wild: brick houses, brick walls, brick walkways, brick lanes.

It was enough to make the Big Bad Wolf go iron lung.

Through plate-glass windows, a kitchen that was pretty damn spank spread out in all kinds of directions, and there was some kind of food thing going on at the counter-but no people. Stepping back, Jim looked not at the house, but through the house, closing his eyes and concentrating.

Yes, he could sense the pair of them… as well as something else. There was a… ripple… inside.

His lids flipped open and just as he lunged for the back door, Eddie caught him by the arm. Which, considering the guy’s strength, was like running into a parked car. “No, it’s not Devina. That’s a wayward soul.”

Jim frowned and focused his feelers on the disturbance. “Wayward?”

“It’s a soul that has been released from the body, but has yet to go to its destined eternity. It’s trapped here on earth.”

“A ghost.”

“Yeah.” Eddie slipped his backpack off his shoulders, his thick braid falling forward. “It’s hanging around, waiting to be free.”

“What keeps the thing here?”

“Unresolved business.”

“And you’re sure that’s what it is.” As the angel’s red eyes went rock-hard, Jim raised his hands. “Okay, okay. But can we go with calling them ‘ghosts’? That ‘wayward’ shit is straight-up granny-speak.”

“Agreed,” Adrian chimed in.

“Oh, for the love…” Eddie muttered. “You can call them Fred if it gets you off.”

“Deal.”

At that moment, Isaac and Grier walked into the kitchen. As the guy parked it on a stool, she resumed cooking for him and the tension between them was obvious… as was the attraction: The pair of them were playing eye tennis-each time one looked over, the other glanced away-and that blush on the woman’s cheeks sealed the deal on the ooh-la-la undertone.

Staring through the glass, Jim felt utterly ancient and apart. Guess now that he was an angel any dreams of ever getting married and doing the kid thing were dead and gone-to say nothing of dating anyone… although, Christ, when had he ever dated?

And he’d never been the marrying kind, so what the hell was he bitching about?

Besides, this was no Lifetime movie going down in RL on the far side of the glass: what he was staring at was a hunted man and a woman who was in over her head.

Hardly something to be envious of.

In fact, he wondered what in the hell the guy was thinking. Anyone who had worked with their old boss knew that collateral damage was a very real possibility in this scenario.

“Man, let’s just move in with them,” Adrian groaned. “Screw protective spells-I love a good omelet and I’m starved.”

Jim glanced over. “Seriously.”

“What? Gotta have plenty of bedrooms in this place.” Abruptly the angel’s voice grew deeper. “And I can partake of my extracurricular exercises discreetly.”

Yeah, and he wasn’t talking about basket weaving there. Read: sex with anonymous women. Sometimes with Eddie riding shotgun.

Jim had spent only one night with the pair of them, but he already knew what the drill was. Even though Ad had allowed himself to be used and abused by Devina at the end of the first match, it hadn’t taken him long to go trolling again. The guy was frickin’ obsessed with the females.