If You Dare Read online

  On her bare breasts…

  “Your break,” he said.

  She snapped her shoulders back.

  “You didn’t answer me.”

  It was a full five seconds before she recalled what they’d been talking about. Her imagination was snagged between the brambles of the fantasy of his mouth, and the idea that she could use that as fodder for her date with her vibrator. Dragging her eyes from his face, she chalked the end of her cue stick with way, way too much concentration. “Yes. All night.”

  “You’re on.” He slid around behind her, his body heat enveloping her, his warm breath fanning her hair and causing her nape to tingle.

  Turned on, maybe.

  “Hundred bucks.”

  She moved away from him, palming her throat to catch her breath. The scratch of his voice, his very presence, threw her majorly off-kilter. She had to regain her focus, get her feet under her again. With a new sense of purpose, she leaned over the racked balls.

  Infusing her own voice with confidence, she said, “Come on, Marcus. We just made thousands of bucks from our bonuses on the London account. I think a bet like this one calls for higher stakes.” She cracked the cue ball into the center of the arranged balls. Lame. Her shot did little more than roll the colorful orbs a few inches from their original resting places.

  Behind her again, he grasped her hips with wide, warm hands—she assumed to move her to the side. But before he did, he squeezed his fingers into her skirt, just enough to dance along the line of “inappropriate”. Only it didn’t feel inappropriate. She felt like backing her ass into his crotch. Pressing her head into his chest. Maybe rubbing against him a little… Right when she might have done just that, he moved to her left, robbing her of his heat and attention, and positioned himself over the cue ball.

  A fine sheen of sweat lingered on her brow and she reached for her drink, unsure if the beer would help or hinder her at this point, and not caring either way.

  “Fine.” He paused over the table and shot her a look laced with dark promises. “A thousand.”

  She cleared her throat and adjusted her skirt as if she could wipe away the twin heated imprints of his hands on her body, or the look in his eyes that made her wonder for a split second if she might not regret sleeping with him. Even if it only lasted one night. Then she remembered her last workplace tragedy and decided that sex with a coworker was so the worst idea. He leaned over the table, and she appreciated the way his jeans outlined his perfect butt, and the way the snug cotton T-shirt molded over one muscular shoulder as he drew back the pool cue. She couldn’t help it. And she figured as a female it was her duty to notice a specimen this delicious. So long as she kept her clothes on when he was around, no harm, no foul.

  Proving his body was for more than just admiring, his shot smacked into the balls and scattered them across the table with a satisfying crack! A solid sank into one corner and another dipped into the side pocket.

  But of course.

  “You have big ones.” A smile tilted his lips on his stubbled face.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Stripes,” he said. “They look bigger than the solids.”

  “Oh.” She shook her head, pretending frustration, but mainly it was to get her brain back online. Note to self: Tequila makes you attracted to unworthy men.

  They’d been discussing something before she’d lost time ogling him…oh, right. The bet. If not money, what? Then she landed on it, digging an idea out of the part of her brain not marinating in Jose Cuervo. “Hawaii.”

  His aim slipped, sending the white ball into the corner pocket. He straightened, his smile vanishing as if dry-erased from his face. “I won that trip fair and square.”

  “That’s debatable.”

  Joanie and Clive had intended the trip as a second honeymoon, until Clive learned he’d be at a work-related conference during the first weekend in December. The Camerons put their trip on the line as a reward to the designer who could win the most accounts in two months. Lily and Marcus were neck and neck the entire contest…until Marcus had won by one account.

  “You submitted your drawings to Alan the same day I did,” he said, petulant.

  Alan. His cousin. Like she would have had a prayer of winning the bid to redesign the svelte coffee shop’s interior! True, a win was a win for Cameron Designs, and normally they were all on the same team. But her competitive nature had flamed hot during that contest. Losing to Marcus stung.

  She wanted Hawaii. Hell, she wanted to win.

  On my own. With no one’s help. Yeah, that. Emmett, her ex-boyfriend’s stupid face popped into her mind again. Why was she thinking of him so much lately? Maybe because this was the first time she’d really felt like her spark was back. Marcus had fed that flicker, and now she was alight.

  She crossed her arms and refocused on her goal. How to get a do-over from Marcus? “What’s the matter?” she teased, baiting him. “Too scared to put Hawaii on the line?”

  Her suggestion shouldn’t have worked. It was immature and childish… But his jaw ticked in challenge, and she found herself tamping down the smile dying to produce itself on her face. Simply say the word “scared” to the man and he’d break his neck trying to prove he wasn’t.

  “You’d have to stay the entire night,” he finally said.

  Ha! She had him. “Done.”

  “Alone.”

  “Done.”

  “This Friday. The thirteenth.”

  “D-Done.”

  Chapter Two

  Halfway back to her car, her phone buzzed from the pocket of her jeans. She knew who it was without looking. Sure enough, a text message from Mr. Wonderful read, there yet fraidy cat?

  Ignore him, a mature, self-reliant voice asserted.

  After debating for two seconds, she keyed in the word jerkwad and sent the text.

  She’d never been good at listening to reason. Obviously. She angled her head up to the second story, where filthy windows clouded with dust and decay seemed to transform into yawning faces with soulless eyes. The human brain often put together random shapes into an order it could understand, she knew. There were no faces gaping back at her from the upstairs window, just her overactive imagination seeing things where it shouldn’t.

  She closed her eyes and then reopened them. Nothing but dirty glass and yellowed lace curtains. A shudder snaked up her spine anyway.

  She spun on the heel of one sneaker, went to her trunk again, and dragged out a giant tote filled with bedding, a shiny new Coleman lantern, and a few hundred dollars’ worth of supplies from the local sporting goods store. Then she hauled her booty up the short staircase to the door and kicked it open.

  Marcus would laugh his tight butt off if he saw her lugging all this crap in to stay one night. But “roughing it” wasn’t part of the bet.

  They had finished their beers and game shortly after the dare was made. Marcus had won, further fueling her flair for competition.

  “When you succumb to white hot terror and run screaming into the hills”—he’d tugged his brown bomber jacket over impossibly wide shoulders, and she’d tried really, really hard not to admire the way the chest muscles rippled with the movement—“what do I get?”

  “What, my terror and abject humiliation aren’t enough?”

  “Satisfying, but no.”

  She’d pressed her lips together to keep from smiling and asked, “What did you have in mind?”

  He hadn’t hesitated. “The annual RSD dinner.”

  “That’s it? I go to that every year.”

  “As my date,” he’d clarified.

  She doubted she’d successfully hidden her shock. The man had shown up to the last three Retail Space Design dinners with a different blonde du jour. It wasn’t as if he was hard up for a woman to accompany him. His dates’ duties seemed to include: laughing at his jokes, holding champagne flutes between perfectly manicured fingers, and worshipping his every footstep.

  She pictured herself in that role and
snorted.

  He sent a long, slow gaze up and down her body and she swore she felt it like a sizzling brand. “Do you own any outfits that don’t make you look like you never miss a Wall Street Journal?”

  Self-consciously, she fingered the two buttons holding her Calvin Klein blazer closed. “I like this suit.”

  He took a deliberate step closer, making her face grow warm. “I didn’t say I didn’t like the suit.” His suggestive murmur, and the way he brushed her fingers aside to touch a button on her jacket drew her in. She found herself staring at his mouth, evaluating the shape of his lips, and calculating how far she’d have to rise on her toes to press her lips to his. Not far.

  She came to her senses, albeit a bit late, but managed to jerk away from him. He backed off instantly, his eyes shuttering, his smug grin locking back into place. Did she imagine the moment of mutual lust?

  “When I win,” he said, “You have to wear a cocktail dress.”

  “I do own a cocktail dress, you know.”

  “A short one.”

  “It’s short. I have great legs.” She noticed his eyes slide down her body again and she resisted the urge to squirm.

  “And no panties.”

  “Marcus!” She crossed her arms defiantly, but felt her face go hot at the suggestion. Felt all of her go hot at the suggestion.

  “It’s Hawaii,” he said, spreading his arms wide. “If you expect me to toss it into this bet, you need to up the ante on your side.” She tried to laugh him off, but he stared her down while she waited for her cab. Finally, when the yellow-checkered vehicle pulled up, he prompted her with, “We agree, then?”

  On the way home, she would try and figure out why he would ask her to be his date to the dinner he likely already had a date for. He had to be messing with her. She’d shot down his advances before. Maybe this was him taunting her, trying to put the one thing on the line that would make her balk. If he thought she would let Hawaii go on the prospect of her going sans-underpants, he had another thing coming.

  “No panties,” she shot back, noting the helpful cabbie had stepped out of the car and craned an interested eyebrow. “But you can’t touch me below the shoulders.”

  The slow spread of his smile made her tingle everywhere. “Oh, honey. You have no idea what I’m capable of above the shoulders.”

  It was the thought that had followed her all the way home. And into bed.

  Of course, the next morning she plodded into work with the mother of all hangovers. Not to miss a chance to tip the scales, Marcus made sure to try and psyche her out as often as possible.

  He swung into her office, holding onto the doorframe with one hand and gripping a crowbar in the other. “Hope the cops don’t catch you. B and Es include fines and jail time.” If she’d been a hundred percent, she would have Googled his claim to see if it were true. Instead, she’d held out a hand and accepted the length of iron.

  This morning, she was sipping her second cup of coffee when the email icon at the bottom of her computer screen flickered.

  Lil, thought you might like to know who you’re up against tonight. Happy Friday the 13th! M.

  She opened the attachment, and then wished she hadn’t. A scanned newspaper article, so old the edges of the periodical were torn and faded, boasted the header: WOMAN FALLS TO HER DEATH, POLICE SAY SUICIDE. Lily read through the article about Essie Mae Epson and her leap from the second story window. The article was tame compared to the rich urban legend that surrounded the place. The rumors of Essie’s suicide being a murder at her husband’s hands, the phantom voices on the property, a woman in white, and the general feeling of unease…

  But that’s all they are. Rumors.

  Now, standing outside of Willow Mansion, the world seemed utterly normal.

  The birds chirped, the leaves rustled in the breeze, and cars and semis rumbled down the highway in the distance. Friday the thirteenth or not, she was standing in warm sunlight, breathing air infused with the fragrances of fall, and the big, scary mansion appeared more neglected than eerie.

  Yes, the “Legend of Essie Mae” still looped her brain like a stock car in a race, but she found herself wondering if a woman named Essie had ever actually lived there. She had no proof the article about Essie’s suicide wasn’t Photoshopped. Marcus was a designer, and she wouldn’t put it past him to stack the deck in his favor. He was a practical joker at his core.

  Besides, she had this. She may have balked at age fourteen, but now an adult, she could look at the house as just a structure. A structure that was an eyesore, not the site of a demonic possession. But the thought supposed to make her feel better somewhat stalled her mental rounds of “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

  Keeping her toes lined up with the threshold, she poked just her chin into the house. Boarded-up windows lined the other side of the murky living room, dust motes kicking up in the streams of sunlight eking their way through the gaps of the boards. To the right stood what appeared to be a treacherous staircase. The steps were warped, the railing missing every other spindle. With one final steadying breath, she hoisted her supplies in her arms, steeled her spine, and stepped inside.

  The pungent aroma of waterlogged floorboards hit her first. The light poking through showed no more than the gloomy outline of a leaf-strewn floor and a decaying stone fireplace.

  Okay, so at the moment, she didn’t feel like she had this. What she felt mostly…was creeped out.

  Something skittered up the patterned wallpaper to her right, but she refused to turn her head. Her peripheral vision made out enough of the long, shining body and waving antennae to know who she’d be bunking with tonight. She shuddered.

  Unfortunately, she hadn’t thought to put Raid on her shopping list.

  Disgust sat like a lump in her throat, but she gulped it down with purpose and tossed her supplies onto the center of the living room floor. The massive space would make for a workable ground zero. She could blow up the air mattress and surround herself with the comforts of home. It probably wouldn’t even feel like an allegedly haunted mansion by the time she got set up.

  She kicked a downed spindle, and it rolled and hit the baseboard at the edge of the staircase with an echoing thud. One last thought about the shadow-faces peering down at her from upstairs, and it was decided: downstairs would have to do. No way was she going anywhere near the second story.

  A doorway stood to her left, and she ventured over, poking her head inside. The wide kitchen was big enough for several servants, and well lit thanks to a few large, still-intact windows on that side of the house. But the warped linoleum, bones of dead mice or rats—hard to say at that level of decomposition—and door-less cabinets encrusted with cobwebs kept the room from being mistaken for cozy.

  Funny, she thought as she turned back, the living room is charming by comparison.

  A loud bang made her jump and a pathetic little Meep! exit her lips. The front door hung open, leaves blowing across the entryway. After her heart restarted, she blew out a breath of relief. It was only the wind. Likely a sister gust to the one that had dropped that shutter so near her head earlier.

  Certainly not a ghost trying to spook her out of her room and board for the night.

  A few structural uncertainties weren’t going to send her fleeing. Wouldn’t Marcus love that? If one little bump in the waning daylight sent her running…Nuh-uh. No way. He wasn’t winning this bet before it started.

  If the only prize from this ridiculous bet was her proving she was strong and brave and capable, then it would be worth it. Even better, she could reflect on her personal growth while sipping a rum-infused drink out of a hulled coconut in Oahu. Ah, that made her smile.

  She made one final trip outside to retrieve the rest of her supplies. As she shouldered her purse, she recalled Marcus’s smug expression as she’d pulled that same handbag over her shoulder at the bar on Wednesday. He thought she was girlie and delicate, but she was about to prove herself part warrior. Or something.


  Let’s do this.

  Bravery renewed, she reminded herself she’d suffer nothing worse than dust allergies during her night behind the mansion’s walls.

  The grocery bag in the crook of her arm was filled with the essentials. Wine, check. Bottled water, check. iPad, check. Dinner from her favorite local restaurant, check.

  At the mansion’s front door, she cast one last look at the surrounding woods and long, cracked driveway. She’d parked off to one side, behind a low-hanging weeping willow and overgrown brush. Satisfied her car was hidden from the road, she punched the lock button on her key fob and smiled at the answering cheery beep.

  “Hawaii, here I come.” With that last thought warming her, she headed into the dark house and shut the door behind her.

  Chapter Three

  “I don’t know why I had to come with you.”

  Marcus stopped climbing the weed-infested hill to glare at his recently-turned-wussy best friend. “What are you bitching about? I’m the one with Hawaii on the line.”

  “Yeah, and that trip was technically mine.” Clive pointed the flashlight into Marcus’s face. “Plus, I’m the one in danger of an early grave if Joanie finds out we aren’t really playing darts at the Shot Spot.”

  Marcus shielded his eyes, and Clive swept the beam off his face. “I swear you traded in your balls at the altar a year and a half ago.”

  His buddy only smiled. “That’s a helluva trade, considering how much sex I get.”

  “Married people don’t have sex,” Marcus grumbled, resuming his climb to Willow Mansion. “Everyone knows that.”

  “Yes we do. But unlike you, I don’t have to sneak out in my underwear in the morning.”

  Rather than argue, mainly because Clive had made a compelling and, other than the underwear part, an irritatingly accurate point, Marcus continued his stealthy approach to the mansion. As stealthy as one could be toting a duffel bag full of Halloween costumes.

  Hey. It was Hawaii. He may as well try to salvage it.