The Last Kiss Goodbye Read Free Page A

do believe it.” He crossed the kitchen to stand across the table from her. His big hands curled around a chair back. His steady gaze made her uncomfortable. She concentrated on the mail. “Thing is, I think I’m starting to know you pretty well. I think you’re a one-man woman, Doc.”
    Her eyes snapped up to meet his. At what she saw for her there, she felt a wave of heat.
    God, don’t let it show.
    “You might be right,” she said with a false cordiality of which she was justifiably proud. “And if ever I find that man, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
    His answering look made her foolish, reckless heart pick up its pace. Afraid of what he might read in her eyes, she let them drop to the square brown packing box that had been the next item of mail to come within reach of her hands. Damned tape—the box was swaddled in it. Clear and shiny, it was stubbornly resistant to all her attempts to breach it. Reaching for the small pair of scissors she kept along with items like pushpins and paper clips in a basket on the sideboard behind her, she cast another glance at him. She was just in time to watch him fade into translucence. Eyes widening, hand tightening convulsively around the scissors, she registered with a tingle of shock that she could absolutely see the rest of the kitchen through him. Even as she stared, he wavered, then started to solidify once more.
    She was still struggling to wrap her mind around what she was seeing when he did it again.
    “Might want to close your mouth, Doc. Damned if you don’t look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
    That at least had the virtue of snapping her out of total immobility. Her lips met and firmed. Her eyes collided with his. “Funny.”
    He seemed to look at her more closely. Of course, it was hard to tell when he was once again as diaphanous as smoke. “So what’s up?”
    “You—you’re flickering.” Her mouth had gone dry. Wetting her lips, she tried to swallow.
    He was returning to being almost— almost —solid-looking . Oh, God .
    “Flickering?” He glanced down at himself. Seeming to notice nothing amiss—okay, he looked solid again, so why would he?—he lifted his eyebrows at her.
    “Fading in and out. Like—like Tinkerbelle at the end of Peter Pan. You know, the Disney movie. When Tink was dying, and the children had to clap to bring her back.” The comparison made Charlie feel cold all over. She was so rattled that she was hardly making sense, she knew. Her eyes stayed glued to him: he’d started fading again as she spoke, and was now as insubstantial as a layer of chiffon, and rippling like one, too, if said chiffon had been caught in a breeze. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen an apparition flicker, but it was definitely the first time that the sight had made her heart lurch and her blood drain toward her toes.
    The other times—she’d been relieved. And she’d been relieved because the flickering was a sign that the ghost she was looking at would soon cease to be a problem to the living. And that would be because that flicker meant the apparition was minutes away from fading into nothingness, and she was comfortable in the knowledge that it was leaving this earthly plane and never coming back.
    But now, with him, she felt her composure shattering into a million lacerating shards as she faced what that flickering probably meant: either he was getting to the stage where she wasn’t going to be able to see him anymore, or he was being drawn permanently into the Hereafter. One way or the other, it didn’t matter. If what she’d seen happen in the past was prologue to the present, he was going.
    It wouldn’t be long before she was free of him. For good.
    Which she had known all along was going to happen.
    He was a ghost, and ghosts couldn’t stay.
    So why did that make her feel so utterly devastated?
    “Must’ve missed that one,” he replied drily.
    Her eyes stayed fixed on him with a kind of horrified desperation. The glowing green