Raintree: Haunted (Raintree 2)

“Don’t forget about the party Saturday night.” Her eyes flitted quickly to Hope. “Are you going to be around?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, no.”

“How about supper tomorrow night? We can cook out.”

“I have to go out of town for the day. I’m not sure when I’ll get back.”

Hope glanced back

at him and raised her eyebrows slightly. She was probably wondering if he was running out on her or telling Honey an out-and-out lie.

“Well, if you do get a chance on Saturday, stop by.”

“Sure,” he said, noncommittal and less than enthusiastic in his response.

He and Hope both reached the spigot at the foot of the stairway that led to his bedroom at the same time. They rinsed the sand off their feet.

“So where are you going tomorrow?”

“Hale County. The Cordell murder scene.”

Her foot brushed against his, and she instinctively drew back. “Think it’ll do any good?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the ghost will still be there and can help in some way.”

“After all this time?” Her question reminded her that she knew next to nothing about what he did.

“Some ghosts hang around for hundreds of years, stuck where they don’t belong because they were so traumatized by life or their deaths that they can’t move on. Four months is nothing.”

“Do you do what you do to catch the killers, or do you try to send the ghosts of the victims to wherever it is they’re supposed to be?”

“Both,” he confessed.

He turned off the water, and they climbed the stairs, Hope in front, him lagging a few feet behind. What next? He wanted her, but he knew he shouldn’t have her. Not couldn’t, shouldn’t.

In the end, she made the first move. At the top of the stairs she waited, and when he got there, she laid her hand on his arm, rose up on her toes and kissed him. It wasn’t a sexual kiss—at least, not blatantly. It was a simple touch of her mouth to his, a hesitant, stirring kiss.

“You’re a good man, Gideon. I’m sorry I suspected you of being crooked.”

“That’s all right,” he muttered.

“No, it’s not. You hide so much of yourself, and there’s no way you can tell people what it is that you do. And yet you do it anyway, never taking credit, never asking for money or fame or even thanks.”

“I’m a little surprised you’re accepting this so easily,” he said, leaning down for another kiss, because she was there and he could.

“Yeah,” she whispered just before his lips touched hers again. “So am I.”

The ocean had washed away Hope’s worries, at least for a while, and once she’d let everything go she couldn’t stop thinking about Gideon and what had happened that morning. Together they stripped off their wet bathing suits and stepped toward the master bathroom. She was sandy and salty, and she tasted Gideon on her mouth. Work was done, at least for a while, and for the moment she wasn’t worried about anything but getting into the bed and staying there for a while. She felt almost wanton, which was unlike her.

Hope Malory was cautious where men were concerned, and though she’d always tried to be just like the males in her profession, she had never been aggressive in the bedroom. It was the one place where she was truly shy, where she sometimes felt reserved to the point of prim. She didn’t feel at all prim now, as she gently pushed Gideon into the shower and followed him inside, stepping under the warm spray and letting it wash the last of the salt water from her skin and her hair.

“Do you ever get tired of living here?” she asked.

He ran a hand over her wet breast, almost casual and definitely familiar. There was such warmth in that hand, and she wanted more. She had a feeling she could never get enough of this man.

“Only when I get too much company,” he answered. “When that happens, I just toss a few grains of sand into the bed each night, and eventually they go home.”

She moved her body closer to his, unable to stop herself, not wanting to stop. “If I overstay my welcome, are you going to toss sand in my bed?” she teased.