I swallowed back my irritation. “You’re going to make me ask again, aren’t you?”
She gave me an innocent look. “Ask what?”
“Are you staying … or just passing through?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“Why? Does it matter to you?”
A thousand smart-ass replies leaped to mind, but she would be expecting that. So, I went for the truth. “Yeah, it does.”
Her eyes widened and the faintest hint of pink spread across her face.
I grinned. Had I just embarrassed Alona Dare,
She sniffed. “Someone has to keep you out of trouble. Might as well be someone who knows the stupid crap you get yourself into all the time. And …” she traced the grain of the wood on the bench with her fingertip, “there may also be a small issue of me still learning to consider others before myself.”
“I was never in trouble except when …” I paused as her last sentence sank in. “Ha! You got held back because
“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes. “Being a poor winner isn’t nice, either,” she pointed out, but she got up and came to sit beside me.
We sat in comfortable silence for a long moment.
“Thank you for my bench,” she said almost shyly.
“How did you know it was me?”
“Oh, please. As soon as I heard Misty talking about it, I knew it was you. Who else would have come up with that quote?”
When it was finished, beneath her name and dates, the plaque would read, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”—John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”
I shrugged, unaccountably pleased.
She edged a little closer. “So … thanks.” She leaned in and before I realized it, she kissed me. Her mouth tasted warm and sweet, and when her hand touched my chest for balance, every cell in my body stood at attention.
She broke it off first, pulling away from me and touching the corners of her mouth as if to make sure her lip gloss was still in place. It was, by far, the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.
I cleared my throat. “If that’s for a bench, what happens if I suggest a whole dining room set?”
She laughed and slid away from me. “In your dreams, Killian.” She tucked her legs up under herself and gave me what I recognized now as her “getting serious” look. “Okay, so college. Let’s talk dorm room decor. I’m thinking we really need to go beyond the whole milk crates and dark, moldy-smelling comforter—”
I groaned. “I think this is a little outside your responsibilities as a spirit guide.”
She shot me an offended look. “I have to stay there, too, you know.”
I considered her words and all the various pleasant and unpleasant ramifications. “Well … that ought to make things interesting,” I said weakly.
She grinned. “No point in living otherwise.”
Acknowledgments
My thanks to my fabulous agent, Laura Bradford, for taking me on. To my editor, Christian Trimmer, who is ten kinds of awesome and made this book better than it ever could have been without him, and everyone at Hyperion. To Ed and Debbie Brown and Stacy Greenberg for help when I needed it most. To my supportive family, especially my parents, Steve and Judy Barnes. To my husband, Greg, for understanding what this means to me. And to my sister, Susan, who inspired me to write this story.
