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Perfect.
He released her and then started up the stairs.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to find your keys. And then we’ll drive ourselves out of here.”
She hooked a finger in his belt loop. “Are you nuts? Don’t go up there.”
“Do you want to leave or not?”
“More than anything.” But she wasn’t staying downstairs alone. “What if we call a draw on Hawaii?”
He looked down at her, his hand on the railing. “Do you think I give a good goddamn about Hawaii?”
“Yes. You earned that trip. And you have been trying to convince me to give up this bet since we made it so that you could keep that trip. Remember the hockey mask?”
“I apologized for that. Do you think I’m that shallow? That I would continue to manipulate you into losing after what we shared—” He shook his head. “What we did, I mean. After we had sex?”
She answered honestly. “I don’t know.”
“Thanks a lot.” He continued up the steps.
“Wait! I never said you manipulated me into sex.” Only she had thought it.
“Stay put, McIntire.”
“I’m coming with you!”
“No. You’re not.” He ascended, the glow from the lantern barely illuminating the blackness ahead.
“In my defense, you were the one trying to cheat.”
“We’re not doing this.” His tone was a warning.
“There are things happening here I don’t understand,” she called up after him. “The voice. My missing keys. The crash in the kitchen.” And the intensity of what had happened between them. “I’m scared, okay? I say things I don’t mean when I’m scared.”
He turned toward her with a sigh. His expression softened in the lantern’s light. She was winning him over, she could tell.
“You can’t leave me down here. What if—what if something happens and you’re not here to protect me?”
“Dammit, Lil.” His eyebrows bowed. He came down to her and extended a palm. She slid her hand into his larger one, relieved at the contact. “Stay close. Walk, don’t run. Carefully. These steps are mostly rotted.”
To his point, the boards beneath her feet didn’t feel that solid. With each step, they dipped enough to make her wonder if she’d fall through one and into a dank basement somewhere.
That wasn’t a very comforting thought. Even less comforting than the phantom footsteps they’d both heard. If it wasn’t Clive or raccoons, what was stomping around inside of Willow Mansion on Friday the thirteenth?
She didn’t want to know.
She really, really didn’t.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Marcus’s hand nearly slipped from the sweat-slicked handle of the lantern. Fear had carved a path into his insides with a dull knife. At least it’d distracted him from Lily’s accusation.
He hadn’t taken her keys. Hadn’t seen her keys tonight at all, in fact. He’d even checked around and under her car while he’d been outside a few minutes ago. He knew about the bells on her keychain. He’d addressed her as Mrs. Claus for a week after she’d bought them.
He’d been shocked when she’d accused him of hiding them upstairs tonight. Granted, he understood her suspicion. He had rigged up a speaker in the west bedroom to play a voice—which he still needed to confess to doing. But the mask and the speaker were a far cry from sleeping with her in an attempt to keep the vacation. What kind of an asshole did she take him for?
