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“Trust me, people have said a lot more impolite things to me than dishwater blond,” he said, his smile fading.

“People tend to not know what they’re talking about,” I said, diving into my food.

A flicker of Bastian’s smile returned. “They really don’t. I try not to let any of it get to me, but…you know.”

A, I did know, and B, I had the uncomfortable feeling a lot more unkind things had been said to Bastian than remarks about his hair.

Our eyes met, and for a moment we just stared at each other. I felt warm all over and bursting with enough energy to set the EMF detectors upstairs off. Falling in love at first sight was the kind of thing that only happened in movies, and I didn’t kid myself into thinking that’s what was going on with me and Bastian at all. But as silly as love at first sight was, being attracted to someone immediately wasn’t ridiculous at all. Some people just pushed your buttons, there was no denying it. Both in terms of physical reactions and emotional ones. Bastian Gorman did it for me.

We both realized we were staring at roughly the same time. Bastian cleared his throat and tightened his posture, which made me realize we’d leaned closer and closer to each other. “This chicken is good,” he said, focusing on his plate and eating his next mouthful with gusto.

“What can I say? Being a good cook is in the blood.”

I winced as soon as the words had passed my lips. Had I just said something exactly like that? Bastian was going to think I was a dork.

That wasn’t the way things unfolded as we ate, though. Bastian had a dozen more nice things to say about the food. I asked all sorts of questions about his family and the funeral business. Polo sat on the floor watching us and occasionally getting a piece of chicken that I knew I shouldn’t be offering him from the table, but I did anyhow.

It was the best evening I’d spent in a long time, despite the slight patter of rain that started up outside.

“Do you drink at all?” I asked as I cleared the table once we finished up. “I have a pretty impressive wine collection, thanks to my business. And I have a tiramisu in the fridge.”

“You made tiramisu because I was coming over?” Bastian asked, standing and helping me clear the table.

“To be fair,” I said bashfully as I stacked his plate on top of mine, “I traded a wedge of gruyere for it with the bakery at the end of the street.”

“I love tiramisu,” Bastian said, veering close to me as we carried plates and leftovers from the table to the counter.

“Do you?” Our arms brushed as we put everything down next to the sink.

“It’s my favorite,” Bastian said, pivoting towards me.

I don’t know why I did it. It was probably a really bad idea. But he was right there, he’d eaten all of the food I put in front of him, and he looked like he needed it. So I lifted to my toes, hooked a hand around the back of his neck to pull him down to me, and slanted my mouth over his in a kiss.

Bastian sucked in a breath of surprise. That convinced me even more that I’d acted way, way too soon. But then he rested a hand on my waist and kissed me back with surprising fervor. I couldn’t believe my luck and grabbed his coat with my other hand, deepening our kiss.

It was right at that moment that an alarm on his phone began to beep loudly and Polo leapt to his feet and started barking.

CHAPTER 4

Bastian

Ididn’t startle easily, but in that moment I did. Not the moment when the alarm went off on my phone or when Polo leapt up to bark. That was nothing. I was shocked out of my mind when Marco, wonderful, outgoing Marco, grabbed me and planted a big wet one smack on my mouth.

Things like that didn’t happen to me.

It wasn’t until the mood suddenly changed that it dawned on me to feel like a fool for kissing Marco back. The whole thing must have been an accident to begin with, so I shouldn’t have leaned into it and pulled Marco closer, like the two of us were miles farther along the relationship journey than we were.

We weren’t even in a relationship. We hardly knew each other.

But sometimes things just clicked.

“I think we found something,” Marco exclaimed breathlessly, staring up into my eyes, his pupils blown.

He was talking about the ghosts, right?

“We should go see what it is,” I mumbled, no idea what was going on, what I was doing, or even where I was.

I took a breath, and sense returned to me. Ghosts. EMF detector. Alarm. Dog barking. I nodded, once again embracing my strong and powerful ghost hunter persona that was so helpful when I was too anxiety-ridden to live, and grabbed my phone from the table.