Chapter 11
She stared at him from across the table.
He smiled at the waiter and paid the bill.
He really is a beautiful and kind man, she thought.
She was sure she had little hearts superimposed over her eyeballs as he smiled at her.
Sexy. Knowing. He reached across the table, grasping her hand between both of his and kissing her palm.
His soft warm lips may as well have pressed against that sensitive space between her ear and jaw line—or a place much more intimate.
The place that was heating up, wanting his lips pressed against it as softly as they were pressing against her palm.
“Derrick, let’s go home,” she said softly as he pressed his lips into the back of her hand.
“You know it was never you I wanted.” He stroked his thumb over her knuckles. “I know you saw the way I looked at her. I know you ignored it,” he said, almost in contemplation as he stroked her hand.
“You were convenient, Lauren, and I just wanted to be around the woman I loved but couldn’t have.
When I was around her, your love felt like a chain locked around my neck.
You were choking the life and joy out of me, and I hated it.
I hated touching you, I hated fucking you.
I hated everything about you…except her.
” He smiled, kissing her hand tenderly before biting into it, his teeth were like razors ripping into her flesh as he reached for her throat, grabbed it, and started squeezing.
She woke up fighting to get free of him, screaming and sobbing.
She couldn’t stop sobbing, even as she turned on the lamp and checked for shredded flesh.
It was a nightmare. She was okay, she wasn’t harmed.
But she was. Had she ignored the hate, not seen their attraction?
She had seen Derrick looking at Lahn once or twice?
But everybody looked at Lahn. She was strikingly beautiful with an ethereal artistic flare that she’d cultivated to perfection.
But did she know on an unconscious instinctual level? Did she sense that Derrick and Lahn longed for each other and blocked their love out of some selfish sense of jealous entitlement?
Hell no.
She might question if the sky was blue, and the sun was hot, but she didn’t want anything not meant for her, even if it was the man she thought was the love of her life. She didn’t see the value in settling for anyone or anything.
“So, what was my sin?” she asked out loud. “That I’d allowed myself to fall in love, that I’d exchanged vigilance for trust?”
Why was she still trying to understand why?!
“I just want to get over this!” she sobbed.
A cool breeze caressed her heated skin, and the air became almost electric.
A small hand caressed her cheek and when Lauren opened her eyes she was by all intents and purposes alone in the room.
The touch calmed her, and she became the clearest she’d been in weeks.
Reaching for her phone, she went into the closet and put on her black puff jacket and a pair of running shoes.
She turned off the bedroom light and walked downstairs.
Entering the security code, she turned off the alarm, and just in case—in case the spirit didn’t want to be alone in the dark—she left the kitchen light on.
She set the alarm again and walked out the back door.
“I’ll be back,” she said for... She didn’t know why she said it. No, she did. Whatever was in that house had offered her comfort and she wanted to accept it, Ma Mable would’ve accepted it, yet right now she was calmly freaking out.
Locking the door, she trotted down the stairs and trot-walked the distance to Santiago’s home. She banged on his door several times before it swung open.
The sheriff stood there shirtless, his thick hair unbound and flowing in a heavy cascade over his shoulders and back. She was used to seeing his hair pulled back into a tight, slicked down, braided ponytail that rested between his shoulder blades.
“How can you be asleep at a time like this? It’s only like eleven thirty.”
He looked in the direction of her house, a smile spread across his face. “Take it you didn’t enjoy your welcoming party.”
She barged passed him without responding, surprised he didn’t object before closing the door.
“My welcome was sweet. Really. Gentle even. I’m just going to need another night to reconcile that I was welcomed by a spirit, that’s all.
I mean…you can’t just prepare for that,” she said, walking around his home, which was very different than hers.
His was more of a cabin craftsman but not all wooded out, whereas hers was more of a small Queen Anne.
“Was your grandfather a woodcarver?” she asked, stooping down to examine a baby mountain lion in full-on stalking mode.
“He was. He built himself a studio about fifty feet off the front of the yard that—”
She headed up the stairs and made a beeline to the door that was most likely his bedroom since it overlooked the lake. It was a large room with an extra-large bed, and unlike hers had an ensuite that she didn’t bother looking in right now.
Sitting on the firm bed, she toed off her shoes. “Sometimes I snore so I hope you’re not a light sleeper,” she said, slipping under the covers on the side that wasn’t pulled back.
He at least deserved to sleep on his regular side of the bed.
“Woman, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Let me tell you something Stillwater—I’ll drop the sheriff part because we are sleeping together and all. When a spirit from days gone past wants to get to know me, that’s totally fine, but just not my first night when every sound, or lack thereof, puts me on edge.”
“I’ve never seen you not on edge.”
She flopped on her side and snuggled against the pillow and pulled the thick comforter over her shoulders.
“I like it here. It’s warm in your room.”
“That would be the wood burning fireplace right there,” he said sarcastically.
She’d seen it, but it was more than the fireplace. It was the space. And the clean earthy scent of the man that lingered in the sheets.
“I’m going to build me a fireplace,” she mumbled, closing her eyes. “In my bedroom...and one down in the front room as well. It’d be better than that old potbellied stove.”
“That would be some major structural work and the spirits over there tend to get murderous when people start messing with the walls and foundation. It’s okay to add on, but don’t start taking shit down over there. Historically, that’s when the residents tend to die. Violently.”
“Can you talk less please…and cut off the light? Thanks, and good night.”
Santiago watched her fluff his pillow and close her eyes.
In his house. In his bed.
He didn’t turn off the fucking light. He walked to the foot of his bed, grabbed a hand full of covers and yanked.
“Oh my God!” she shouted, sitting up. “Can you not be an asshole for at least one night?”
“Get out.”
“Not tonight, hoss,” she said, flopping down onto her pillow and hugging it as if it was all she needed. “Unless you plan on snuffing out the fireplace, I ain’t thinking about you taking the covers. Have the covers, I got the bed.”
“Don’t take my kindness for weakness, Lauren,” he said, circling back to his side of the bed and getting in.
He pulled the covers over them both. “You will leave my house by sunup. This will not happen again. If you and Deborah don’t get on good terms, you can walk a little farther around the lake and see if St. James will take you in. ”
She was silent so long he wondered if she’d fallen asleep.
Instinctively he knew she had not.
“I’m not sure how I feel about you using my first name only, it feels very familiar. Too intimate.”
“The minute you climbed your ass in my bed, you will now and forever be Lauren.”
She flipped over and glared at him. “Why are you like this?” she asked.
“Like what? The guy who let you climb in his bed after you’re run away from yours by ghosts.”
“No, the perpetually grumpy grouch? Everybody here talks about you like you’re the second coming and I don’t get it.”
“I don’t care.”
She remained silent for so long he closed his eyes, forced his body to relax despite its awareness of her. Her breathing, her scent, her heat crawled to him beneath the covers. She shifted, edging closer.
He tensed.
“I like your bed,” she said softly, as if rousing herself just to let him know.
“Surprised that something pleases you.”
“I’m easy to please. Because I don’t expect much from people.”
“What I’ve learned is that when you expect less, human beings, being the contrary creatures they are, will give you less.
When you expect better, more, people tend to step up.
I’ve had men and women die beside me, knowing that if they could’ve fought harder, longer, they would have.
When you do decide to face whatever it is you’re running from, maybe you should also start requiring more, Lauren. ”
“People disappoint; it’s easier to rely on myself.”
“Did you believe in them in the first place, or did you just pretend to?”
She turned away.
“No,” she said, almost too low to hear. “I believed in them. They just didn’t care, and that’s so much worse.”
Derrick promised he’d be over before she went to bed, but he hadn’t been. He didn’t always arrive when promised, but he was here now, his body generating so much heat that she didn’t think twice about pressing more fully against him.
Derrick didn’t like being woken up early, so she was careful when she draped her arm over his hip and began stroking his abs and chest.
It had been months since he’d come over, longer still since he slept at her place.
She didn’t know if it was her imagination or not, but it felt like he’d grown a little thicker and a little harder.
And this new rain and earth scent, it was intoxicating.
She smiled, dragging her nose across the back of his shoulder, grateful that for once he wasn’t wearing a T-shirt to bed. Only a pair of boxers.