He looked down at Emily, and the look on his face was surprisingly tender. “You’re not being a baby, Em. You’re scared, that’s all.”
“I hate being alone,” she whispered, leaning closer as they headed up the old staircase. “I’ve never liked it. Especially at night.”
“That why you invited me to live with you the other night?”
“Mostly. I like your company, too.” She felt a little uncomfortable but since he’d gotten up in the middle of the night to come be her hero, the least she could do was confess how she felt. “I acted really weird on the date. I wanted to apologize. It wasn’t that I didn’t like you. I just…I haven’t dated anyone in a really long time, and my ex kind of did a number on my self esteem. And you were looking at me weird with the ghost stuff, and I think I just started babbling.”
Jericho’s smile widened. He put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a casual hug. A warm, sincere hug. “We all get nervous. I have to admit, I wasn’t sure how to take it when a girl tells me she wants me to move in but in a completely platonic sort of way. And here I was having dirty thoughts about you.”
Emily’s breath caught in her throat. “You were?”
“Fuck yeah. In that demure little cardigan? Was thinking about peeling it off of you and seeing what was underneath.”
Suddenly the arm around her shoulders felt a little too innocent — she craved those filthy thoughts he’d been having. “Well, I—“
A massive thump sounded overhead, silencing them both.
“Well, damn,” Jericho said, glancing up at the ceiling.
“I didn’t lie,” Emily told him, a little breathless at being proven right. She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t. “I have a ghost.”
His sexy mouth curled a little at the edges, and she noticed he was unshaven. Oooh. “You’ve got something up there. Got a flashlight? We’ll go check things out.”
She’d never been quite brave enough to check things out on her own. Braden had probably filled her head with too much nonsense. Still, the thought of confronting whatever it was upstairs freaked her out a little, and she moved even closer to him. “Are you sure?”
“Only one way to see if it’s what I think it is.”
“What do you think it is?”
That mouthwatering smile quirked again. “Don’t know, but really hoping it’s not a ghost.”
They headed up the stairs, turned past Emily’s room, and then further up toward the attic space. Emily’s attic staircase was a cramped and twisting set of narrow stairs behind a door at the end of the hall on the second floor. At the top of the staircase was another ominous door. Just looking at the stairwell gave her the willies.
Jericho turned to her. “Flashlight?”
“Right,” she said quickly, and ran to her second floor storm closet. She kept emergency supplies on both floors just in case she had guests and the power went out. A heavy Maglite was in the closet and she grabbed it, then raced back to Jericho’s side and offered it to him.
“Thanks. You want to stay down here?”
Oh God, did she ever. It thumped again, and she moved a little closer to him warily. “Um. Will you think less of me if I do?”
He chuckled. “Not at all. Just call the police if I’m not back in twenty.”
Emily glared at him. “That’s not funny.” The lights flickered as if to agree with her. Ugh. Emily squeezed closer to him and closed her eyes. “Are you sure you want to go?”
“It’ll be fine.” He pried her away from him and tapped her cheek so she’d open her eyes. When she did, he gave her one of those bad-boy winks. “Don’t worry.”
“Easy for you to say.” He didn’t live here, after all.
But he was already climbing the stairs. “Be right back.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and watched as he disappeared around the bend. She heard the attic door open and sucked in a breath, waiting. Waiting for him to say that yes, he saw a ghost, or no, there was nothing and she was still crazy.
“Shit.”
Emily felt like her throat was closing. “What is it? What do you see?”
“I see shit.” He laughed, and relief flooded through her at the sound. He didn’t seem worried or frightened at all. In fact, he sounded pleased. “Who did you say you had coming over here to check for ghosts?”
She frowned up at the staircase. “A few of the officers. Sometimes Hank, sometimes Old Charley. Mostly Old Charley. Why?”
“Because I think I know what your ghost problem is. Want to come up?”
Buoyed by his ease, she went up the narrow staircase after him. He stood just in the entryway of the attic, the bulb hanging from the ceiling on overhead, and the mag-lite in hand. And he was smiling. He looked over at her and waved her forward. “Come on. You’re going to want to see this.”
“Am I?” she asked skeptically. “Because I’m pretty sure whatever it is, it isn’t good.”
“Well, in the scheme of things, it’s not ideal, but it’s not the worst,” he said, and offered her his hand.
Emily put her fingers in his and let him lead her into the attic. The room was too shadowy for her liking, the ceiling tall and gabled overhead, raw beams of wood creating even more shadows. Tufts of insulation were everywhere, like snowy piles of pink cotton. It covered the floor of the attic and bunched up along the sides in mounds dotted with smaller, darker spots of dirt.
“See,” he said, giving her hand a comforting squeeze. “No ghosts.”
With someone at her side, she had to admit that things seemed a lot more benign. “It…doesn’t look so bad.”
“I’m surprised no one has noticed this before. You ever had a pest guy come out?”
“No, why? Do I have bees?”
With his free hand, he pointed at one of the brown spots of dirt. “You see that? That’s shit.”
“It’s what?” She asked, horrified. She pulled her hand free of his and grabbed the mag-lite from him, then shone it on one of the spots. Sure enough, now that she had a second look at it with a brighter light than the yellow bulb that hung down from the ceiling, it did look like a big nasty turd. “What the hell? What is pooping in my attic?”
“Unless you have a ghost with incontinence issues, my guess is possums.”
“Possums?”