“Yes.”
She eased back, a smile on her face. Before she could get away, I shifted and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her close.
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” I rumbled in her ear.
She rested there a moment, warm and alive in my arms, breathing me in. If she noticed how fast my heart was beating, she didn’t mention it.
“I won,” she said, her words almost lost in my shirt fabric. “I found the magical item that’s worth something. We’re sleeping under the stars tonight.”
I grunted, trying to sound annoyed, but with Lu in my arms, I found it impossible.
Chapter Four
Devil’s Elbow was a lumber-chewing bend in the Big Piney River that got enough attention back in the early 1900s that the Ozark lumberjack encampment there eventually grew into an unincorporated town.
There wasn’t much to it back then except the trees for logging, the river for fishing, and the forest for hunting.
But when a bridge was built across the river in 1923, a few more buildings popped up, including one that was both an inn and a sandwich shop/café.
The building had gone through floods, ownerships, and plenty of years of neglect. But it was still standing, a single-story wooden building with a gabled roof that had seen better days.
Not the worst place to stop for an early lunch.
Country music laid a low, soothing vibe over the darkened dining area. The half dozen people at the bar were arguing over some reality show playing on the TV that involved survival.
Lu sat with her back to the door, so I was facing it. She thumbed through something on her phone, her lunch of french fries largely ignored.
I’d devoured a pile of brisket and was drinking water, trying to decide if I should go for the chicken and a beer. A headache pricked behind my eyes, hard enough I jabbed a thumb above my eyebrow, trying to relieve it.
“Asshole like you doesn’t even know how lucky he is,” a man’s voice said from behind me.
I turned, frowning into the darkened room.
“If I were alive, I wouldn’t sit there and let her scroll through dating sites.”
There was no one behind me. No one over my right shoulder, which is where I thought I’d heard the voice. I twisted to get a better look over my left shoulder.
The headache spiked, then my vision snapped.
I could see him.
A ghost.
Just what I needed.
This one was a man, tall and lean in life, dark, messy hair, scruff that might have been an anchor style goatee, or might have been he didn’t know how to shave properly.
He wore a white T-shirt with a leather vest over it, ripped jeans, and boots, and all of him was outlined in a moon-silver light. Next to him was a huge wolf, also outlined in silver.
The wolf turned its head toward me, and its eyes flashed red.
“I’d take her someplace nicer than this crapfest, that’s for damn sure. You know who has good barbecue? Texas.”
“Then go haunt Texas,” I muttered.
His head snapped my way, eyes flashing red. “Youcanhear me. Sonofabitch. I thought you were blindanddeaf.”
I sighed and rubbed my head, although the headache was gone now.
