“Don’t grudge, Delaney. Don’t be angry because I’ve opened wounds you’d much rather slap Band-Aids on. Don’t. I get it now that I’m dead. I want you to get it before you are, too. I’m being very serious when I say that I like you. You have a razor-sharp tongue, and you’re too damned cute for your own good, but you’re also alone. Because I like you, and I can’t be here to do a proper job of it myself, I want you to have those things you want. I don’t want you to sit at home and hope it’ll find you.”
They had to lighten up or she’d be crying buckets of wasted tears. And what did “do a proper job of it himself” mean? “So are ya giving me permission to date other guys? Does this mean it’s over between us, Clyde? Are we”—she made quotation marks of her fingers—“seeing other people?”
Without warning, he pulled her into his embrace, jolting her senses. “Don’t make light. Just promise me you’ll give it a try when I’m gone.”
When he was gone.
That the words still stung after he’d said them for the hundredth time, that she was feeling even the slightest bit of dread for a lost soul who was by far going somewhere better than this, meant heartache would follow. Clyde belonged up yonder. Any suspicion she’d had earlier was gone. Ghosts had blank spots in their memories all the time. Demons probably could, too. Whatever was keeping Clyde from remembering who he’d done work for, she was ready to admit it had nothing to do with dishonesty.
That made him even more wildly appealing, and nothing scared her more. Clyde was right in his assessment of her life and the potential to become attached to something she just couldn’t have.
Scarier still.
“Sure, Clyde. I’ll give www.mediumsaren’tbatshit.com a shot just for you.” She turned to pull out of the arms that were feeling far too insistent, and way more secure than she was comfortable with.
Yet Clyde held fast. “Light.”
“Huh?”
“You’re making light. Stop. Just do it.”
Yeah, she’d do it, and while she was at it, she’d avoid any more sexual healing in the process.
Marvin Gaye, 1982 . . .
Oh, Hell’s bells.
She’d caught the disease known as Clyde.
The only cure was to get him out of here and off to higher ground.
Pronto.
fifteen
Mistake number one—putting something as undeniably romantic on her CD player as Michael Bublé while she packed.
Mistake number two—being anywhere in the same small space as Clyde.
So here they were.
In a clinch, swaying to the strains of “Lost.”
Delaney wasn’t even sure how it’d happened—how his arms, like granite, had encompassed her, or how his chin had come to rest on the top of her head while their feet found a slow, rhythmic pattern.
Her eyes closed without her realizing, her head lying nestled in the crook of his shoulder. Dogs one through six lay splayed out across the bed after they’d thoroughly sniffed her half-packed suitcase.
Clyde’s hands moved across her spine, trashing her resolve to keep her hands off and get to the business at hand—getting Clyde to where he belonged.
And she’d been doing a fantabulous job of it until now. First, she’d called Kellen and alerted him to what was going on, offering to send Marcella to look out for him while she was gone. In light of the fact that Kellen’s name had been brought up in the conversation Clyde had heard before he left Hell, Delaney couldn’t take any chances he’d be caught off guard. But Kellen had refused Marcella’s help—which didn’t surprise her. He’d even offered to come along and help them, and she’d refused. She needed someone to check on Mrs. Ramirez for her.
Second, she’d made reservations to go to North Dakota and Clyde’s house. He’d assured her that he had money for plane tickets in this account no one had come across since his death to pay for them. So she’d used her credit card to secure two seats to North Dakota.
The only way to end this was to go back to the beginning.
And to the scene of Clyde’s death.
There had to be a clue, a body, a cemetery that had a tombstone with his name on it. Something.
They were on a fast train to nowhere if they kept looking for clues on the Internet. Time was running out for Clyde. If he didn’t decimate her all right and proper like he was assigned to do, Hell and all its minions would come looking for him—for her. She had to find out what was keeping him in Hell and cross him over.
So you’d think that’d light a fire under their respective asses.
However, Bublé’s “Lost” turned into “Home” and “Home” turned into something she couldn’t recognize for the plunking of her heart and the peaceful utopia of being held by Clyde while they shuffled their feet.
“I was never a Bublé fan in life,” Clyde mumbled.
She sighed. “Yet another stark difference between the two of us. I’m not only a Bublé fan, but a Feinstein fan, and I’d probably hurt little old ladies to sit front row at an Andrea Bocelli concert. Not to mention the damage I might be inclined to do if someone were to rival me for five minutes alone with David Cassidy. It would so be on.”
His chuckle vibrated against her ear. “I’d have figured you for a Shaun fan, not David.”
She tilted her head back to gaze up at him, wrinkling her nose. “Again, might I point out, different, we’re very different. No way was Shaun cuter than David. I lived—lived—for Partridge Family reruns.”