“Sure, he always does. I mean, I don’t know, I guess…” I frowned at Morrison’s brown hair, caught up in logistics. “It’s going to be four in the morning before we get out of here. I can’t really call Gary and ask him to drum me under, but Billy never has, and besides that he’s going to have to go with me. I guess Mel, but—”
Morrison said, “Walker,” again, and I clued in with a physical lurch that turned my ankle. Morrison’s hands tightened on my waist. For an instant we were frozen in an awkward noir pose, the sort where the hero seizes the heroine’s arms and pulls her close before kissing her like she’s the most exasperating woman on earth. Except I was much too tall to be a noir heroine, even bent awkwardly while I tried to get my foot back under me, and for all the intensity of those old-movie poses, they never seemed to really have much in the way of bodies pressed together. There was body-pressing going on here. There had to be: Morrison’d braced me against himself so I didn’t topple over entirely.
He did not, however, look as though he’d like to kiss me. He looked as if I’d stepped on his foot, and like whatever had prompted him to say my name had been a bad idea.
Intuition and me weren’t the closest of friends, but I was still following the thought that’d led to my collapse. Morrison hadn’t been asking if Billy would take care of me. He’d been asking if I needed him to. Bubbling gladness spilled through me, as though he’d offered an answer to problems I didn’t even know I had. I wanted to hug him, or bury my nose in his neck, or something else unseemingly physical. I held it back to an idiotic beam and blurted, “Shit, I’m sorry, yes, that’d be—”
Morrison put me back on my feet and I looked over his shoulder to see Thor. Guilt that had gone passive surged back to life and my smile crumbled. Everything crumbled: I felt like I was shrinking, delight draining out and leaving bone-deep regret. I’d shut Thor down a few hours ago when he’d had the courage to ask if he could help, and jumping at the chance to put Morrison in his place, especially when the captain had been so circumspect in asking, seemed like a particular and special brand of cruelty. Thor’d been right: I didn’t trust one of us in our pairing, and the fact that Morrison’s offer sent my heart soaring where Thor’s sent it plummeting didn’t bode well for which one I didn’t trust, after all.
Morrison turned us both so he could see where I was looking. His hands loosened abruptly and he fell back half a step, making room for the Holy Spirit between us. He took a breath and I knew, I just knew, he was going to issue a retraction. I grabbed his lapels hard enough that my hands ached from it, and he exhaled, words lost in surprise.
“I…” I wanted to say a million things. Most of them didn’t seem especially appropriate. I held on to his lapels for a moment longer, then let go and smoothed them, like doing so would help me keep my voice moderate. “I would be a lot more comfortable with you drumming me under than with calling Gary in the middle of the night and asking him to come over.”
There. That sounded very reasonable. It didn’t touch on why I wasn’t having Thor do it, because that was none of Morrison’s business. It didn’t focus on the fact that Melinda would no doubt be perfectly fine drumming me under. It was also utterly true. I’d rather have Morrison, who was already awake, lend a hand, than get a seventy-three-year-old out of bed and ask him to help.
It in no way told Morrison, or let me acknowledge, that when my captain picked up that drum of mine, I felt magic.
Christ, I was doomed.
CHAPTER SIX
Phoebe and Morrison and half a dozen other lag-behinds stayed to help clean up, so we were out of there by half past three. Phoebe’d come over with me, but her eyes skittered away and she hailed someone else for a ride home. Worse, for the first time since I’d known her, she didn’t remind me of our upcoming fencing lesson. Thor snaked his arms around me for a hug. “She’ll come around. Give her a little time.”
“To get used to me sounding like a lunatic?” I gave him a wan smile and glanced toward Petite. “I’m going to go home and get this ghost thing sorted out, okay?”
“Sure. Call me in the morning and let me know you’re all right.” If he resented being kept away, he did a good job of hiding it. I felt guilty all over again. Relationships were complicated. No wonder I’d stayed away from them all this time.
Amazing how the human mind will let a person rearrange facts to suit her. That phrasing made it sound as if I’d made a deliberate choice to not get seriously involved with anybody since at least college. But if I was serious about the new Joanne-faces-reality lifestyle, it would be somewhat more accurate to say I’d buried my head in the sand and gone “LA LA LA LA LA” to drown out any possible chance of having to deal with romantic entanglements. Emotionally stunted, that was me. At least I had nice long legs to make up for it.
I nodded a promise to call, and Thor peeled off in his monster Chevy truck. It was black and chromey and had the worst gas mileage of anything this side of a Hummer, but it was also short-circuit-the-brain sexy, and I had a terrible soft spot for it. The wheels were three feet tall, and stepping up to the running board and the driver’s seat proved Thor had some nice long legs his own self. I felt that same dippy little grin from earlier crawl into place. A girl could do a whole lot worse than her own personal Norse god.
He roared off, exposing Morrison getting into his top-safety-rated Toyota Avalon.
I burst out laughing. Morrison looked up—so did the Hollidays, for that matter—and I waved them all off and climbed into Petite, still grinning. If I didn’t need my psyche examined, I’d have put my sweet little Mustang in gear and chased Thor down the road. Emotionally stunted or not, at least I could tell when a guy’s car sense coincided with mine, and Morrison’s never would. I reminded myself to give Thor an extra kiss next time I saw him, and drove home to find out what it was like to be part of a genuine ghost story.
Melinda looked like she’d swallow her tongue when Morrison pulled in to my apartment-building parking lot as I climbed out of my car. I locked Petite, patted her purple roof and said, “I thought if we were going ghost hunting it might be good to have somebody who’d done it before drum me under,” all breezy-like, as if it was no big deal. The weird thing was, right then it didn’t seem like one.
Melinda unswallowed her tongue, coughed, “Sure,” and gave Morrison a sunny smile. I figured stronger men than he could be hornswoggled by that smile. Billy wasn’t bad-looking, but his wife was a knockout. If I ever needed to be a five-foot-two Hispanic woman, I wanted to be Melinda. Also, she could and did say, “Hello, Michael,” like it was a normal thing to do, whereas I still couldn’t imagine calling my boss by his given name. “I might’ve made Billy drive me home if I’d known you’d be here.”
Morrison and I exchanged glances. It’d seemed awkward to me to mention he was coming over when I’d sent my boyfriend home, and I have no idea what he thought. Telepathy ought to come standard with psychic talents, although if I put any actual consideration into that, it sounded like a really bad idea. Morrison said, “I’m sure Walker will lend you her bed if you want to take a nap,” and I gave a feeble nod of agreement that Melinda brushed off, clearly not too worried about it.
Billy gave first Morrison, then me, looks that said volumes, but kept his mouth shut. I made them climb all five flights of stairs to my apartment out of cheerful vindictiveness and the knowledge that the building’s ancient elevator was both astonishingly slow and incredibly noisy. Only very drunk college students or heavily laden tenants used it, and the former had been known to fall asleep in front of its doors waiting for it to arrive.
Poor Melinda was pink cheeked and puffing by the time we reached my apartment. I had the grace to be ashamed of myself, but she flopped down on the couch and wheezed, “I’ll try anything to go into labor. I could’ve protested in the lobby.”
I scurried to get her a glass of water, and by the time I