Page 1 of Crazy Spooky Love
Chapter
One
“So, what do you do with your spare time, Melody?”
I look my date square in his pretty brown eyes and lie to him. “Oh, you know. The usual.” I shrug to convey how incredibly normal I am. “I read a lot…Go to the movies. That kind of thing.”
I watch Lenny digest my words and breathe a sigh of relief when his eyes brighten.
“Which genre?”
“Umm, in movies or books?” I’m stalling for time because, in truth, I don’t get much in the way of spare time to do either.
“Movies. Action or romance? No, let me guess.” He narrows his eyes and studies me intently. “You look like a sucker for a rom-com.”
“Do I?” I’m genuinely surprised. I just scrape five foot and look more like Wednesday Addams than a Disney princess. Maybe Wednesday Addams is over-egging it, but you get the idea; I’m brunette and my dress sense errs on the side of edgy. I don’t think anyone has ever looked at me and thoughtwhimsy.Maybe Lenny sees something everyone else has missed, me included. I quite like thatidea, mainly because everyone who knows my family has a head full of preconceptions about me.
“Four Weddings?” He shrugs. His outdated suggestion tells me that he’s not really a rom-com guy either. There’s hope.
I shrug, not mentioning that the only part of that particular movie I enjoyed was the funeral.
“The Holiday?”
Again, I try to look interested and hold my tongue, because I’m sure he doesn’t want to hear that I’d rather stick needles in my eyes than ever watch an overoptimistic Kate Winslet drag some old guy around a swimming pool again. My mother tries to get me to sit and watch it every Christmas, and every Christmas I think of a new reason to say no.
I’m relieved when the bill arrives and we can get out of there, because so far Lenny has turned out to be a pretty stellar guy and somehow I’ve managed to convince him that I walk on the right side of the tracks. Maybe this time, things will be different. Lenny pulls his dull, salesman’s sedan into the cobbled cartway beside my building and kills the engine. I don’t mind dull. In fact, my life could really use a bit of dull right now, so I shoot him my most seductive smile, cross my fingers that my mother will be in bed, and invite him in for coffee.
I tug him by the hand through the dark back door, placing my finger against my lips to signal he should be quiet as we tiptoe past my mother’s apartment and up the old wooden staircase to my place.
He rests his hand on my waist as I turn the key, and a small thrill shoots down my back. Look at me, winning at this being-an-adult thing today! Dinner with an attractive man, sparkling conversation, and now back to mine for coffee…and maybe even a little fooling around. It’s not that I’m a virgin or anything, but it would be fair to call my love life patchy of late. Byof lateI mean the last two years, ever since Leo Dark and I called things off. Well, by Leo and I, I meanLeocalled things off, citing conflict of interests. Ha. Given that he was referring to the fact that my mad-as-a-bag-of-catsfamily are the only other psychics in town besides him, he was, at least in part, right.
But enough of Leo and my lamentable love life. Right now, all I want is for Lenny to not know anything at all about my peculiar family, to keep seeing me as a cool, regular, completely normal girl, and kiss me senseless.
“You remind me of Kate Middleton,” Lenny whispers behind me at the top of the stairs. I mean, I’m considerably shorter and distinctly un-regal, but I’ll takeit.
“All big brown eyes and clever one-liners. It’s very sexy.”
I’m fairly sure Kate Middleton has green eyes and isn’t especially known for clever one-liners, but I don’t even care because I think he’s just brushed a kiss against the back of my neck! My door sticks sometimes so I shoulder-barge it open, aiming for firm and graceful but, I fear, more like a burly police SWAT team ramming it down. Thankfully, Lenny seems to take it in his stride and follows me into my apartment. He probably doesn’t register the heady scent of Chanel No. 5 hanging in the air, but I do and my heart sinks.
Just when it had all been going so well.Why couldn’t I have just given him a good-night kiss in the car, sent him on his way with maybe the smallest hint of tongue as a promise? He’d have been up for a second date, I’m sure ofit.
I sigh as I flick on the table lamp. My mother is standing on my coffee table in a too short, too sheer, baby-blue negligee with her arms raised toward the ceiling and her head thrown back.
“Shit!” Lenny swears in my ear, clearly startled. He isn’t to blame. My mother’s a striking woman, ballerina-tall and slender with silver hair that falls in waves well beyond her shoulder blades. It isn’t gray. It’s been pure silver since the day she was born, and right now she looks as if she’s just been freshly crucified on my coffee table.
I huff as I drop my bag by the lamp. So much for me being normal.
“Err, Mother?”
She takes several heaving breaths and opens her eyes, glaring atus.
“For God’s sake, Melody,” she grumbles, dropping her hands from above her head and planting them on her hips. “I almost had the connection then. He’s hiding out in the loft, I’m sure of it.”
I risk a glance over my shoulder at Lenny, who sure isn’t kissing my neck anymore.
He lifts his eyebrows at me, a silent “what the hell?” and then looks away when my mother beckons to him like a siren luring a fisherman onto the rocks.
“Your hand, please, young man.”
