She came to him, her body molding against his. He could feel the thunder of her pulse so like his own. He wanted this woman with every fiber of his being. He looked into her eyes. She wanted to trust him, but even though he could see that she was afraid she shouldn’t, desire flamed in those blue eyes.
If she kept looking at him like that, he was going to sweep her up in his arms and carry her to his room and ravage her. The door to the room slammed closed as if caught by the wind.
Casey started and pulled free of his arms as a cold breeze stirred her hair and then his own. He felt the chill all the way to his bones. It was as if Megan had brushed past them both, coming between them.
CASEY COULDN’T BELIEVE how close she’d come to surrendering to the powerful desire Finn had lit inside her. She felt shaken as she stepped back to rub away the cold chill that had circled her neck.
“It seems I need to check the windows around here,” she said as she shivered. She knew she hadn’t fooled Finn. He’d felt it, too. She wondered how many windows in the hotel were open, causing the drafts. In a few days, it wouldn’t be her problem.
She could feel Finn looking at her. He must be thinking the same thing she was: how close that had been. “That wasn’t Megan. There are no ghosts.”
“Just keep telling yourself that,” he said and chuckled softly. She could hear the desire still thick in his voice. He cleared his throat. “Bad timing.”
She nodded. They stood almost awkwardly now. She still felt an aching need inside her, a raging desire that he’d set ablaze. If he touched her right now... “So who do you think it is, the person trying to come between us?”
From his smile, she knew that he’d thought of Megan when the door had slammed, when that cold breeze had brushed past them. “Not a ghost.”
“No,” she agreed, even though if the door hadn’t slammed when it did, she could very well have been in one of these rooms naked in Finn’s arms. Just the thought sent a tremor through her. It would have been just like Megan to keep them apart. If Casey believed in ghosts.
DEVLIN COULDN’T REMEMBER the last time he’d drunk this much or been this sick. “Just shoot me,” he said to the empty hotel room. He’d opted for his own room without a roommate and was glad of it now. He thought he might die as he lay half-naked on the bathroom floor waiting to heave again.
Why had he drunk so much?
The answer came back to him in a wave of nausea: the conversation at the bar earlier about who’d been in the woods the night Megan died. Jason had been going around the table trying to remember the timeline they’d told the marshal.
“Devlin,” he’d said as if forgetting for a moment that he was even there, “what were you doing in the woods that night?” The way Jason asked it, the words intimated that he was a loser who wasn’t out there with a girl, so what did that leave?
“I was taking a whiz,” he’d said and motioned to the bartender for another beer since, after all, Jason was buying.
“Oh, right, sure,” Jason had said, making it sound as if Devlin had been lying. “And Benjamin—”
“I’d stepped away to do the same thing,” Benjamin had said quickly.
“Amazing that you two didn’t piss on each other,” Jason had said and laughed.
“So Jen and Shirley had gone to get more beer. Megan and Casey had been at the fire. Jen and Shirley returned. Shirley...” He’d stopped and looked over at her.
Shirley had been staring down at her beer as if knowing he would be coming to her soon. She’d told him the same thing she had the marshal ten years ago, she’d said. “I was sick in the car coming back with the beer. I didn’t want to go all the way back to my room, so I went through the trees down to the creek and washed up as best I could. I was on my way back, turned around and a little lost, when I found Megan.” Shirley had looked relieved when Jason took her at her word and moved on.
He looked at Jen. “I was at the fire. Casey was there. Maybe she saw Megan wander into the woods. I didn’t really notice.”
Jason nodded. “Now, if we just knew what Claude had been doing.”
“I think we already do,” Patience had said and ordered another round. Shirley had said she needed food, and the others had agreed.
Devlin left them to hit the bathroom. When he returned, he noticed that his cell phone was lying on the bar but not where he’d left it. He picked it up, feeling as if someone had opened it. Anyone at the bar could have seen him put in his passcode.
“I’ll buy the ingredients for taco salad,” Jason was saying magnanimously as Devlin had looked around at the others. Only one met his gaze: Jen. She smiled as if everything was fine. Or was it a knowing smile?
“Just tell me what to buy,” Jason said as he borrowed a pen and pad from the bartender and began to make a list. “Who’s up for making it back at the kitchen?”
Devlin ordered another drink as Jason and Patience climbed off their bar stools to head to the store, with the others following shortly after them.
That had been hours ago. Why hadn’t he left the bar with them?
FINN STILL FELT shaken because he’d almost kissed Casey, something he’d been wanting to do since the first time he’d laid eyes on her. He’d come so close. And then that damned door had slammed.
He shook his head. Not even Megan’s ghost was going to keep them apart. But, given
