Shiver : 13 Sexy Tales of Humor and Horror - Aurora Belle - Страница 64

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“It’s okay. You look…fine…er…I mean great. You look great.” Could he be any more of a dork? He cleared his throat. Back to business. “Where do you want me to set up?”

“Oh, I thought if we put the camera by the register then we could wait behind the counter so we’d be hidden if someone came in through the front door.”

He arched an eyebrow at her. “Do ghosts usually come in through the front door?”

“No, but I’m trying to keep my mind open to all possibilities. Like I hope you’re doing. Whatever is happening, I want to be prepared for anything.”

As annoying as he found her kooky fortune-telling nonsense, he found that the more he was around her, the more he liked her. She always seemed to look at things in a positive light, and he hadn’t heard her complain yet. Even when her office had been trashed and her things had been destroyed, she seemed unfazed. Most of the women he’d dated spent half the night complaining about everything from their weight to the high price of cosmetics. Like he gave two hoots about the cost of mascara.

But Zia was different than anyone he’d ever met before, and he found himself drawn to her. Not just her curves, but her smile and her easygoing manner. She was fun to be around, but he didn’t think he could get past her weird ideas and crazy notions. She’d flat out told him she was a witch. What was he supposed to do with that?

He held up the thermos as he walked across the room and dropped the cooler and his backpack. “I grabbed some of my equipment and some food. And I brought coffee.”

“Oh, me too.” She pointed at the drink carrier on the counter holding two carryout cups from a fancy coffee joint. “I brought us some pumpkin spice lattes. And I had them put in extra shots of espresso.”

“Pumpkin spice what?”

She laughed and handed him a cup. “Pumpkin spice lattes. Don’t you ever get out? People line up for these when they come back every fall.”

“No people that I know.”

“Just try it.”

He gingerly took a sip. Just to prove he could be open-minded too. It was warm and cinnamony, with a little kick. He shrugged. “Not bad. Kinda good, even. It tastes like Thanksgiving in a cup.”

She grinned. “Exactly. See what you can discover when you try new things?”

Hmmm. Why was he imagining her as one of the new things he’d like to discover? Like one of the New World explorers, he could envision scaling her peaks and surveying her valleys. Just like Magellan, he could start an expedition across her unexplored territory.

She eyed him curiously and with a tiny gleam in her eye, as if she could actually read his mind. He was in big trouble if she could. He was afraid his man’s mind would be disappointing and fairly predictable, considering his thoughts usually tended to the topics of sex, food, and work, or some combination of the three, like “what should he eat for lunch at work and when did he think he would be having sex again?”

He set up his equipment, and she grabbed some throw pillows and blankets and made them a little nest on the floor behind the counter. He gingerly sat on a blue pillow and leaned his back against the wall. “This is the most comfortable stakeout I’ve ever been on. I’ve never brought a pillow before. Wouldn’t want to fall asleep.”

“I figured since there were two of us, we could take turns sleeping while the other kept a lookout.” She locked the door and turned out the lights. A soft glow filled the room from the display lights under the counter, and she plopped onto the floor next to his outstretched legs.

Yeah, right. Like he was going to fall asleep with her sitting this close to him, the smell of her perfume filling his every sense. “Do you really think we’re going to see something?”

She nodded vigorously. “Oh yes. I know we are. I can feel the upheaval and terror in this room. I know something evil happened here, and I just know whatever’s happening is not finished.”

What a load of crap. Did she seriously buy into all this nonsense she was spouting? “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“I just know we’re going to see something tonight.”

“Look, I don’t claim to have any spiritual Spidey sense like you do, but I do believe in intuition and trusting my gut. And my gut is telling me that stuff happened because an actual person, that’s still alive, broke in and tossed our offices.”

“I guess we’ll find out.” She settled in next to him against the wall. “And speaking of guts, I’m getting hungry. You ready for a snack?”

“Sure.” He reached for the cooler and pulled out a container of sliced veggies and an expensive bottle of water.

She eyed the bottle. “I thought you said you only ate sunflower seeds and drank coffee.”

“I do. But I thought you might like this stuff.”

“Oh.”

Her mouth formed a perfect O, and his thoughts went to dark ideas of taking those lips as his.

She grinned and broke the spell. “You bought this stuff for me? That is soooo sweet.” She picked up the fancy bottle of water and read the label. “This water is from a natural spring somewhere in Europe. Judging from the price tag, you could’ve skipped the water and just brought us a bottle of wine.”

“I’ll remember that for next time.” Next time? Who said anything about a next time? Next time their offices were ransacked and they had to do a midnight stakeout? He frowned and pointed at her bag. “What did you bring?”

She dumped her bag on the blanket in front of them. He gaped at the collection of cheese puffs, potato chips, candy bars, and chocolate cupcakes. “I’m afraid my snack choices are a little less healthy than yours.”

She did that thing again where she wrinkled her nose and grinned, and he couldn’t help but smile back.

His office had been next to hers for months and he’d never taken the time to even have a conversation with her. He’d made up his mind and thought he knew everything about her before he’d had a chance to get to know her. And his snap judgments were turning out to be dead wrong. She’d brought cheese puffs, for crap’s sake. “You really eat all this stuff?”

She laughed and reached for a candy bar, totally at ease with eating the junk food. “Oh yeah, I love all this stuff. I’ll punish myself on the treadmill later or take a hike, but it’s worth it.” She took a bite of chocolate then closed her eyes and groaned in ecstasy. “So worth it.”

Geez. What was going on with him? Maybe instead of a shot of espresso, she’d put horny potion in that pumpkin spice thing, because her eating that candy bar was totally turning him on. Watching her eyes close and that groan. Holy mother.

The way she tipped back her head gave him a clear view of her pale skin, and he ached to bury his face against her neck. His own pulse picked up a beat as he imagined the feel of hers pulsing under his lips as he ravaged her throat with passionate kisses.

He felt like a teenage boy. His hands were even beginning to sweat. He did not react this way to women. To anyone. She had to have spiked his drink with some hocus-pocus. Or maybe those weren’t ordinary incense sticks she was burning earlier. His mind reached for any explanation rather than the obvious one. That he was falling for her.

And that was not going to happen. He cleared his throat and reached for his thermos of coffee. “I think I’ll just stick to coffee for now.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself. I brought pop too.” She hauled out a six-pack of highly caffeinated soda. Not even diet. Who was this woman? “It’s not expensive mountain spring water, but it’s got caffeine and carbonation.”

She laughed, but he knew it was with him and not at him, and something about the sound of her laughter touched him. She seemed so genuine. He wanted to believe in her. But he’d been burned before, and with fatal consequences. It was hard for him to believe she could be this nice. Hard to believe anyone could be this positive.

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