Chapter Eight
Chapter
Eight
I decide not to deliberately tangle with Leo and his production meeting.
I begrudgingly admit to myself that he was right that we have actually both been employed to work here at the same time.
It’s not a competition like the last job I pretty much stole from beneath his nose, so I lead my crew away from the ground floor and up the stairs.
Pausing on the first-floor landing, I try to get my bearings.
“What are you looking for?” a voice says, and I turn to find Britannia Lovell beside me.
“I saw a small back staircase somewhere here earlier,” I say, unguarded as I scan the corridor.
Then I remember that not only can Marina and Artie not see her, I’ve got Fletch to deal with here too.
I make a quick decision; the only way I can do this is to behave exactly as I would if he wasn’t here, so I turn to the others and say, “Britannia Lovell is here with us.” I nod to my left to indicate where she’s standing.
“About time,” Marina mutters. I can’t blame her. For a haunted castle, these guys have so far been pretty selective about their appearances around us.
“Rather rude,” Britannia says with a flick of one perfectly arched dark brow. “The stairs are behind the last door on the right. Nothing up there though, just dull storage.”
“Can I talk to you about what happened here last night?” I ask, and she laughs in the mean way of a cool but vicious schoolgirl who enjoys the odd spot of playground bullying.
“Dino decided he’d had enough of the Americans.”
“Were you having an affair with him? With Dino, I mean? When you were alive?”
I didn’t intend to ask that quite so directly, but she annoyed me with her uncharitable attitude toward Lois and Barty.
“Oh don’t be such a dullard, darling,” Britannia says, and her appraising glance settles on Fletch. “Are you having an affair with him?”
“No,” I say quickly, glad no one else can hear her.
Britannia laughs. “Why not? He’s terribly handsome, don’t you think?” She’s circling Fletch now, then stops in front of him and strokes the back of her hand down his face. “Don’t you ever wonder how this stubble would feel when he kisses you, Melody?”
I shake my head, grit my teeth, and refuse to rise to her goading.
“Liar,” she whispers, and she leans forward and touches her lips to his.
“Just pack it in, will you?” I say, sharper than I planned to because, to me, she looks like a gorgeous living and breathing woman kissing Fletch.
Even though he isn’t aware of her, he’s just parted his lips slightly and skimmed his tongue over his bottom lip, and it looks for all the world as if he’s responding to her kiss.
Britannia laughs with wicked delight. “I think he senses me, Melody.”
“Don’t be so bloody stupid,” I say, but she does it again and Fletch passes his hand over his mouth as if a butterfly landed on his lip and he’s brushing it away.
“What’s she doing?” Marina asks.
“Being a cow,” I mutter, and Britannia slants her sly eyes at me as she runs a hand down Fletch’s chest.
“I bet he’s firm and warm to touch,” she sighs, and I know where her hand is heading next.
“Okay, you win. Yes, he is, okay? He’s all of those things,” I snap. “He’s as firm as a racehorse, he’s as warm as morning bedsheets, and his stubble grazes your face when he kisses you. Now can we stop this stupid game and move on, please?”
Britannia claps happily. “Ah, so you are lovers! I knew it.”
“No, we are not,” I say, and I don’t want to say the next bit loudly, so I lean toward her and whisper in her ear. “One unplanned hook-up doesn’t make us sodding lovers, okay?”
Britannia’s smile brims full of wickedness and in a blink she disappears, leaving me practically face-to-face with Fletch.
He’s staring at me and I can tell from his expression that he’s trying to assess what’s happening here and frame it in a way that makes sense to his black-and-white mind.
He reaches for his notepad, takes out his pen, and I watch as he writes:
MB wants me so badly it’s sending her crazy. Also, buy a razor.
I take a deep breath and realize that we need to establish the ground rules of this shadowing malarkey pretty damn quick or else he’s going to enjoy himself immensely then do a hatchet job on me in the paper.
“Marina, would you and Artie please head on up to the top floor and check if there’s anything there that strikes you as worth a second look? I just need a quick word with Fletch and then we’ll be right behind you.”
As soon as they’re gone, I turn on Fletch.
“The lengths you’ll go to to get me alone, Ghostbuster,” he drawls.
“Do you have to be a cock at every possible chance you get?” I ask, exasperated. “This shadowing thing…we need some ground rules.”
He grins. “You’re so damn cute when you’re bossy.”
“Rule number one. Stop flirting with me. I don’t like it and it’s unprofessional in front of other people.”
He huffs softly and looks at the floor. “Says the woman who just said I was as firm as a racehorse and as warm as morning bedsheets. Does my stubble really graze your face when I kiss you?”
I’m not sure, but I think he’s stepped closer and my back is against the wall so I can’t move away.
“I don’t remember,” I mutter, looking down the length of the empty corridor rather than into his seafoam eyes.
“I could remind you,” he says, and his voice has dropped to that sex octave.
My skin prickles with awareness as his hand lands flat on the wall beside my head.
Oh shit. I wanted this to be a “me talk, you listen” situation and he’s turned it into a “me swoon, you kiss me” situation without even really needing to try.
“Rule number two?” he says, which is useful because it seems that I’ve lost the power of autonomous thinking.
I cast around in the flotsam and jetsam inside my head.
“It was something about you not laughing at me, or making a fool out of me, or trying to destroy my reputation,” I say.
Fletch spans his other hand flat over the base of my neck, stroking my collarbone with his thumb and little finger.
It’s so very unexpected that I don’t ask him to stop.
“I promise not to make a fool of you,” he murmurs, and his hand slides up the side of my neck until his fingers massage into my hair. “Or hurt you or destroy your heart the way he did.”
Wait…that wasn’t what I said at all, was it?
“No, Fletch…” His name catches in my throat, because the truth is I cannot hide the fact his words have hit home.
How does he do that? He spins from sarcasm to silver-tongued on a sixpence, and every now and then he is so raw he almost reduces me to actual real tears and it is well documented that I am not a crier.
“Hey,” he whispers, and he lowers his head and brushes his lips over my cheekbone.
“Your stubble is scratching my cheek,” I say, and he slides his mouth down my face and then he’s kissing me, pressing me into the wall, his body every bit as racehorse firm and bedsheet warm as I remember.
I know, I know. This is unprofessional and I should push him away, but he’s just made that low sex noise in his throat, and now he’s pinning my hands above my head with one of his own bigger ones and his body is telling me how very turned on he is.
I cannot be held responsible for this total lapse in control: Fletcher Gunn is to kissing what John Travolta is to dancing.
It’s so incredibly sensual and spine-tingling, and he’s so tall, and I love the way he dips his head down to meet mine, and I can’t explain how my hands have threaded themselves into his hair to hold him there in case he thinks about stopping.
“Jesus, Melody,” he whispers into my mouth. He so rarely uses my proper name and I love hearing him say it now, like this.
“Fletcher Gunn,” I murmur, then slide my tongue over his lips. In answer, he rocks his hips into me and palms my breast through my T-shirt, and I put my mouth against his ear and tell him I want him to get me naked.
Both Fletch and I are too caught up to notice that the corridor is no longer empty.
He rucks my T-shirt up and feels for my bra hook, and it isn’t until someone coughs, exaggerated and loud, that I turn and find myself being watched by a hulking great camera lens, a short, beardy cameraman who looks like he’s enjoying himself far too much, and an absolutely livid Leo Dark.
I automatically put my hand out and cover the lens. “Get that thing out of my face!” I yelp as if I’m a minor royal caught in a compromising position with my butler.
Behind Leo, the creepy twins observe proceedings with their dead-behind-the-eyes expressions, iPads in their hands as if they are actually useful assistants.
Fletch steps in front of me to give me a chance to straighten my clothes. “Sneaking around to get your thrills again, Dark?” he drawls.
“Just doing the job I’ve been paid to do,” Leo says, and his eyes laser into me as I step out from behind Fletch. “Unlike some people.”
“I’m working,” I squeak, and then I realize that the only people who do what I was just doing for a living are sex workers. “I’m not charging you though,” I say quickly to Fletch, as if it makes it better that I just let him cop a freebie. I’ve gone all hot.
Fletch rolls his eyes as if my randomness is entirely to be expected. “That footage better not see the light of day,” he says.
“I’m looking for supernatural occurrences, not a cheap peep show,” Leo snaps.
“There’re seventeen bedrooms in this building.
You could have picked any one of them for your sordid little romp, yet you have to go and pick the public corridor.
” He looks at both of us as if we’re randy teenagers on our first adult-free vacation in Kavos, but Fletch just shrugs.
“What can I say? Heat of the moment. You know how it is. Or perhaps you don’t.”
There’s a strange glint in his eye when he glances down at me, and then, without warning, he bends down, lifts me as if I’m a damsel in distress and he’s a fireman, and flings me over his shoulder.
“What the…put me down!” I yelp, pummeling his back with my fists.
“To bed with you, filthy wench!” Fletch exclaims robustly, and turning to the nearest door, he kicks it wide open on its hinges.
I’m outraged but powerless as he struts through the door.
All the blood is rushing to my head and I catch a glimpse of the cameraman scrabbling to catch it all on film as I reach out and slam the door as hard as I can.
Inside the room, Fletch strides to the bed and tumbles me onto my back on the mattress. I spring to my feet like a jack-in-the-box and round on him.
“What the hell was that all about?” I whisper-shout furiously in case they’re still outside the door listening, my hands on my hips and my chest heaving. I know this because Fletch’s eyes have just dropped to look at it.
“That”—he jerks his thumb toward the door, and his words come out all urgent and hot—“was to piss Leo Dark off. But this thing going on with us…we need to have sex again, Ghostbuster. I can’t concentrate on work, or writing, or any damn thing else.”
I stare at him and he stares right back with those bold “let me do you” green eyes.
“What do you expect me to do? Strip off right now and get into bed?”
He shrugs, and then he softens his voice to the danger zone again. “I’d rather take your clothes off for you.” He reaches out and tucks my hair behind my ear, and I untuck it again, just to make a point.
“Are you always this stubborn or do I bring it out in you?” he asks, smoothing my hair back a second time. “You look at me like you hate me, all flashing, angry eyes and then you look at me like you want me, all pouty lips and breathy. You’re the queen of mixed messages.”
“And you’re the king of bad intentions,” I spit back, fluffing my hair around my face, affronted by the suggestion that I’m ever pouty or breathy.
His lazy grin tells me he doesn’t mind the title as much as I’d hoped.
“Only where you’re concerned.”
We eye each other and I become aware suddenly of how close our bodies are and how bunched his shoulders are as he looks down at me.
He cups my face between his hands and I feel disconcertingly fragile and hyperaware of his contained strength.
I sense he’s about to say something sexy in that honey gravel way he sometimes does, so I shake my head to dislodge myself from his clutches and step backward.
“Fletcher. It might have escaped your notice, but it’s three in the afternoon, Marina and Artie are waiting for us upstairs, and there’s a daytime TV crew in the corridor.”
He looks toward the door. “I could wedge a chair under the handle.”
“We’re both on the clock while we’re here,” I say, moving away from him in case he tries any of his caveman tactics again. “Let’s just grow up and try to act like it, okay?”