And he liked last night’s Shanna, too. The same her as always, but with a touch more magic and that seductively joyous spark in her eyes.
Couldn’t that Simon and that Shanna exist for a bit longer?
“Shanna,” he whispered, pushing a lock of her hair back over her shoulder.
Her lashes fluttered as she lowered her eyelids. Her chest rose and fell rapidly. She wanted him, too. It was still early; they had time. They could fall into each other again, forget—
His phone rang with the persistentbeep-beep-beepof an alarm. Thrown completely off balance, Simon glanced around in confusion, almost panic, as if the alarm announced the end of the world. The beeping came from the console table. He didn’t even remember when he had put the phone there last night.
“Reminder: Aries press conference,” his digital assistant announced. “Reminder: Aries press conference. To turn off—”
Simon crossed over and shut down the reminder. “Sorry,” he said to Shanna. “They’re making some announcement today.”
“You should probably watch it,” she said.
Yes. He should. Even if he couldn’t quite focus on work-related stuff at the moment. “It’s in half an hour. I still have time.”
“Well, I’d better go wash.” Shanna smiled, pointing at her back.
“Right.” He continued to stand there like an idiot as she walked past him, the pearl-white sheet wrapped around her like a goddess’s robe, and disappeared into the bathroom. “Leona,” he managed after a minute, bringing his assistant to attention. “Find a video feed of the conference and queue it up for me, please.”
“Yes, Simon.”
A yelp, a short scream, and then a giggle came from the bathroom. Without hesitation, Simon burst through the door. “What is it?”
Shanna, now wrapped in a towel, turned to him wide-eyed. She covered her mouth with her hand and laughed.
“Are you okay? You scared me. Has a shelf fallen down again?”
She shook her head, continuing to laugh until she finally wiped her eyes. “It’s Nelly.”
“What?”
“The ghost, remember? She’s here. She said …” Shanna wheezed. “She said you have a nice butt.”
Instinctively, Simon reached back to cover his pants-protected bottom. “She—”
“Saw us last night, yes.”
“You mean,watchedus.”
“Cut the girl some slack,” Shanna said. “She’s been gone for over a century. And she says she doesn’t get much action around here.”
Simon pouted and spread out his arms. “Glad to provide, I guess,” he said sarcastically.
“So …” Shanna pointed to the shower. “I need to …”
“Right. Sorry.” With one last look around the bathroom—letting Nelly know just what he thought of voyeuristic ghosts—he closed the door.
With Shanna hopefully safe for the time being, Simon put on his crumpled shirt from yesterday and headed out. At least his room was next door, so nobody would see his walk of shame—except he got stopped right as he walked out of Shanna’s room.
His wrist yanked.
Simon frowned, then pulled gently. Shanna was still in the bathroom; he could even hear the shower going. And he was able to walk much further away last evening. What was going on?
He didn’t want to cause any accidents in the shower, so he walked back inside the room and waited by the table.
“Oh. You’re still here,” Shanna said as she came out, one towel wrapped around her middle section, another around her hair.
