Her problem was that she was consumed with lust. Suffering from a bad case of near coitus interruptus. Turned on to her back teeth. Horny. Aching for a man.
Face it, you’re aching for Garland.
And she had reached that sorry state of affairs because she’d had a bad—okay, bad and really, really sexy—dream.
Even as Charlie recognized the truth of that, even as she recoiled in dismay from the path her wayward subconscious had led her down, she was startled into motion by the blare of the alarm clock on the bedside table. In a flash she knew where she was: in her bed in the in-law suite of the FBI’s rented beach house. Apparently the clock’s ring was what had jolted her out of her dream, and, still groggy, she’d hit snooze, and the thing was going off again. Turning a disbelieving eye toward the clock, she saw that it was 6:05 a.m. As she grimly smacked the off button, she remembered right before she had fallen asleep sitting up and setting the alarm clock for her scheduled run with Tony.
For a moment, as she lay there trying not to think about the still urgent clamoring of her body, Charlie debated: exhaustion plus the sudden disinclination to go messing up her love life any further by dragging a perfectly nice man into it argued with canceling out by staying in bed. Mental confusion, a sexed-up body that needed to be cooled by about several hundred degrees, and the need to give herself a guy to think about besides Garland weighed in on the side of the run.
What sealed the deal was the thought of Garland in the next room. The TV was still on; she could hear it. Given the time frame, and the salt, he was almost certainly in there, no convenient vanishing in the middle of the night for him. The knowledge made her tense. It made her nervous. It made her insides take on the approximate consistency of melted butter. It made her—well, she refused to acknowledge it, but the bottom line was that she badly needed to clear her head before she had any kind of significant interaction with Garland. The last thing in the world she wanted was for him to get some kind of an inkling of the role he had so recently played in her dream. And the way she was feeling right now, he might pick up on it.
As aroused as she was, she was probably giving out massive vibes screaming Do me.
That did it: the run won.
Stifling a groan, Charlie clicked on the lamp, tossed back the covers, swung her legs over the side of the bed, stood up, and headed for her suitcase. Padding across the carpet, she yawned hugely.
I feel like I didn’t get any sleep at all.
On the heels of that thought came another, horrifying one: what if her little interlude with Garland hadn’t been a dream? Her pulse kicked into overdrive at the mere possibility. A quick glance down at herself was reassuring: her blue nightgown was definitely on. Definitely the same one she had gone to sleep in. Her panties were intact, too. In other words, she was still as completely dressed as she had been when she had tumbled into bed the night before. Anyway, he was about as substantial as water vapor, remember? No way they could have …
Wincing as vivid images of herself pulling her nightgown over her head replayed themselves in her mind, Charlie shucked her sleepwear—not so much as a single grain of sand in it—and quickly checked herself out in the mirror over the dresser. No swollen lips, no love bites. No telltale signs of a passionate interlude on a starry beach. Letting out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, she pulled on her running gear, brushed her hair back into a ponytail, and headed for the bathroom. Moments later, face washed, teeth brushed, moisturizer-cum-sunblock in place, she was ready to race out the door.
Only she had to get past Garland first.
The last thing you want is to let him sense fear.
She remembered thinking that about him back at Wallens Ridge. When he’d been nothing to her but a dangerously handsome serial killer she’d been studying—who was having, according to what he’d told her in her dream, a high old time imagining her naked. Now she had the same thought about not letting him sense her fear—albeit fear of a totally different kind.
What was scaring her now was that he would somehow divine how badly she wanted to have sex with him.
A predator was a predator, and she knew how to deal with those. But a spectral predator whose bones she wanted to jump? That was new.
Get a grip, she thought. Then, back straight, chin up, she strode into the living room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Garland lay sprawled on the couch with one arm bent behind his head, watching some kind of sports show. The living room was dark except for the glow from the TV, so she didn’t get the details, but she could see that he was staring at the screen with a less-than-enthralled expression on his face. His big body took up practically the entire piece of furniture and was as solid-looking as her own. He’d taken off his boots: his feet were encased in white athletic socks. He looked so completely normal, so alive, so much the typical, couch potato, sports-watching male that for a moment, as he turned his head and looked at her, Charlie was thrown off her game.
Was his expression appraising? Broody? Or, God forbid, knowing?
Say good morning and get out. That had been the plan.
But just looking at him made her heart pick up the pace, and her breathing quicken, and her blood heat. Panicking a little as his eyes slid over her—it absolutely had to have been a dream, so there was no point in letting herself even begin to imagine otherwise—she felt her body tightening deep inside.
Thank God it was dark.
If the warmth in her cheeks was any indication, she was blushing. The man—ghost—whatever—was not a fool. Given a reasonable degree of light, a blush he would see. That, coupled with her expression, which she guessed was something less than cool indifference, would be easy for him to interpret.
Probably as a sadly misguided case of the hots for him.
Crap. Leave. Fast.
Jerking her eyes away from him, not saying a word, Charlie kept on moving, heading for the door even as Garland frowned and sat up.
“Where are you going?” His eyes tracked her.
“For a run,” she answered, and was out the door before he could say anything else.
She ran lightly down the stairs. Like her rooms, the house was dark, shadowy, because all the window coverings were drawn. She was just thinking that if Tony wasn’t up she had a problem, because she didn’t know which of the downstairs bedrooms was his, when she saw movement in the little alcove off the kitchen. Her heart gave an automatic lurch a split second before Tony’s black hair and tall form registered. He was up, then, dressed in running gear, and doing a series of stretches as he waited for her.
“You’re early,” she said.
“I heard your alarm go off.” He grinned as her eyes widened fractionally. “My bedroom’s right below yours.” Charlie barely had time to wonder what else he might have heard when he added, “So, you ready?”
She nodded.
“Security alarm’s already off,” he said as she started toward the keypad, so she turned back and waited for him. What she really wanted—no, needed—at the moment was to be alone. Usually her runs were her time to think her own thoughts, sort through things, clear her head. But being alone right now wasn’t smart; and if she couldn’t run alone, she would just as soon have Tony with her as anyone else. No, sooner, actually. She liked him a lot, and she certainly wouldn’t have to worry about the Boardwalk Killer with him beside her, which, she discovered as he followed her out the door into the pale morning light and the fresh ocean-scented air hit her in the face, was a bigger relief than she would have thought. With the rustle of the sea oats and the roar of the tide loud enough to drown out any noise up to, possibly, a siren, and the dunes to provide concealment if someone wished to hide, Charlie realized that, alone, she would have been feeling pretty vulnerable as she set out down the narrow wooden walkway toward the beach. With Tony only a couple of steps behind her, though, she did not.