“It looks like a cult of Satanists lives in the basement,” Dakota said frankly. “You could always room with me for a few weeks. I’m going into the sheriff’s department today—my uncle said he could get me a job as a deputy. You know, in a month I might even be able to use a gun.”
Tucker tried not to stare at her. Of all the unexpected outcomes of his magic sexual karma, he had not expected the former English teacher to scream “I’m gonna be a cop!” in the middle of orgasm.
And yet she had. And apparently she also had follow-through.
Tucker thought seriously about her offer and then about what a live-in girlfriend with a gun would do if he asked her to drop him off in town so he could sleep another random stranger into a life epiphany.
“I’m pretty sure the only Satanists in there are the rats,” he said with a toothy grin. “I think a gun would be overkill.”
“Okay,” she said doubtfully. “If you’re sure.”
He kissed her cheek. “Darlin’, I’m good. And I can’t thank you enough.”
With that, he swung out of her little green Ford Ranger and hauled his bags from the back. He took a few steps away and waved so she could leave and then peered through the red dust up the walkway.
Sure enough, the ghost of not-Damie was waiting at the door, arms crossed and a sort of resentful apology on his pouty-mouthed face.
Tucker sighed. Maybe the Satanic rats would eat him alive tonight and he wouldn’t have to live with whatever fresh hell the karma gods had planned.
Not-Damie. Also, Not-a-god
AS ANGEL watched Tucker haul his suitcases up the broken cement pathway, he tried not to bang his head through the support post for the porch.
So much for his resolutions not to push the resident empath again.
He’d promised—he’d promised—Ruth Henderson that he would try to be a friend, a companion, to her nephew, but dammit! He’d been so excited about meeting Tucker Henderson, so prepared to be kind, to welcome him with open arms and gratitude, that finding out the jackass had spent last night catting around had really ticked him off.
Although Tucker hadn’t seen it that way. What had he said? His entire life was a sexual violation?
That hadn’t sounded like a man who’d been happy to wake up in the bed of a beautiful woman. Not at all.
And seeing Tucker sex-sated, sleepy, looking warm and human and mussed…. Angel pushed that thought away. He didn’t feel things like this. He didn’t have human reactions or feel warmth or attraction. He just… he didn’t.
But that didn’t change the fact that Angel had kept pushing Tucker’s buttons.
Damn. When would he ever learn?
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Tucker muttered. “Am I late? Did all the dead people suddenly come alive? Did my shower hasten the zombie apocalypse? Did taking time to shave put all mankind at risk?”
“Did you at least have time to eat before you got laid again?” Angel snapped, and then he really did try to thunk his head on the support post, only it went through it instead.
“Augh!” Tucker dropped both suitcases. “Oh my God. Do you have any idea how weird that looks? Stop that!”
“I’m sorry,” Angel said, a contrite, sincere echo of Tucker’s sarcastic apology. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be an ass. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m sorry. I really was asking if you’d eaten.”
Tucker stood on the porch, holding his hands to his eyes. “Is your head out of the post now?”
Angel double-checked. “Yes. Yes—all body parts accounted for.”
Tucker sighed with relief and took his hands away from his eyes. “Better. Did you say food?”
At that moment, a grocery van pulled up the long, slanted driveway and swung around to the front of the house. A low three-layer brick wall marked the edges of a concrete parking lot that faced what appeared to be overgrown gardens. A decrepit toolshed marked the corner. The space was huge—it had made Dakota’s job easy when she’d backed her truck out—and this guy had no problem, even in the oversized van.
Angel smiled hopefully. “Supplies and sandwiches,” he said, hoping that as offerings of contrition went, this was a good one.
Tucker swallowed and then smiled.
Angel had noticed this when Tucker was naked in bed, but somehow seeing that smile in the sunshine made it so much more apparent—Tucker was really a very handsome man. In his early thirties, with careless dark hair and blue eyes, he had a strong chin in a rectangular face that highlighted some stellar cheekbones. His mouth was full, with a good-humored curve, but Angel hadn’t noticed that until he smiled. Some of the bitter care fell from his face then, on his forehead, in the lines of his mouth. For a moment he looked innocent and, as his aunt had maintained, sweet.
“You?” he mouthed, and Angel nodded, not sure if it was possible to feel heat prickling up and down his skin. He may have had a certain way with electronics and phone messages, but he really didn’t have a corporeal body.
Still, Tucker kept that sweet smile, and Angel fought the temptation to hold his incorporeal hand to his incorporeal face to check.
“Thank you,” Tucker said. The naked gratitude on his face did something fierce and unprecedented to the center of Angel’s being, where humans maintained the heart sat, regulating emotion. The twisting, swelling sensation where Angel’s chest would have been, had he had a corporeal form, was both unpleasant and exhilarating, and it shook him to the marrow of his invisible bones. As he watched Tucker walk down to take the crate of groceries and sandwiches from the delivery boy, he felt the slightest flicker in the projection he’d chosen to show Tucker for their acquaintance, and he thought frantically, trying to figure out what he’d changed.
Tucker was smiling to himself as he walked back up the porch steps, and he looked at Angel to share the smile and stopped abruptly.
“Man, that is some shirt!”
Angel looked down, and in place of the plain white T-shirt—which, it had seemed, every human had been comfortable in for at least the last fifty years—he was wearing a button-front Hawaiian shirt that looked like the victim of a tie-dye grenade.
“Oh my God,” he said, heedless of the blasphemy. “What in the—”
“You got puked on by a rainbow!” Tucker chortled, his good will apparently easy to earn with food and bright colors. “Dang, ghost guy, I don’t know what made that happen, but if you keep doing stuff like that, you might be useful to have around after all.”
“Useful?” Angel sputtered, embarrassed. “Useful? Do you have any idea who I am?”
“No,” Tucker said. He set the groceries down on the porch and reached into his pocket. “Yes! I knew I had the key.” He put his hand on the doorknob to unlock Daisy Place and let out a low moan.
“Oh hells!” Angel muttered. “Tucker, let go—”
“Stop.” Tucker fell to his knees, his hand still locked around the handle. “Oh God, make it stop.”
Dammit! All those spirits, all of that cold energy locked in the house for weeks. Of course the cold iron of the doorknob would be where that energy was stored. Oh Jesus. Poor Tucker. He convulsed, moaning, his hand locked on the doorknob like it contained an electric current.