“What about her?”
I never knew my mother. She’d given me up for adoption when I was born. Oh, I knew of her—she was supposedly a nun, but that was all I knew.
The spirit’s mouth opened. “Your mother’s alive.”
“I figured that.”
“She’s looking for you.”
The words barbed my heart to my spine. My mother was alive—that I knew. But she was looking for me?
I reached for the spirit. “Wait. Tell me more. She wants me?”
The spirit’s mouth coiled into a line that could only be described as sheer bliss. “She wants you.”
Those were his last words as the spirit slipped into the afterlife. My body numbed from my toes to my crown.
“My mother wants me,” I whispered. “Now where the heck could she be?”
TWO
“The spirit said my mother is looking for me.”
I was curled on Roan Storm’s couch, swirling a bottle of beer like it was wine and pretending I was cultured.
Roan, right on cue, opened an actual bottle of wine with all the effort of an experienced vineyard owner.
“Your mother is looking for you?” He slid the beer from my grip and replaced it with wine.
“No fair. I wasn’t finished peeling the label.”
He stared at the shards of paper unfurling from the glass. “Good thing. I think this bottle’s seen enough torment for one day.”
“Very funny.”
He slipped onto the empty seat beside me. “But seriously. How would a ghost know that?”
I shrugged. “No clue.”
Roan studied the crimson liquid in his glass. “Perhaps your reputation has preceded you.”
“Meaning?”
He sank onto the couch cushion and gestured for me to place my feet in his lap. You might think I was weird about my feet. Not for any reason other than lots of people are weird about their feet. Not actually their own feet but other people touching them.
I was not. I’d learned months ago that Roan gave the best foot massages ever and I would be an idiot to turn one away.
I was not an idiot.
I toed my shoes off and gracefully complied with the free lap waiting for me. He settled the glass on the table and kneaded my feet gently.
I closed my eyes and allowed a tiny moan of pleasure to escape my lips. “You pamper me.”
“Some girls deserve to be pampered.”
I peeked out from under a closed lid. “And you’re saying I do?”
Roan smiled wickedly. “Absolutely.”
