A thump, then a low dragging noise echoed across the ceiling.
Her body broke out in goose bumps. Not again.
Emily reached over the side of the bed and gripped her cross. Another heavy foot slid across the floor upstairs in the attic. She wanted to cry. She’d had such a good day earlier. She and Jericho had chatted for hours, the awkwardness left over from the movie date gone. She’d asked him to stay for dinner but he’d declined, since he had another client to run out to. He’d taken a plate of cookies with him and told her to call him for any other repairs.
It hadn’t quite been romantic, but it hadn’t been uncomfortable, either. And it had made her happy.
But now, staring up at the ceiling, all she felt was dread and sheer loneliness. Here she was again, at three in the morning, terrified out of her mind and no one to call on. She could call Luanne, but her sister only laughed at Emily’s fears. She was a bit of a daredevil and didn’t understand Emily’s distress over the thought of having a ghost in the attic and having to deal with it by herself. The police department hadn’t exactly been super receptive the last time they’d come out, so she’d baked double batches of their favorite treats and promised not to call again for a few weeks.
She had no one she could turn to, and right now, she felt terribly, horribly lonely.
Maybe Braden would be available if she called. Maybe he wouldn’t be a total dick about it.
She doubted that, but when she heard another noise upstairs, she reached for her phone. Right now she just wanted to hear a human voice, someone to tell her it was okay, and to not be afraid of ghosts despite living by herself in a big, creepy old house.
Emily flipped to the ‘recent calls’ screen on her phone to pull up Braden’s number…and saw Jericho’s name staring back at her.
Would he answer if she called? She supposed she could always fake a plumbing emergency. But…that felt wrong. She just wanted a friend right now.
On impulse, she hit ‘call back’.
Jericho’s phone rang four times, and just when she was about to hang up and declare herself stupid for even trying, someone on the other line picked up. “Mmm, hello?”
It was obvious he’d been asleep. “Hello? Jericho?” Emily hated the way her voice trembled. “It’s Emily.”
“Em? You okay? What time is it?”
“It’s late,” she said tearfully. “Or early. I guess. I just…needed to talk to someone. I keep hearing things in my attic.”
“You want me to come over?” He sounded a little more awake.
She caught the sob in her throat. God, she was being such a baby. But she felt like a big ball of emotional distress. She wanted help, and she didn’t have anyone to turn to that might possibly understand how she was feeling… except him. “That would be great. You don’t mind?”
“Not at all. I’ll be there in about twenty.”
“Thank you,” she said softly. “I’ll make you cookies.”
“You don’t have to bake me anything to get me to come over, Em.” She heard the rustle of clothing as he moved around on the other end of the line. “I’ll be there soon.”
“Okay,” she whispered and hung up.
~~ * * * ~~
Jericho showed up in a roar of mufflers at precisely 3:15 in the morning. Normally she’d have been one of the people in town pissy at the noise in the middle of the night, but today? She didn’t care.
It just meant that she had a friend.
He strode to the door, a worried look on his face. His hair was a rumpled mess, the floppy black locks going in every which direction. He wore Scooby Doo sleep pants and a plain gray t-shirt under his jacket, his hands stuffed in his pockets as he headed to her front door. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” she said, hugging her bathrobe closed. But she felt like a fraud saying it. “Actually,” she added, voice trembling. “I’m really not. I’m scared and no one believes me and I don’t have anyone to depend on and—“
“Hey,” he said softly, moving forward. “Shh. Shh. It’s okay. We’ll take a look at things, all right?” Jericho pulled Emily against him in a warm, comforting hug.
“Everyone thinks I’m crazy,” she sobbed. “And no one will help me. Even Braden. And I’m…scared of my own stupid house. I can’t even sleep in my own stupid bed.” She buried her face against his shirt. God, he smelled good. She was wimping out on him, but she didn’t care.
For once, she just wanted someone to lean on. She normally took the mothering role, but this time, heck, it was so nice to have someone else hold her and tell her that it would be all right.
Jericho’s hands rubbed up and down the arms of her bathrobe. “You need to sit down and have a good cry?”
“I need someone else to hear these ghosts so I know I’m not crazy,” she said, sniffing against his shirt. Her fingers curled into the soft fabric. “You smell good.”
He chuckled. “Thanks?”
“A-are these pajamas?” She sniffed again. “Did you come over in your pajamas?”
“You seemed like you wanted someone over ASAP. So here I am.” He rubbed her back. “Shall we go inside?”
She nodded and surreptitiously wiped her nose.
Jericho took her hand and led her back into her own house. “Lead me to it.”
“The attic,” she said, pointing upstairs. “The noises always come from the attic.”
“Of course they do,” he said with a chuckle. “Typical horror movie shit. The bad stuff is always in the attic.”
“I’ve had it checked before and no one can find anything,” she whispered. And even though she wanted to kick herself for it, she clung to his arm. “I’m sorry I’m being such a baby.”
He looked down at Emily, and the look on his face was surprisingly tender. “You’re not being a baby, Em. You’re scared, that’s all.”
“I hate being alone,” she whispered, leaning closer as they headed up the old staircase. “I’ve never liked it. Especially at night.”
“That why you invited me to live with you the other night?”
“Mostly. I like your company, too.” She felt a little uncomfortable but since he’d gotten up in the middle of the night to come be her hero, the least she could do was confess how she felt. “I acted really weird on the date. I wanted to apologize. It wasn’t that I didn’t like you. I just…I haven’t dated anyone in a really long time, and my ex kind of did a number on my self esteem. And you were looking at me weird with the ghost stuff, and I think I just started babbling.”
Jericho’s smile widened. He put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a casual hug. A warm, sincere hug. “We all get nervous. I have to admit, I wasn’t sure how to take it when a girl tells me she wants me to move in but in a completely platonic sort of way. And here I was having dirty thoughts about you.”
Emily’s breath caught in her throat. “You were?”
“Fuck yeah. In that demure little cardigan? Was thinking about peeling it off of you and seeing what was underneath.”
Suddenly the arm around her shoulders felt a little too innocent — she craved those filthy thoughts he’d been having. “Well, I—“
A massive thump sounded overhead, silencing them both.
“Well, damn,” Jericho said, glancing up at the ceiling.
“I didn’t lie,” Emily told him, a little breathless at being proven right. She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t. “I have a ghost.”
His sexy mouth curled a little at the edges, and she noticed he was unshaven. Oooh. “You’ve got something up there. Got a flashlight? We’ll go check things out.”
She’d never been quite brave enough to check things out on her own. Braden had probably filled her head with too much nonsense. Still, the thought of confronting whatever it was upstairs freaked her out a little, and she moved even closer to him. “Are you sure?”
“Only one way to see if it’s what I think it is.”
“What do you think it is?”
That mouthwatering smi
le quirked again. “Don’t know, but really hoping it’s not a ghost.”
They headed up the stairs, turned past Emily’s room, and then further up toward the attic space. Emily’s attic staircase was a cramped and twisting set of narrow stairs behind a door at the end of the hall on the second floor. At the top of the staircase was another ominous door. Just looking at the stairwell gave her the willies.
Jericho turned to her. “Flashlight?”
“Right,” she said quickly, and ran to her second floor storm closet. She kept emergency supplies on both floors just in case she had guests and the power went out. A heavy Maglite was in the closet and she grabbed it, then raced back to Jericho’s side and offered it to him.
“Thanks. You want to stay down here?”
Oh God, did she ever. It thumped again, and she moved a little closer to him warily. “Um. Will you think less of me if I do?”
He chuckled. “Not at all. Just call the police if I’m not back in twenty.”
Emily glared at him. “That’s not funny.” The lights flickered as if to agree with her. Ugh. Emily squeezed closer to him and closed her eyes. “Are you sure you want to go?”
“It’ll be fine.” He pried her away from him and tapped her cheek so she’d open her eyes. When she did, he gave her one of those bad-boy winks. “Don’t worry.”
“Easy for you to say.” He didn’t live here, after all.
But he was already climbing the stairs. “Be right back.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and watched as he disappeared around the bend. She heard the attic door open and sucked in a breath, waiting. Waiting for him to say that yes, he saw a ghost, or no, there was nothing and she was still crazy.
“Shit.”
Emily felt like her throat was closing. “What is it? What do you see?”
“I see shit.” He laughed, and relief flooded through her at the sound. He didn’t seem worried or frightened at all. In fact, he sounded pleased. “Who did you say you had coming over here to check for ghosts?”
She frowned up at the staircase. “A few of the officers. Sometimes Hank, sometimes Old Charley. Mostly Old Charley. Why?”
“Because I think I know what your ghost problem is. Want to come up?”
Buoyed by his ease, she went up the narrow staircase after him. He stood just in the entryway of the attic, the bulb hanging from the ceiling on overhead, and the mag-lite in hand. And he was smiling. He looked over at her and waved her forward. “Come on. You’re going to want to see this.”
“Am I?” she asked skeptically. “Because I’m pretty sure whatever it is, it isn’t good.”
“Well, in the scheme of things, it’s not ideal, but it’s not the worst,” he said, and offered her his hand.
Emily put her fingers in his and let him lead her into the attic. The room was too shadowy for her liking, the ceiling tall and gabled overhead, raw beams of wood creating even more shadows. Tufts of insulation were everywhere, like snowy piles of pink cotton. It covered the floor of the attic and bunched up along the sides in mounds dotted with smaller, darker spots of dirt.
“See,” he said, giving her hand a comforting squeeze. “No ghosts.”
With someone at her side, she had to admit that things seemed a lot more benign. “It…doesn’t look so bad.”
“I’m surprised no one has noticed this before. You ever had a pest guy come out?”
“No, why? Do I have bees?”
With his free hand, he pointed at one of the brown spots of dirt. “You see that? That’s shit.”
“It’s what?” She asked, horrified. She pulled her hand free of his and grabbed the mag-lite from him, then shone it on one of the spots. Sure enough, now that she had a second look at it with a brighter light than the yellow bulb that hung down from the ceiling, it did look like a big nasty turd. “What the hell? What is pooping in my attic?”
“Unless you have a ghost with incontinence issues, my guess is possums.”
“Possums?”
“Yep, and it looks like a lot of them.”
“Possums,” she repeated. That was…too simple an explanation. Surely it was more than that.
“You ever had any weird smells you couldn’t figure out?”
She started to shake her head, then gasped. “When…when we first moved in, there was this god-awful smell like dead things. Braden kept saying it was the ghosts telling us about their presence.”
“It was probably a dead possum in the walls somewhere.”
“In the walls?” Her voice rose a bit. “You’re kidding, right?” She’d heard noises in the walls once or twice, but she’d never guessed…and Braden had always filled her head with stories of spirits attempting to send them a message…
God, either she was a huge idiot, or Braden was. Or both.
“I’m guessing there’s a few of them in the walls,” he said, tapping one of the beams overhead with his hand. “Especially in these old houses. I’ve seen it before. That’s why when I saw the droppings, I figured that’s what’s making your ghost noises. Never seen a ghost in an old house, but I have seen lots of rodents.”
“And that’s possum poop,” she asked. “You’re sure of it.”
“Pretty sure. If you’ve got a stick, we could always go poking around in some of these tufts to see where they’ve buried themselves. They bite, though. And some carry rabies.”
Emily shuddered. “How do I get rid of them?”
“Pest service, I imagine. I know a guy. I can call him in the morning.”
“So…possums.” It couldn’t be that simple, could it? “Not ghosts?”
“I’m not saying you don’t have ghosts,” Jericho said with a slow smile. “But your attic noises are probably caused by these guys running around at night. I’m pretty sure they’re nocturnal.”
She stared up at him, then around her attic. Possums. Something she could easily have removed. The evidence of rodents was all around her – poop was sprinkled liberally amongst the insulation puffs. How no one else had picked up on it before now, she didn’t know. Even as she shone her flashlight around, one of the piles shifted and she gasped.
“That’s probably one of the culprits right there,” Jericho said, pointing. “Want me to try and flush him out so you can see him and know for sure that it’s possums?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s okay. I believe you.”
“You’ll probably want to get all the feces out of here, too. It’s unhealthy and will probably attract others.”
Emily wrinkled her nose. “I believe you. I’ve seen enough poop for now, thanks.”
“Want to go downstairs then?”
She nodded and was surprised – and pleased – when he offered her his hand again. They went back downstairs and paused in front of Emily’s bedroom door. She looked in her room, the blankets still mussed and trailing over the side of the bed.
“I can’t believe it’s something so easy,” she murmured. “Possums. I can take care of possums.”
Jericho pushed his messy dark hair off of his forehead. “Kinda glad it wasn’t ghosts. I don’t know what I’d have done if I’d seen Casper up there.”
She laughed and wrapped both of her arms around one of his, hugging him. “This is the best news I’ve had in years. I could just kiss you.”
The look in his eyes grew interested. With his free hand, he reached up and caressed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “So…why don’t you?”
CHAPTER FOUR
Jericho gazed down at Emily – pretty, flushed, tousled Emily in her pajamas and ratty night robe. Maybe he was being a bit forward, but he wanted to see how she reacted. Because he was extremely distracted by her presence. And maybe three in the morning wasn’t the right time to hit on her, and maybe post-poop viewing wasn’t putting her in the mood, but damn.
With an opening like that, he just had to take it.
His fingers stroked her cheek again and he watched her consider, her gaze darting over his face. Then, slowly
, she leaned forward and tilted her head back, inviting him to kiss her after all.
He knew an invitation when he saw one. Jericho pulled her against him and lowered his mouth to hers. Emily was a bit shorter than most of the girls he dated, but not uncomfortably so. Just made her seem a bit more fragile. Her mouth was soft and warm under his own, her lips as plush as he’d imagined. And that soft, sweet mouth parted under his lips, and her tongue greeted his.
Lust roared through him, hot and heavy. He deepened the kiss, his mouth moving over hers in a possessive but coaxing manner. It didn’t matter that they were both in their pajamas, hair messy. To him, she was the sexiest woman in the world at the moment, because of the way her tongue flicked against his own in a small, silent encouragement.
And that was all he needed. His hand moved to her wild hair and wrapped in her blonde curls, holding her pinned against him as he made the kiss more urgent, more demanding.
She whimpered low in her throat.
He broke the kiss, giving her mouth a long, slow lick before pulling away. “Can I keep kissing you, Emily?”
She nodded.
“You sure?” He didn’t want to pressure her, and her previous words about not being ready to date were still uncomfortably fresh in his mind.
Her eyes closed and she leaned in just a little more, her fingers digging into his jacket. “I’ll be pissed if you don’t.”
“Well, I don’t want that,” he murmured. His mouth closed over hers again, coaxing her to open for him. But this time it was her tongue that pushed into his mouth, and her demands that led the kiss. Her passion took over, and then it was Emily who was kissing him, her mouth moving hungrily over his, her tongue dipping and flicking against his own.
And…damn, but the woman could kiss. Jericho found himself fighting back a groan of pure lust. There was nothing better than when a pretty woman could kiss like a fucking demon, and Emily Allard-Smith definitely could.
“Want. To. Move. To. Bedroom?” She asked, punctuating each word with a fervent little kiss.