“Shit, I tripped on my sheet!” Magnolia stage-whispered, her voice carried on the rustle of fabric.
Sutton’s unmistakable wheeze-laugh cut through the dark, the kind of laugh that made you want to join in even if you didn’t know the joke.
“Why are we whispering?” Sutton managed between gasps. “They already know we’re ghosts!”
More stumbling. More laughter. “OH MY GOD, I’M GONNA PEE!”
We both turned just as Magnolia came barreling into the room, swallowed up in a white sheet that clung and twisted around her like she’d lost a fight with a haunted laundry basket. Her hair stuck out in a dozen directions, eyes wide and unblinking, and whatever she was going for, it definitely wasn’t ghostly restraint.
Sutton stumbled in behind her, hiccuping laughter spilling out of her as she clutched the trailing edge of Magnolia’s sheet—more like it was dragging her along than the other way around. The two of them looked less like spirits and more like drunk bridesmaids who’d wandered off from a bachelorette party and decided to haunt the bar out of pure spite.
I reached for the nearest thing within arm’s length—the salt—and lobbed it across the room.
Nancy went nuclear, barking like we were under a full-blown attack.
Magnolia yelped and pitched forward, hitting the floor with a hollow thud that rattled the floorboards. Sutton tripped over her, both of them collapsing into a heap of tangled fabric and limbs, shrieking with laughter until they could barely breathe.
I froze, caught somewhere between laughing and bolting for the door. Across from me, Tally’s shoulders shook with silent laughter, her cheeks flushed, her eyes wide and glinting in the dim light. And for a moment—long enough for me to feel it in my chest—I swore she was going to kiss me again.
But then Magnolia groaned from the floor, flinging an arm over her face. “Well? Did we scare the spirits out of you or what?”
I let out a slow breath and tore my eyes away from Tally. “I don’t know about the spirits,” I said. “But I think the mood is officially dead.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
TALLY
I’dspentmostofthe morning reminding myself that a bit of space would be good for me. Good for both of us. Just because Charlie had been all over me the night before didn’t mean I had to melt into him every time he came within a foot of my personal space. Which was harder than it sounded, because apparently, Charlie had decided my personal space didn’t exist.
He’d been brushing past me in the kitchen, his hand skimming my hip when he reached for the coffee—standing behind me at the counter with his palm flat against the small of my back, leaning in to grab the sugar when there was plenty of room to go around the other way. At one point, he came up behind me whileI was rinsing dishes and pressed a kiss to my shoulder like it was the most natural thing in the world.
It was maddening. And addictive.
I tried to focus on reorganizing the stack of cookbooks Sutton had dropped by, telling myself I wasn’t going to read into it. But every time I turned around, he was there—close enough that I could smell the faint mix of sawdust and soap on his skin. Close enough that my pulse jumped, right before my brain chimed in with a reminder that this was a terrible idea.
“You’re quiet today,” he said from behind me, his voice low enough to brush the back of my neck. “Everything okay?”
“Mm-hm.” My voice came out a little too high. “Totally fine.”
He smiled like he didn’t believe me and reached past me to grab a mug, his chest brushing my shoulder. “Thought we could go through those boxes Magnolia sent up from the bar. Might be something we can use to make this place less… oatmeal chic.”
I looked up at him, trying for casual, even though my whole body was leaning toward him on instinct. “Yeah. That could be fun.”
What I didn’t say was that if he kept touching me like that, we weren’t going to get any decorating done at all.
***
Charlie’s merry little experiment had backfired spectacularly.
He moved through the penthouse like he did everything else—casual and utterly unaware of the slow torture he was inflicting under the faint glint of Christmas lights. It was not the distraction I’d been hoping for, and, if anything, it made things worse.
The low hum of a jazzed-up holiday classic drifted through the room while I stood there, fists clenched around a ball of tangledlights, trying not to picture him unwrapping me one inch at a time.
I needed to get a grip.
“What’s your plan for Christmas?” I asked, even though I already knew. I’d asked before—more than once.
He didn’t seem to mind the repetition. “Maggie and I stay up all night, kind of a dare now. Started as waiting up for Santa when we were kids. Now we bet on who’ll fall asleep first. Loser owes the other one a free pass to cover for the other at a Eunice Wilder function—no questions asked.”
