Asking for Trouble - Leslie Kelly [8]
Yes. That pretty well summed him up. Because though my brain told me it was impossible—that I didn’t believe in ghosts—I couldn’t stop the fear rushing through every inch of me. Did I say I had an imagination that worked overtime in some situations? Well, right now, it was deserving of triple pay.
“Don’t come any closer,” I whispered.
“Who are you?” he asked, all traces of amusement gone. “What do you want?”
Just to not be slaughtered by a murderous ghost or a reincarnated serial killer. That’s all I wanted. To make it back to my car and put the pedal to the metal and race down the mountain like the hounds of hell were after me.
Not hounds, I quickly clarified. Hound. Just one terrifying, murderous creature.
Named Josef Zangara.
2
Simon
SIMON HAD STILL been shaking off the tension and trauma of what he’d seen on his laptop screen when the banging on the front door had finally burst into his consciousness. He was unaccustomed to receiving visitors. Just a cleaning lady from a local maid service company, a mailman, occasionally a delivery of groceries. Sometimes old Mr. Potts, who had recently purchased most of the town of Trouble, stopped by. Other than that, he lived in complete solitude.
Which was exactly what he wanted.
So who would pound on his door during a stormy, violent night, he had no idea. He just knew he didn’t appreciate the intrusion—not now, not when he was still so concerned about what had just happened. Doubting your own sanity was difficult enough to do in private. In front of unexpected—and unwanted—guests, it was beyond bad.
When he’d yanked open the door, ready to tell whomever was on the other side of it to stop that incessant banging before his head blew off his shoulders, he certainly hadn’t expected a woman to fall into his arms. Or that she’d stay there.
Or that she’d feel so incredibly good.
For a few long moments, he’d remained still, soaking in the surprising pleasure of physical contact. He hadn’t experienced that in a long time, and until the dark-haired stranger had landed in his arms, he really hadn’t known how much he missed it.
Her soft, curvy body, her sweet-smelling skin—even her tangled wet hair—reminded him that it had been a very long, celibate four months since he’d touched a woman. Considering how very much he liked to touch women, that he hadn’t exploded out of sheer sexual frustration before now, was the biggest surprise of all.
As a globe-trotting writer of travel guides and newspaper columns, he made a damn good living. And as someone who’d been born with a lot of confidence and the ability to get around the defenses of just about any aloof, sexy woman, he’d never lacked for female companionship. His little black book could probably double as the yellow pages and every one of his friends had harassed him for years about what a lucky son of a bitch he was when it came to sex.
But he wasn’t that man anymore. An inner voice of anger and regret, which might have been his conscience or just his intelligent side, was always present now, reminding him of Charleston. It made him acknowledge just how badly giving in to his liking for women had turned out then. A bar pickup with a stranger had seemed dangerous only in the sexual sense—he’d never, in his wildest dreams, imagined how that night would end up. Bloody.
And deadly.
Any man would steer clear of beautiful, strange females after one he’d picked up in a bar had turned out to be armed and violent. The blonde in Charleston—and her accomplice, who had followed them to Simon’s hotel room that night—hadn’t just robbed him of his money. They had stolen his faith in the basic decency of strangers. So he should have been much more wary of the brunette who’d landed in his arms tonight.
But for some reason, he wasn’t. Something had awakened within him. His long dormant sensual side, he supposed. Whatever it was, he had liked having this stranger curl against him as if they were longtime lovers. She’d liked it, too—he could tell by the little sighs in her throat, the soft surrender of her body against his