“Figured that. And Stella, I imagine said the same.”
“Logan agreed with me.”
“I bet he did.” She moved to him now, wrapped her arms around him, rested her cheek on his back.
He had a good, strong back. Working man, prince of the castle. What a fascinating combination of both he was. “I appreciate the thought, if not the method. That help any?”
“Not so much.”
“How about it’s nice that you care enough about me to try to boss me around?”
“It’s not bossing you around to—” He broke off with a curse and a sigh when he turned to see her grinning at him. “You’re not going to budge.”
“Not an inch. I think some of the Ashby blood, even as diluted as it is in me, must have stubborn corpuscles. And I want to be a part of finding the answers to all this, Harper. It’s important to me, maybe more important now that I’ve shared a kind of consciousness with her. Boy, that sounds pretty woo-woo, but I don’t know how else to say it.”
“How about she invades you?”
Her face sobered. “All right, that’s fair. You’re still mad, and that’s fair, too. I guess I don’t mind knowing you’re worried enough about me to be mad.”
“If you’re going to be reasonable about this, it’s just going to piss me off more.” He laid his hands on her shoulders, rubbed. “I do care about you, Hayley, and I am worried.”
“I know. Just remember I care about me, too, and worry enough to be as careful as I can be.”
“I’m going to stay with you tonight. I’m not budging about that.”
“Good thing that’s just where I want you. You know . . .” She slid her hands up his chest, linked them around his neck. “If we start fooling around, she might do something. So I think we ought to test that.” She rose on her toes, played her lips over his. “Like an experiment.”
“In my line of work I live for experiments.”
“Come on inside.” She stepped back, caught both his hands in hers. “We’ll set up the lab.”
LATER, WHEN THEY lay turned toward each other in the dark, she brushed at his hair. “She didn’t seem to be interested this time.”
“You can’t predict a ghost who should be haunting an asylum.”
“Guess not.” She snuggled closer. “You’re a kind of scientist, right?”
“Kind of.”
“When scientists are experimenting, they usually have to try more than once, maybe with some slight varieties, over a course of time. I’ve heard.”
“Absolutely.”
“So.” She closed her eyes, all but purring at the stroke of his hand. “We’ll just have to try this again, at some opportunity. Don’t you think?”
“I do. And I think I hear opportunity knocking right now.”
She opened her eyes, laughed into his. “They don’t call that opportunity where I come from.”
twel
ve
DAVID TURNED THE map upside down, and ran a fingertip down a line of road. “We’re like detectives. Like Batman and Robin.”
“They weren’t detectives,” Harper corrected. “They were crime fighters.”
“Picky, picky. All right, like Nick and Nora Charles.”