Page 15 of Wired Ghost

The torch reappeared just as he was reaching the boulder that Sophie’d disappeared around. Her face peered around the protrusion, backlit so that he couldn’t see her expression.

Jake steadied himself as best he could. He focused on her dimly-lit face. “Sophie, I’m sorry about all that. But I can’t keep apologizing and groveling. Not that I mind, it just doesn’t accomplish anything. You have to decide to let that shit go, or we can’t move forward.”

“And you have to trust me. No reservations. No conditions.” She lowered the torch to illuminate his feet. “Or we can’t move forward.” The torchlight finally reflected up on Sophie’s face enough for him to see her expression. Her lips were trembling, her eyes full of tears. “I want to let it go. I’m trying to.”

“And I want to trust you. I’m doing it.” He sidled around the boulder and came up flush against her body.

They leaned their foreheads together, breathing each other’s air for a long moment.

“You came back for me,” he said. “I trust you. With my life. With my heart.”

“Then I forgive you. I choose to let that shit go.”

Jake angled his face a little, hoping—but the next move had to come from her.

Sophie seemed to know it too, and she kissed him, a soft but thorough joining that stole his breath. “I want to be with you, Jake. Let’s put the past behind us.”

“I—” but Jake had let go of the boulder too soon.

His foot slipped into the water, and he was falling—until Sophie grabbed the front of his shirt with her free hand and yanked forcefully, hauling him back enough that he could grab the rock wall and regain his footing. He shook out his soaked boot and pant leg. “You’re my badass babe, Soph,” he panted.

“Good. And you’re mykun dii.” She began her crabwise sidle again. “That was refreshing, but I think we should stick to priorities for now.”

“Cootie?” Jake followed, resuming his careful movements along the edge. “Never heard that before as a term of endearment.”

“Kun dii.”Sophie pronounced the Thai phrase slowly. “It means ‘my dear’ or ‘my love.’ What does ‘cootie’ mean in American?”

“It’s slang for a bug, a pest.” He smirked. “Cootie. Kind of apropos.”

Sophie’s eyes gleamed with laughter over her shoulder. “Perfect. You are my cootie from now on. Ha!”

“Phom rak khun khrup,” Jake enunciated carefully. Sophie stopped to look back at him, her eyes wide. “I love you, Sophie.”

“Your accent is terrible.” She blinked rapidly. “Let’s get off this ledge and continue this conversation on stable ground.”

“Preferably naked,” Jake said.

“That’s my cootie.”

Jake laughed, and finally, Sophie did too.

Chapter Ten

Raveaux

Pierre Raveaux smoothedthe front of his button-down shirt, a silky cotton that his wife Gita had bought him more than five years ago. He stared unseeing out the window of the plane, allowing his mind to rest on her briefly. The stroke of his fingertips down the row of genuine pearl shell buttons, then across to the small pocket inset over his heart, reminded him of touching her—skin pure golden satin, warm and smooth under his hands.

He didn’t often allow himself to remember his wife, let alone those details.

Gita had been dead for close to five years now, along with his four-year-old daughter Lucie. Everyone said it was time to move on. And when he’d finally opened his heart a tiny crack, entertained the idea of another woman in his life—Sophie had turned away from the tender bud of possibility to her former lover.

And now, both of them were missing.

“Would you like something to drink, sir?” The flight attendant stood at his elbow holding a tray of liquids—that awful syrupy pineapple-orange-guava drink that everyone seemed to love, and water.

“I prefer water, please.”

She handed the sealed plastic cup to him with a smile that told him she found him attractive, even more so now that he’d opened his mouth and uttered a couple of words in a French accent.

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