Page 22 of Ghost
“She has hazel eyes…” I argued, not sure where she was coming up with all this. God, I hated Maria. She was so nosy. My life would be so much easier if I wasn’t forced to make her my assistant. Family sucked.
“Oh my God!” Maria squealed—the sound pierced my eardrums and caused me to squeeze my eyes shut reflexively. The girlish sound contrasted terribly with her professional persona. “That’s so, so…”
She paused, and I opened my eyes, checking to see the hold up.
The second my gaze met hers, her entire face darkened. Before I could react, pain shot through my head as she smacked me over the head. “Stupid!”
“Hey!” I jumped away from my, now fuming, assistant, using my desk as a barrier between us. “What the—”
“Have you lost your mind?” I have never seen her so unhinged. She began to pace the length of the room. “I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but youcan’t date!”
Why did everyone always have to bring this up? “We know that already. It’s not a problem. We aren’t dating her.”
“We?” Her voice rose an octave. “Allfourof you?”
My breath caught, realizing my slip. And my heart began to pound furiously in response. Maria was no ordinary employee, like the staff at the restaurant. They didn’t have a stake in things, but she did. She wouldn’t brush this off as nothing, even with my order to do so.
Because the truth was, I did have a crush on Bianca. And Maria knew me well enough to tell.
“Don’t worry, she’s just a friend. She sought out Damen for help. There’s no romantic involvement.”
“But you wish there was.” She looked at me evenly, reading in between the lines of my denial. Something akin to alarm crossed her expression, before it was masked a moment later. She rubbed her hands over her skirt—one of her nervous habits—before she spoke again. “Well, that certainly issomething. How did the two of you meet? For someone to captureyourattention…”
I grinned at the recollection.
Even though nothing would ever come from this, when the time came I would always have my memories. And it has been said that my attention to detail was… uncannily eerie.
I had taken my bike to Damen’s that night. It was a rough day, one monotonous meeting after another. But, in order to succeed, a necessary evil. I had plans, and I had every intention on seeing those plans through. Even so, it was a relief to be able to dress down and feel the cool autumn wind against my face.
No one ever walked the backroads near Damen’s home. It was not the greatest of areas, and generally people who had business back there were the unsavory sort. In fact, it was for that reason Damen had purchased that house. Part of his effort to restructure the area.
So it had been impossible to miss her.
My dream girl, picking her way down the street. I had to stop. If I didn’t, the possibility was high an axe murderer would have gotten to her. They’d take her body back into the woods, do unspeakable things, and then bury her. She would never be heard from again, and her family would not know what became of their sweet angel.
I had no choice but to talk to her. To help her. Not that I wouldn’t have tried the same moves if we had met in a coffee shop either…
“Oh my Lord, that stupid look on your face.” Maria gasped, horrified. “Youloveher!”
I couldn’t deny it, but I really didn’t think it was love. Not yet at least. We had, after all, only been acquainted a few days. Those kinds of feelings took time to develop.
But I couldn’t hold back my instincts. I needed her in my life. More than anything else I had ever wanted, I had to have Bianca Brosnan.
“She was Finn’s friend,” I told Maria. Closing my eyes to keep the vision of Bianca clad in a towel fresh across my mind. “She was being haunted, and he wouldn’t help. So she went to Damen for help.”
“When did Finn get a friend? I didn’t hear about this.” Maria sounded scandalized. “But besides that, you never noticeanyone. You’re probably the most oblivious person on the planet when it comes to these things. You have women throwing themselves at your feet every day. What in the world did she do to garner this kind of reaction?”
I couldn’t stop my smile. “She maced me. And then she kicked me in the balls.”
There was silence in response. I opened my eyes to see if my cousin was even listening anymore.
She was.
In fact, the look she gave me was impossible to decipher. I wasn’t sure if this was a good sign or not.
If we needed anyone on our side, it would be Maria. “It doesn’t matter anyway. She’s a normal girl. Not involved in our world.” I held her gaze, trying to express my feelings without words. “We’re friends. We are allowed to have friends.”
Maria’s stare was unwavering, before she suddenly blinked. A strange expression crossed her face. “We’ll see. I want to meet her. I need to see the girl that was able to hurt you. She must be a bodybuilder.”
