The Last Kiss Goodbye Read Free

herself go where she feared their association was headed.
    She wasn’t about to commit the ultimate folly of letting herself fall in love with him. No way, no how.
    Bottom line was, he was dead, she was alive.
    Whatever their relationship was or wasn’t, the hard truth was, there was absolutely no future in it.
    If she let herself forget that, she deserved every bit of heartbreak that would be hurtling her way.
    So get over being so ridiculously glad to see him already .
    Charlie opened her eyes. There she still was, looking at her own reflection in the kitchen window, with not so much as a glimmer to indicate that a gorgeous (dead) guy was standing right behind her.
    “I was actually very comfortable with the idea that nature had finally taken its course with you.” She spoke over her shoulder, admirably cool, as she crossed to the light switch beside the back door and flipped on the kitchen light. A round oak table with four slat-back chairs stood in the eating area in front of the window. Because she had been away, the table was piled high with mail. Beyond it, out the window, she could see the tall, nodding shadows of the sunflowers that grew in a patch along her back fence. Backlit by moonlight, they were striping the grass with shifting lines of black. Beyond that, a thickly wooded mountainside formed an impenetrable wall of darkness as it rose to meet the night sky.
    This old-fashioned, two-story white clapboard farmhouse with its gingerbread trim and wide front porch was the first real home she had ever had, and she loved it. Located on a quiet street at the edge of Big Stone Gap, Virginia, a coal mining town deep in the heart of Appalachia that was still reeling from the recession, it provided her with a much-needed respite from the daily grimness of her work at the prison, which perched like a vulture at the top of the mountain, overlooking the town. Decorating and furnishing it had been a project that she had enjoyed.
    Until right this minute, when Garland’s presence suddenly seemed to fill it to bursting, she had never recognized that, with only her in it, the house had sometimes felt empty. No, strike that: lonely.
    “Bullshit,” he said without heat, and the inescapable fact that he’d hit the nail on the head there made her lips tighten. Ignoring him, she crossed to the table with the intention of checking out her mail. He stopped in the kitchen doorway and, folding his arms over his chest, propped a broad shoulder against the jamb. “Thank you for saving my life, Michael.”
    His mocking falsetto earned him a narrow-eyed glance. But truth was, he had saved her life, and she was grateful.
    “Thank you.” She turned her attention to the mail. Nothing like a fat stack of bills to provide a distraction.
    “Michael,” he prompted. She could feel his eyes on her.
    Ostensibly busy flipping through the pile of envelopes, she said nothing. The last time she had called him Michael—well, she wasn’t going there. She was going to forget that whole mind-blowingly sexy episode.
    Yeah, right . Never gonna happen as long as you live.
    Well, she was going to try.
    “So, you shack up with FBI guy while I was gone?”
    The question annoyed her. Actually, he annoyed her. Greatly.
    In the process of tearing open an envelope, she flicked him a look. And lied. “Yes.”
    “Your nose just grew, Pinocchio.”
    “If you’re not going to believe me, why ask?”
    “Good question.” He shrugged. “So why aren’t you shacking up with FBI guy?”
    “Because, believe it or not, I don’t sleep with everything in pants,” she snapped before she thought. As a slow smile spread across his face, she felt like biting her tongue. Because, of course, she had slept with Garland. Sort of. As in, ghost sex. Again, it was complicated.
    But whether or not it had been, in the strictest sense, real or not, it had definitely been the hottest sex of her life.
    And she was not going there. Not again. Not even in her thoughts.
    “I