A Ghost in Shining Armor
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Synopsis
In this spellbinding romantic comedy, a woman with a supernatural talent is haunted by one persistent spirit—and a seductive, impossible love . . .
Once haunted . . .
Gemma Daniels has never been quite the "down to earth" woman her adoptive parents raised her to be. She even has a unique gift: she can see ghosts—and she likes helping them settle their unfinished business. But the hotter-than-hot stranger she impulsively kisses on a bet is not only a phantom, he's determined to help her. And the only way Gemma can explain his presence is to pretend they're a real-life couple . . .
Twice shy . . .
Levi Walker lived—and died—to save his sister. Now he's got a second chance at life if he assists Gemma in reuniting with her own long-lost sibling . . . and then never sees Gemma again.
Third time's the unforgettable charm . . .
Gemma is thrilled to be getting to know her sister, but it causes a family rift she may not be able to heal. On top of that, she's falling for a ghost with a dilemma. For Levi must decide what loyalty—and living—is truly all about. To fix their mistakes, Gemma and Levi must risk being real with themselves—and each other—if they're ever to claim true love . . .
Release date: September 27, 2022
Publisher: Zebra Books
Print pages: 304
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A Ghost in Shining Armor
Therese Beharrie
Twelve years later
“What about him?” Gemma pointed to the man standing at the bar. He looked lost, which was exactly why she had chosen him.
No. That was a lie. She had chosen him because he was tall. Really tall. The kind of tall where people—not her, per se, but people—looked up and thought about climbing things. And by things, she meant him.
Luckily, those people were not her. She preferred climbing more traditional things. Trees. Ladders.
That man.
“Who?” Lacey Maritz, Gemma’s closest friend since university, asked.
Lacey’s bride-to-be sash had fallen off her shoulder and was now a hula hoop at her waist. She was swirling the champagne in her glass; a controlled movement, despite how much she had already drunk. Not that that mattered. Lacey was never sloppy, even drunk. Gemma’s eyes rested on the liquid as it circled the glass, not a single drop spilling over the top.
“Never mind.”
“Gemma,” Lacey said, eyes narrowing. “Tell me who you were talking about.”
“That guy over there.” Gemma pointed to a completely different man.
“The one with the nipple ring?”
“How do you know he has a—” Gemma broke off when she saw the man she’d pointed to had taken off his shirt to reveal . . . yes, that was a nipple ring. Gemma studied it, but no length of time made it seem like something she wanted to know more about. “I’m sure he’s a perfectly lovely man—”
“Gemma, we don’t want you to marry him,” Izzy, Lacey’s soon to be sister-in-law, said. “We just want you to kiss a stranger. Come on.” Her voice turned sharper. “It’s a bachelorette game, not a life decision you have to ponder.”
There was an awkward beat of silence, the kind that had settled over their group a couple of times that night. Izzy wasn’t the most pleasant person, and she and Lacey bumped heads often. At least they did when they weren’t playing nice for the sake of the wedding.
Lacey had told her fiancé, Chet, that she’d make him choose between her and his sister if Izzy didn’t behave. She didn’t mean it, Gemma thought, but the threat was good enough. So they had both been on their best behavior. For the most part. Izzy tended to take out her frustrations on the group; Lacey responded by ignoring it completely.
Until now, it seemed.
“Izzy—”
“At the bar!” Gemma cut in. There wouldn’t be an incident because of her. “Tall. With the beard. The one whose skin looks like gold and brown had a baby.”
“Who?” their friend, Pearl, asked.
“At the bar,” Gemma said again. Why was it so hard for them to see him? He stood out like a . . . like a tall tree. “Wearing the green shirt with the buttons down the front? The blue jeans?” When they still didn’t seem to get it, Gemma continued. “Standing next to the man in the leather pants?”
“Oh!” Lacey said.
“Oh is right,” Izzy agreed.
They all went quiet in mutual admiration.
“How did you manage to find the hottest guy here?” Pearl complained. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you date someone mediocre.”
“It’s the energy you put out in the world, Pearly,” Gemma said with a grin.
“Oh, you mean your ‘my face is an artist’s dream’ energy?” Onu, Pearl’s girlfriend, teased. “Because some of us don’t have that kind of energy to harness.”
“And some of us do,” Pearl replied, stealing a kiss from Onu.
“Break it up, you two,” Lacey said, waving a finger at them. “Gemma has a task to focus on, and she can’t do that if you’re Frenching.”
“I’m pretty sure I can do it fine with them Frenching,” Gemma offered. She smiled when Lacey quirked a brow. “Do I have your approval, madam?”
“Indeed you do.”
Gemma reapplied her lipstick, made sure her hair was still doing what she’d told it to do, adjusted her boobs, and ignored her friends’ teasing. A feat, truly. With one last look in her mirror, she slid out the booth and made her way to Mr. Tall and Beautiful, rubbing her thumb over the back of her ring for luck.
The bar was full. Unsurprising for a Saturday night at the end of the month. There was an unspoken agreement among the people of Cape Town that when they had energy and money to spare, they partied. Gemma usually preferred to do so at one of the rooftop bars in Cape Town. She loved air and space and the feeling that she wasn’t about to risk her life simply by breathing in the same oxygen as the people around her. And this . . . wasn’t it.
No, this was one of the dodgy Cape Town clubs where air, space, and avoiding disease—of many kinds—were not the priority.
They’d descended a long flight of stairs to get inside, been ogled by the bouncers, then ogled by everyone else, since the entrance led directly onto the dance floor. There were no windows, the floor and the walls were different shades of the kind of brown that didn’t bring to mind anything good, and it smelled like sweat and alcohol. When they walked past the bathrooms, the vague scent of throw-up threw its hat in the ring of smells.
Gemma shuddered.
Fortunately, the booth they’d reserved was relatively clean, but that didn’t stop Gemma from giving Pearl the stink eye.
“What?” she’d asked.
“This is what you chose?” Gemma demanded.
Pearl shrugged. “Lacey wanted dirty.”
“I don’t think she meant that literally.”
“No, I did,” Lacey interrupted, a faintly alarming expression on her face. “It’s perfect.”
“This wedding is damaging your brain,” Gemma informed her.
She’d gotten a deranged smile in return.
Shaking it off—while also shaking off the feeling that she was walking with a blanket of fleas over her dress—she dodged bodies, swearing at them under her breath since doing it out loud wasn’t polite, until she reached the man at the bar.
“Hi,” she said when she got to his side.
He didn’t respond, his eyes scanning the room in front of him. Was he looking for someone? A partner? Spouse? Friend with benefits? She had no interest in interfering with that.
But surely, he could handle the situation better than ignoring her.
“Hey,” she said louder.
Nothing.
Maybe she was too short. “Hey,” she shouted, adding a little jump. It made her feel stupid, but it worked: He looked down at her.
Suddenly, she felt a strong urge to make climbing her new hobby.
Up close, he was even more attractive than she’d thought. The kind of attractive that made her wonder if she’d ever really seen attractive before. All of it framed by such angry hair.
It wouldn’t make sense if she didn’t see it herself. She wouldn’t have thought it attractive if she didn’t see it, him, herself.
But there it was—his angry, beautiful hair.
Thick, full black eyebrows that curved so slightly, they looked like squares. A thick, full black beard that highlighted the sharp curve of—surprise, surprise—angry-looking cheekbones. And thick, full black hair that wasn’t wavy, but wasn’t straight either, on top of his head.
Gloriously aggressive, all of it.
Her stomach did a swoop, and she told herself it was alarm. Alarm, because who described a man as gloriously aggressive shortly after thinking of him as attractive? Those two things were not aligned. Not for her; no sirree. She was not drawn to beautiful men with angry hair and intense brown eyes. She did not care for full lips that looked to be in a permanent pout, contradicting nearly everything else about his face. Not to mention that earring.
An earring!
Gemma, focus.
Right. Yes. She needed to focus on her task.
“Are you looking for your partner?” she half-shouted, because it was still loud, even though he was now looking at her with those piercing eyes.
Those unnervingly serious eyes.
She got so distracted by them she almost missed the shake of his head.
“So you’re single?”
He angled his head. Nodded.
“Do you speak? Or do you only do the head thing? No,” she said, hearing it and immediately banishing the dirty thoughts it brought to mind, “you know what? It doesn’t matter.”
She paused. Considered. Glanced at her table and saw her friends being obnoxiously supportive.
“I’m going to level with you, okay? It’s my best friend’s bachelorette party. One of the games is ‘kiss a stranger.’”
“That’s a game?”
“Oh, so you do talk.”
He gave her a look. She realized she’d said it out loud.
Okay, Filter, remember we had this talk? You need to do your job. Otherwise, I’ll give your position to Conscience. You know he’s been wanting it for years.
“Anyway,” she said brightly, “they picked you.” They. “If I don’t do this, I’ll be the only one to lose the game. So I guess I’m asking—can I kiss you?”
There was a long silence.
A long, long silence.
She prepared to walk away.
But then . . .
He nodded.
Levi Walker had always been competitive. Once upon a time, he’d worked through it by playing sports. That changed when his parents got divorced. He’d channeled all his competitive energy into helping raise his sister after that, but perhaps that wasn’t the best idea. Not if the mere mention of a game had him agreeing to kiss the last woman he should be kissing.
It was most certainly that making him agree, and not the large brown eyes staring up at him from the most striking face. It was a unique face: dark lashes and brows, high cheekbones, a wide mouth that was painted a fierce red. Her hair was long, making her seem shorter than she probably was, though that was true of most people for him. He tried not to notice the red outfit she wore, the skirt of which ended in the middle of truly impressive thighs. Tried not to lower his gaze to a rather spectacular chest, either.
She hadn’t looked like this in the video They had shown him.
There, she had looked innocent. All smiles and politeness, bouncing around the world as if she truly believed in its goodness.
Or maybe that was what They wanted him to see.
Not this version of her. This . . . this seductive woman standing in front of him with her body and her dress, asking him to kiss her. He was supposed to help her get her life together, but here he was, kissing her.
Somehow, he was kissing her.
He wanted to say it was terrible. He wanted it to be terrible. That way, he wouldn’t think about it as he continued his mission. That way, he could tell himself it was a mistake and pretend like it didn’t happen.
Except it wasn’t terrible. It sparked. As if he were being kissed by some impossible mix of light and happiness. It made him feel like he was suspended in the air; a cosmic entity that wasn’t part of the earth, but still belonged to its orbit.
He could—and probably would, at some point—put it down to a technicality. Technically, she made him feel like he wasn’t part of the earth, because technically, he was dead.
Technically, it was all bullshit.
Technically, she was the most enticing person he’d ever kissed.
Her lips moved gently, innocently, against his. At first. If he didn’t know better, he would have said she knew how he’d perceived her, why he’d agreed to help her, and was mocking him for it. Because when her tongue slipped into his mouth—when fire took the place of his blood, and for a second, he thought he’d failed at his mission and ended up in hell—innocence flew out of the window.
He tossed his restraint out with it, too, slipping an arm around her waist and pulling her flush against him. Since he’d only been a ghost for an hour, he wasn’t sure what his body was capable of. Turns out, it was quite a lot.
She moaned into his mouth, the vibration traveling through him, turning into goose bumps on his skin. Her hands slid up his arms, rested on his shoulders. Her fingers dug into the muscle there, and he thought it might be involuntary. A reaction to whatever was happening between them.
She shifted, her breasts pressing against his chest. He imagined them bare against him, and his body once again proved that it was indeed alive and well, even if his soul—or whatever—was dead.
“Hmm,” she said as she pulled back, her lipstick smudged, her lips glistening with a faint sheen of moisture, parted slightly in surprise.
He might have read her reaction wrong, but she said, “Well, that was surprising,” and confirmed that he hadn’t.
He loosened his grip, only then realizing he’d been holding onto her too tightly, and nodded. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t,” he said, his voice a little gruff in its command.
“Don’t what?” she asked, frowning.
He frowned right back. In truth, he didn’t see the point of her question. His don’t had been clear.
Don’t apologize for kissing me. You asked, and I said yes.
Don’t apologize for kissing me. It was incredible.
His frown deepened. Perhaps the second one wasn’t as clear as the first.
But it would remain unclear. He would never admit it out loud. Certainly not to the woman he was meant to be guiding through a particularly messy situation in her life. Certainly not when he was sure he had simply added to the mess by agreeing to kiss her.
Why had he agreed again? Right, because of the game. Because he wanted her to win.
If he wasn’t so annoyed, he might have ignored the mocking laughter some self-sabotaging part of himself had echoing in his head.
“You’re not going to answer that, are you?”
He blinked down at her, saw that she was staring at him thoughtfully. No, she was studying him. Studying with those bright brown eyes.
Had he noticed the intelligence in them earlier? Or not intelligence; wisdom. The kind that made being studied by her awfully uncomfortable.
He shifted.
“No,” she spoke again. It took him a second to realize she was answering her own question. “You won’t answer me because you’re trying to figure out why the hell you let me kiss you. Don’t take it personally.” She grinned. “I’m the kind of person who whittles their way through defenses until one day, you find yourself asking me to be the godmother of your firstborn. Not to mention the fact that I’m really cute.”
She fluttered her lashes at him, laughed, as if she couldn’t believe she’d done it.
“Anyway, it was a great kiss, and if you ever want to do it again . . .” She trailed off with another laugh. “What am I saying? As soon as I leave, you’re going to pretend this never happened.”
With a pat on his chest, she thanked him and disappeared into the crowd.
He stared after her.
“That might not have been the best way to approach this task,” a voice said from beside him.
Levi turned. It came from a lanky guy hunched over his beer at the bar. He was wearing a loose T-shirt with leather pants. Levi stared at those before resting his eyes on the man.
“Who are you?”
“No pleasantries?” The man looked at him. There was something different about his eyes. A light, or perhaps a darkness, that Levi hadn’t seen before. “No, ‘you offered me an opportunity to return to my life, and I should take your advice’?”
“Oh, you’re one of Them.”
“No need to sound so dismissive.”
Levi grunted.
The man smiled.
There was a long silence. Levi usually didn’t mind those. He wasn’t one of those people who felt the need to fill silence whenever they encountered it. Hell, some might even say he preferred it. Yes, he did prefer it.
So why was he suddenly feeling the intense desire to say something?
His mouth was opening before he could stop it, and he hoped he’d say something that wasn’t stupid.
“It wasn’t my fault.”
Nope. Stupid all the way.
“We probably shouldn’t talk about it here.”
The man took Levi’s hand, leading him to a dark corner of the club. Once they got there, Levi felt as though he’d been swept into a hurricane. He braced, but the sensation was already over.
Except for the nausea. The dizziness. That stayed.
“What did you do to me?” Levi asked, looking around to find a seat.
And found that he was now in a hotel room.
It was swanky, with its plush blue carpets on sleek wooden floors and views of the ocean. Much larger than he was used to, too. It didn’t only have a bedroom and bathroom, but a dining area, a kitchen, a lounge.
“We poofed,” the man said, waving a hand and distracting Levi from his perusal. “It’s the way ghosts move around when we have to. Well, some ghosts.” He paused. “Sometimes, anyway.”
There was a lot in that, but Levi was stuck on one thing. “Poofed?”
But the man continued, as if he hadn’t heard the question. “Being dead is complicated, Levi. As you’ve already discovered.” He leaned back, holding out his hand. “I’m Jude, by the way. Your Guardian Ghost.”
Levi took the hand while his brain tried to figure out what a Guardian Ghost was. “I thought I was a Guardian Ghost?”
“I suppose you are. To Gemma. But we don’t call you that.”
“What do you call us?”
Jude smiled. “Shall we talk about what happened tonight?”
Whatever They called people like him—ghosts—wasn’t flattering.
He might have cared more if he weren’t still processing that he was dead, that the key to his reincarnation was a woman he had kissed, and that the kiss had made his body believe it had already been reincarnated.
“You said it wasn’t your fault,” Jude prompted when Levi didn’t speak. “I suppose I misheard when you gave your consent.”
“She asked me,” he replied, as if it were an adequate defense.
“When people ask you things, Levi, do you always acquiesce?”
When someone like her asks for a kiss, yeah.
He blinked. That was not how he felt. Certainly not.
“It will complicate things if you have feelings for her.”
“I don’t have feelings for her,” Levi replied. “It was one kiss. It didn’t mean anything.”
Jude studied him. It felt a lot like before his parents’ divorce, when he was still a carefree kid who did stupid things because he could. When he got caught doing them, his mom would look at him like this.
Maybe not exactly like this. Jude made him feel as if . . . as if he were transparent. And because he was a ghost, that might have actually been happening.
“If you say so,” Jude eventually said, tone all mild and innocent even though Levi knew—he knew—Jude thought he was full of it. “Regardless, you’ve made an introduction now, so she should be willing to let you stay with her from now on.”
“What?”
“Where do you think you’re going to live?”
“Here?” Levi asked.
“Unfortunately, this room is only available for a week.”
“You only booked it for a week? I’m supposed to be here an entire season.” He paused. “Unless time here works differently than in my universe?”
“As I explained previously,” Jude said patiently, “everything here would be the same as in your universe. Alternate realities only differ when it comes to people, although often that does lead to some significant changes in the structure of the world.” He paused. “It’s a bit complicated to explain, but not important. This reality is exactly the same as yours, except the people you share your world with don’t exist. There are also insignificant details that differ, such as who won what during award season.” He scrunched his nose. “We get those things wrong sometimes, so we like to course correct in different realities.”
Levi exhaled. He might have got in too deep by agreeing to this.
“Besides, I didn’t book this room. I just happen to know the next guests will only arrive in a week.”
“So, what?” Levi asked in a measured voice. His best option seemed to be keeping calm. “I stay here and hope no one comes to investigate?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“What if I don’t find another place to go?”
“You will. She’ll help.”
“‘She’ doesn’t even know who I am. ‘She’ doesn’t even know what I am, and you expect her to house me for three months?”
“It will be okay, Levi. Trust me.”
Jude didn’t wait to see if Levi had any reply before he disappeared.
Gemma stared at the book on her kitchen table. The box it had come in had arrived right before she went to work that morning, so she’d set the package down on the floor and hustled out of the house. She’d made it exactly on time. A thing that happened regularly and never failed to give her a sense of satisfaction. Which was probably why she never woke up earlier than she absolutely had to, so she wouldn’t have to rush.
But who cared when there was the box and what the box held: the book that was currently on her kitchen table. One of many books, in fact, each of which was a possible key to a part of her life she hadn’t known about for twenty-eight years.
The key to her sister.
She shuddered, as if the term were a curse. But it was merely a word. Or a relation, technically. A sibling. The sibling she had nagged and nagged her parents for from the time she could understand that she wanted friends and that siblings often meant built-in friends.
Back then, her parents had given her all sorts of reasons why that wouldn’t be happening. It had become a game, and her parents had come up with playful answers.
If you have a sibling, we would have to share your birthday cake between four and not three people, and we’re not willing to do that. After which they’d give her another slice of birthday cake.
A sibling would mean less time tickling you. After which they would keep tickling her.
We simply cannot afford to send another child to obedience school. After which they would wink and give her a command in some made-up language that almost always sounded like German.
She struggled to see it as innocent now, when the private investigator she’d hired had told her she had a sister. He’d given her a nice little package of information about the home she’d been adopted from, about the family who hadn’t wanted her, and about the sister who had never been adopted.
Why? Why didn’t you adopt her?
“A really good question,” Gemma said out loud. “If only you had the courage to ask them about that.”
Unwillingly, her eyes moved to her phone. There were dozens of unread messages from her parents on that phone. Dozens of missed calls.
She’d told them she was busy with the final arrangements for Lacey’s wedding, and she hoped that excuse would buy her at least another three weeks before she had to face them. Unlikely, considering their messages and calls had come after she’d told them that. In fact, she was fully expecting them to pitch up at her house any day now. So she was treating every knock on the door with suspicion, something she had never done before in her life.
She had never stared at a book before, either. Hadn’t walked back and forth between the kitchen table and her counter so she could look at an author’s picture. Or read their bio.
Her phone rang. The screen showed Lacey’s name. It was probably wedding-related—as every Lacey call had been for the last few weeks—and in truth, she was happy for the distraction, so she answered.
“Co. . .
“What about him?” Gemma pointed to the man standing at the bar. He looked lost, which was exactly why she had chosen him.
No. That was a lie. She had chosen him because he was tall. Really tall. The kind of tall where people—not her, per se, but people—looked up and thought about climbing things. And by things, she meant him.
Luckily, those people were not her. She preferred climbing more traditional things. Trees. Ladders.
That man.
“Who?” Lacey Maritz, Gemma’s closest friend since university, asked.
Lacey’s bride-to-be sash had fallen off her shoulder and was now a hula hoop at her waist. She was swirling the champagne in her glass; a controlled movement, despite how much she had already drunk. Not that that mattered. Lacey was never sloppy, even drunk. Gemma’s eyes rested on the liquid as it circled the glass, not a single drop spilling over the top.
“Never mind.”
“Gemma,” Lacey said, eyes narrowing. “Tell me who you were talking about.”
“That guy over there.” Gemma pointed to a completely different man.
“The one with the nipple ring?”
“How do you know he has a—” Gemma broke off when she saw the man she’d pointed to had taken off his shirt to reveal . . . yes, that was a nipple ring. Gemma studied it, but no length of time made it seem like something she wanted to know more about. “I’m sure he’s a perfectly lovely man—”
“Gemma, we don’t want you to marry him,” Izzy, Lacey’s soon to be sister-in-law, said. “We just want you to kiss a stranger. Come on.” Her voice turned sharper. “It’s a bachelorette game, not a life decision you have to ponder.”
There was an awkward beat of silence, the kind that had settled over their group a couple of times that night. Izzy wasn’t the most pleasant person, and she and Lacey bumped heads often. At least they did when they weren’t playing nice for the sake of the wedding.
Lacey had told her fiancé, Chet, that she’d make him choose between her and his sister if Izzy didn’t behave. She didn’t mean it, Gemma thought, but the threat was good enough. So they had both been on their best behavior. For the most part. Izzy tended to take out her frustrations on the group; Lacey responded by ignoring it completely.
Until now, it seemed.
“Izzy—”
“At the bar!” Gemma cut in. There wouldn’t be an incident because of her. “Tall. With the beard. The one whose skin looks like gold and brown had a baby.”
“Who?” their friend, Pearl, asked.
“At the bar,” Gemma said again. Why was it so hard for them to see him? He stood out like a . . . like a tall tree. “Wearing the green shirt with the buttons down the front? The blue jeans?” When they still didn’t seem to get it, Gemma continued. “Standing next to the man in the leather pants?”
“Oh!” Lacey said.
“Oh is right,” Izzy agreed.
They all went quiet in mutual admiration.
“How did you manage to find the hottest guy here?” Pearl complained. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you date someone mediocre.”
“It’s the energy you put out in the world, Pearly,” Gemma said with a grin.
“Oh, you mean your ‘my face is an artist’s dream’ energy?” Onu, Pearl’s girlfriend, teased. “Because some of us don’t have that kind of energy to harness.”
“And some of us do,” Pearl replied, stealing a kiss from Onu.
“Break it up, you two,” Lacey said, waving a finger at them. “Gemma has a task to focus on, and she can’t do that if you’re Frenching.”
“I’m pretty sure I can do it fine with them Frenching,” Gemma offered. She smiled when Lacey quirked a brow. “Do I have your approval, madam?”
“Indeed you do.”
Gemma reapplied her lipstick, made sure her hair was still doing what she’d told it to do, adjusted her boobs, and ignored her friends’ teasing. A feat, truly. With one last look in her mirror, she slid out the booth and made her way to Mr. Tall and Beautiful, rubbing her thumb over the back of her ring for luck.
The bar was full. Unsurprising for a Saturday night at the end of the month. There was an unspoken agreement among the people of Cape Town that when they had energy and money to spare, they partied. Gemma usually preferred to do so at one of the rooftop bars in Cape Town. She loved air and space and the feeling that she wasn’t about to risk her life simply by breathing in the same oxygen as the people around her. And this . . . wasn’t it.
No, this was one of the dodgy Cape Town clubs where air, space, and avoiding disease—of many kinds—were not the priority.
They’d descended a long flight of stairs to get inside, been ogled by the bouncers, then ogled by everyone else, since the entrance led directly onto the dance floor. There were no windows, the floor and the walls were different shades of the kind of brown that didn’t bring to mind anything good, and it smelled like sweat and alcohol. When they walked past the bathrooms, the vague scent of throw-up threw its hat in the ring of smells.
Gemma shuddered.
Fortunately, the booth they’d reserved was relatively clean, but that didn’t stop Gemma from giving Pearl the stink eye.
“What?” she’d asked.
“This is what you chose?” Gemma demanded.
Pearl shrugged. “Lacey wanted dirty.”
“I don’t think she meant that literally.”
“No, I did,” Lacey interrupted, a faintly alarming expression on her face. “It’s perfect.”
“This wedding is damaging your brain,” Gemma informed her.
She’d gotten a deranged smile in return.
Shaking it off—while also shaking off the feeling that she was walking with a blanket of fleas over her dress—she dodged bodies, swearing at them under her breath since doing it out loud wasn’t polite, until she reached the man at the bar.
“Hi,” she said when she got to his side.
He didn’t respond, his eyes scanning the room in front of him. Was he looking for someone? A partner? Spouse? Friend with benefits? She had no interest in interfering with that.
But surely, he could handle the situation better than ignoring her.
“Hey,” she said louder.
Nothing.
Maybe she was too short. “Hey,” she shouted, adding a little jump. It made her feel stupid, but it worked: He looked down at her.
Suddenly, she felt a strong urge to make climbing her new hobby.
Up close, he was even more attractive than she’d thought. The kind of attractive that made her wonder if she’d ever really seen attractive before. All of it framed by such angry hair.
It wouldn’t make sense if she didn’t see it herself. She wouldn’t have thought it attractive if she didn’t see it, him, herself.
But there it was—his angry, beautiful hair.
Thick, full black eyebrows that curved so slightly, they looked like squares. A thick, full black beard that highlighted the sharp curve of—surprise, surprise—angry-looking cheekbones. And thick, full black hair that wasn’t wavy, but wasn’t straight either, on top of his head.
Gloriously aggressive, all of it.
Her stomach did a swoop, and she told herself it was alarm. Alarm, because who described a man as gloriously aggressive shortly after thinking of him as attractive? Those two things were not aligned. Not for her; no sirree. She was not drawn to beautiful men with angry hair and intense brown eyes. She did not care for full lips that looked to be in a permanent pout, contradicting nearly everything else about his face. Not to mention that earring.
An earring!
Gemma, focus.
Right. Yes. She needed to focus on her task.
“Are you looking for your partner?” she half-shouted, because it was still loud, even though he was now looking at her with those piercing eyes.
Those unnervingly serious eyes.
She got so distracted by them she almost missed the shake of his head.
“So you’re single?”
He angled his head. Nodded.
“Do you speak? Or do you only do the head thing? No,” she said, hearing it and immediately banishing the dirty thoughts it brought to mind, “you know what? It doesn’t matter.”
She paused. Considered. Glanced at her table and saw her friends being obnoxiously supportive.
“I’m going to level with you, okay? It’s my best friend’s bachelorette party. One of the games is ‘kiss a stranger.’”
“That’s a game?”
“Oh, so you do talk.”
He gave her a look. She realized she’d said it out loud.
Okay, Filter, remember we had this talk? You need to do your job. Otherwise, I’ll give your position to Conscience. You know he’s been wanting it for years.
“Anyway,” she said brightly, “they picked you.” They. “If I don’t do this, I’ll be the only one to lose the game. So I guess I’m asking—can I kiss you?”
There was a long silence.
A long, long silence.
She prepared to walk away.
But then . . .
He nodded.
Levi Walker had always been competitive. Once upon a time, he’d worked through it by playing sports. That changed when his parents got divorced. He’d channeled all his competitive energy into helping raise his sister after that, but perhaps that wasn’t the best idea. Not if the mere mention of a game had him agreeing to kiss the last woman he should be kissing.
It was most certainly that making him agree, and not the large brown eyes staring up at him from the most striking face. It was a unique face: dark lashes and brows, high cheekbones, a wide mouth that was painted a fierce red. Her hair was long, making her seem shorter than she probably was, though that was true of most people for him. He tried not to notice the red outfit she wore, the skirt of which ended in the middle of truly impressive thighs. Tried not to lower his gaze to a rather spectacular chest, either.
She hadn’t looked like this in the video They had shown him.
There, she had looked innocent. All smiles and politeness, bouncing around the world as if she truly believed in its goodness.
Or maybe that was what They wanted him to see.
Not this version of her. This . . . this seductive woman standing in front of him with her body and her dress, asking him to kiss her. He was supposed to help her get her life together, but here he was, kissing her.
Somehow, he was kissing her.
He wanted to say it was terrible. He wanted it to be terrible. That way, he wouldn’t think about it as he continued his mission. That way, he could tell himself it was a mistake and pretend like it didn’t happen.
Except it wasn’t terrible. It sparked. As if he were being kissed by some impossible mix of light and happiness. It made him feel like he was suspended in the air; a cosmic entity that wasn’t part of the earth, but still belonged to its orbit.
He could—and probably would, at some point—put it down to a technicality. Technically, she made him feel like he wasn’t part of the earth, because technically, he was dead.
Technically, it was all bullshit.
Technically, she was the most enticing person he’d ever kissed.
Her lips moved gently, innocently, against his. At first. If he didn’t know better, he would have said she knew how he’d perceived her, why he’d agreed to help her, and was mocking him for it. Because when her tongue slipped into his mouth—when fire took the place of his blood, and for a second, he thought he’d failed at his mission and ended up in hell—innocence flew out of the window.
He tossed his restraint out with it, too, slipping an arm around her waist and pulling her flush against him. Since he’d only been a ghost for an hour, he wasn’t sure what his body was capable of. Turns out, it was quite a lot.
She moaned into his mouth, the vibration traveling through him, turning into goose bumps on his skin. Her hands slid up his arms, rested on his shoulders. Her fingers dug into the muscle there, and he thought it might be involuntary. A reaction to whatever was happening between them.
She shifted, her breasts pressing against his chest. He imagined them bare against him, and his body once again proved that it was indeed alive and well, even if his soul—or whatever—was dead.
“Hmm,” she said as she pulled back, her lipstick smudged, her lips glistening with a faint sheen of moisture, parted slightly in surprise.
He might have read her reaction wrong, but she said, “Well, that was surprising,” and confirmed that he hadn’t.
He loosened his grip, only then realizing he’d been holding onto her too tightly, and nodded. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t,” he said, his voice a little gruff in its command.
“Don’t what?” she asked, frowning.
He frowned right back. In truth, he didn’t see the point of her question. His don’t had been clear.
Don’t apologize for kissing me. You asked, and I said yes.
Don’t apologize for kissing me. It was incredible.
His frown deepened. Perhaps the second one wasn’t as clear as the first.
But it would remain unclear. He would never admit it out loud. Certainly not to the woman he was meant to be guiding through a particularly messy situation in her life. Certainly not when he was sure he had simply added to the mess by agreeing to kiss her.
Why had he agreed again? Right, because of the game. Because he wanted her to win.
If he wasn’t so annoyed, he might have ignored the mocking laughter some self-sabotaging part of himself had echoing in his head.
“You’re not going to answer that, are you?”
He blinked down at her, saw that she was staring at him thoughtfully. No, she was studying him. Studying with those bright brown eyes.
Had he noticed the intelligence in them earlier? Or not intelligence; wisdom. The kind that made being studied by her awfully uncomfortable.
He shifted.
“No,” she spoke again. It took him a second to realize she was answering her own question. “You won’t answer me because you’re trying to figure out why the hell you let me kiss you. Don’t take it personally.” She grinned. “I’m the kind of person who whittles their way through defenses until one day, you find yourself asking me to be the godmother of your firstborn. Not to mention the fact that I’m really cute.”
She fluttered her lashes at him, laughed, as if she couldn’t believe she’d done it.
“Anyway, it was a great kiss, and if you ever want to do it again . . .” She trailed off with another laugh. “What am I saying? As soon as I leave, you’re going to pretend this never happened.”
With a pat on his chest, she thanked him and disappeared into the crowd.
He stared after her.
“That might not have been the best way to approach this task,” a voice said from beside him.
Levi turned. It came from a lanky guy hunched over his beer at the bar. He was wearing a loose T-shirt with leather pants. Levi stared at those before resting his eyes on the man.
“Who are you?”
“No pleasantries?” The man looked at him. There was something different about his eyes. A light, or perhaps a darkness, that Levi hadn’t seen before. “No, ‘you offered me an opportunity to return to my life, and I should take your advice’?”
“Oh, you’re one of Them.”
“No need to sound so dismissive.”
Levi grunted.
The man smiled.
There was a long silence. Levi usually didn’t mind those. He wasn’t one of those people who felt the need to fill silence whenever they encountered it. Hell, some might even say he preferred it. Yes, he did prefer it.
So why was he suddenly feeling the intense desire to say something?
His mouth was opening before he could stop it, and he hoped he’d say something that wasn’t stupid.
“It wasn’t my fault.”
Nope. Stupid all the way.
“We probably shouldn’t talk about it here.”
The man took Levi’s hand, leading him to a dark corner of the club. Once they got there, Levi felt as though he’d been swept into a hurricane. He braced, but the sensation was already over.
Except for the nausea. The dizziness. That stayed.
“What did you do to me?” Levi asked, looking around to find a seat.
And found that he was now in a hotel room.
It was swanky, with its plush blue carpets on sleek wooden floors and views of the ocean. Much larger than he was used to, too. It didn’t only have a bedroom and bathroom, but a dining area, a kitchen, a lounge.
“We poofed,” the man said, waving a hand and distracting Levi from his perusal. “It’s the way ghosts move around when we have to. Well, some ghosts.” He paused. “Sometimes, anyway.”
There was a lot in that, but Levi was stuck on one thing. “Poofed?”
But the man continued, as if he hadn’t heard the question. “Being dead is complicated, Levi. As you’ve already discovered.” He leaned back, holding out his hand. “I’m Jude, by the way. Your Guardian Ghost.”
Levi took the hand while his brain tried to figure out what a Guardian Ghost was. “I thought I was a Guardian Ghost?”
“I suppose you are. To Gemma. But we don’t call you that.”
“What do you call us?”
Jude smiled. “Shall we talk about what happened tonight?”
Whatever They called people like him—ghosts—wasn’t flattering.
He might have cared more if he weren’t still processing that he was dead, that the key to his reincarnation was a woman he had kissed, and that the kiss had made his body believe it had already been reincarnated.
“You said it wasn’t your fault,” Jude prompted when Levi didn’t speak. “I suppose I misheard when you gave your consent.”
“She asked me,” he replied, as if it were an adequate defense.
“When people ask you things, Levi, do you always acquiesce?”
When someone like her asks for a kiss, yeah.
He blinked. That was not how he felt. Certainly not.
“It will complicate things if you have feelings for her.”
“I don’t have feelings for her,” Levi replied. “It was one kiss. It didn’t mean anything.”
Jude studied him. It felt a lot like before his parents’ divorce, when he was still a carefree kid who did stupid things because he could. When he got caught doing them, his mom would look at him like this.
Maybe not exactly like this. Jude made him feel as if . . . as if he were transparent. And because he was a ghost, that might have actually been happening.
“If you say so,” Jude eventually said, tone all mild and innocent even though Levi knew—he knew—Jude thought he was full of it. “Regardless, you’ve made an introduction now, so she should be willing to let you stay with her from now on.”
“What?”
“Where do you think you’re going to live?”
“Here?” Levi asked.
“Unfortunately, this room is only available for a week.”
“You only booked it for a week? I’m supposed to be here an entire season.” He paused. “Unless time here works differently than in my universe?”
“As I explained previously,” Jude said patiently, “everything here would be the same as in your universe. Alternate realities only differ when it comes to people, although often that does lead to some significant changes in the structure of the world.” He paused. “It’s a bit complicated to explain, but not important. This reality is exactly the same as yours, except the people you share your world with don’t exist. There are also insignificant details that differ, such as who won what during award season.” He scrunched his nose. “We get those things wrong sometimes, so we like to course correct in different realities.”
Levi exhaled. He might have got in too deep by agreeing to this.
“Besides, I didn’t book this room. I just happen to know the next guests will only arrive in a week.”
“So, what?” Levi asked in a measured voice. His best option seemed to be keeping calm. “I stay here and hope no one comes to investigate?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“What if I don’t find another place to go?”
“You will. She’ll help.”
“‘She’ doesn’t even know who I am. ‘She’ doesn’t even know what I am, and you expect her to house me for three months?”
“It will be okay, Levi. Trust me.”
Jude didn’t wait to see if Levi had any reply before he disappeared.
Gemma stared at the book on her kitchen table. The box it had come in had arrived right before she went to work that morning, so she’d set the package down on the floor and hustled out of the house. She’d made it exactly on time. A thing that happened regularly and never failed to give her a sense of satisfaction. Which was probably why she never woke up earlier than she absolutely had to, so she wouldn’t have to rush.
But who cared when there was the box and what the box held: the book that was currently on her kitchen table. One of many books, in fact, each of which was a possible key to a part of her life she hadn’t known about for twenty-eight years.
The key to her sister.
She shuddered, as if the term were a curse. But it was merely a word. Or a relation, technically. A sibling. The sibling she had nagged and nagged her parents for from the time she could understand that she wanted friends and that siblings often meant built-in friends.
Back then, her parents had given her all sorts of reasons why that wouldn’t be happening. It had become a game, and her parents had come up with playful answers.
If you have a sibling, we would have to share your birthday cake between four and not three people, and we’re not willing to do that. After which they’d give her another slice of birthday cake.
A sibling would mean less time tickling you. After which they would keep tickling her.
We simply cannot afford to send another child to obedience school. After which they would wink and give her a command in some made-up language that almost always sounded like German.
She struggled to see it as innocent now, when the private investigator she’d hired had told her she had a sister. He’d given her a nice little package of information about the home she’d been adopted from, about the family who hadn’t wanted her, and about the sister who had never been adopted.
Why? Why didn’t you adopt her?
“A really good question,” Gemma said out loud. “If only you had the courage to ask them about that.”
Unwillingly, her eyes moved to her phone. There were dozens of unread messages from her parents on that phone. Dozens of missed calls.
She’d told them she was busy with the final arrangements for Lacey’s wedding, and she hoped that excuse would buy her at least another three weeks before she had to face them. Unlikely, considering their messages and calls had come after she’d told them that. In fact, she was fully expecting them to pitch up at her house any day now. So she was treating every knock on the door with suspicion, something she had never done before in her life.
She had never stared at a book before, either. Hadn’t walked back and forth between the kitchen table and her counter so she could look at an author’s picture. Or read their bio.
Her phone rang. The screen showed Lacey’s name. It was probably wedding-related—as every Lacey call had been for the last few weeks—and in truth, she was happy for the distraction, so she answered.
“Co. . .
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A Ghost in Shining Armor
Therese Beharrie
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