Doris Rangel - Marlie's Mystery Man

She paused, and Caid had a feeling he wasn’t going to like what came next.

“They said, um, Caid, that you were…on life support.”

It was Caid’s turn to be silent for a long moment. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, hell. All I know is, I’m not in the hospital, I’m sitting right here on this bed talking to you, and the only thing wrong with me is a humdinger of a headache.”

And then she just had to say it. “But no one can see you or hear you.”

“You can.”

“I can hear you, but I can’t see you. Mr. Matthews…Caid…I’m sorry to have to say this, but I—I think you died. Life support keeps the body going, but it doesn’t necessarily keep the spirit going.”

“Bull hockey. I’d know it if I was dead. I’d have seen the light or something. And why the heck would I stick around town when I could go to Paradise?”

“Maybe Paradise isn’t an option. Or maybe you just don’t know you’re dead. I mean, isn’t that kind of what a ghost is, someone who doesn’t understand that they’re dead so they refuse to go to the other side? That’s why they do exorcisms, isn’t it?”

“Exorcisms! Lady, are you crazy?” Caid sat straight up in bed, then had to grab his ears to keep his head from bouncing off. Hell, if he was a ghost he wouldn’t have this damn headache. And what did she mean, maybe Paradise wasn’t an option?

By now, Marlie was near tears. There was no easy way to tell someone they were dead and this man just kept arguing with her.

“My name is Marlie,” she said, “and I’m not the one who’s crazy here. Everyone can hear and see me just fine, thank you very much. It’s you who can’t seem to get with the program. If you’d just go on to the other side like you’re supposed to, you wouldn’t have this problem.”

“Marlie what?”

“Simms,” she said, and sniffed.

“Marlie Simms, are you crying?”

The voice from the other bed sounded very gentle. She could have liked this man, Marlie thought. When he wasn’t being stubborn.

“I’m s-sorry you’re dead,” she said wetly.

She could almost feel his instant withdrawal.

“I’m not dead. Now turn out the light and let’s get some sleep. I’m tired of arguing. My head feels like a Chinese gong at prayer time and I’m out of aspirin.”

Marlie blinked. “You’ve been taking aspirin?”

“While I had it, but I can’t say it’s done much good.”

“There’s medication stronger than aspirin,” she said tentatively. “I, um, have some in my purse. I’ll give you a couple of tablets, if you like.”

“Appreciate it.”

Throwing back the covers, she left the bed to get her purse, returning to sit on the edge to rummage through the bag in the lamplight. Naturally the ibuprofen was on the bottom so that she had to take out a few things.

“Say. Are you going to eat that candy bar?”

Startled, she looked over at the bed next to hers that appeared empty, yet was so very full of pure unadulterated male. How she knew that last she wasn’t quite certain, except that a picture had begun to form in her mind from the moment she’d picked up his hat.

“You’re…you’re hungry?”

“Haven’t eaten a bite all day. When I tried to order a meal, no one would listen to me.”

“Here, take it,” Marlie said immediately. But with no hand to give it to, she placed the chocolate bar on the far side of the bedside table. It immediately disappeared.

“I also have a couple of packages of crackers, and a granola bar,” she added, placing them, too, on the nightstand.

She heard the rustle of paper wrappings and a crumbly, “Thanks,” as if Caid was talking with his mouth full. In seconds, the crackers and granola bar vanished. Discarded wrappers appeared in the trash basket under the night table.

It was all very disconcerting, but not nearly as disconcerting as seeing the water carafe disappear and water slowly fill one of the glasses left for guests at their bedside. When the carafe reappeared and the glass disappeared, Marlie hurriedly placed two pain relievers within reach. Poof. They, too, were gone.

“Um, Caid,” Marlie said slowly, “I don’t suppose you’d consider haunting another room?”

“Not on your life. I reserved for two nights, I’m staying two nights. It’s thanks to me that you have the room at all.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” Marlie sighed, and switched off the lamp.

“And I’m not dead.”

She let him have the last word, mainly because she was too startled to speak. Just as she plunged the room into darkness, she thought she’d seen the blurry outline of a dark head on the pillow of the other bed.

Turning over, she closed her eyes.

Nah, couldn’t be.

Bright sunlight and a piercing whistle from somewhere outside caused Caid to sit straight up in bed. Lordy, he hadn’t slept this late in years. His head still hurt, but not with the splitting agony of the day before.

He yawned and leisurely scratched his bare chest, then threw back the covers and left the bed. First thing on the agenda today was figuring out how to get breakfast or he’d be down to eating his boots.

But before he headed to the closet for his jeans—his dirty jeans—he paused a moment to gaze at the woman who still slept peacefully in the other bed.

Marlie Simms. A dumpling of a woman, just the right size to fill a man’s arms, he’d bet. Too bad she also had the look of a woman who didn’t take that kind of thing lightly. Because lightly was the only thing Caid was interested in anymore.

The last time he’d taken a woman seriously, she’d taken him to the cleaners in the divorce courts—the main reason the Rolling M was in the financial crisis it was in right now.

Still, he had to admit Marlie had been pretty decent about letting a strange man share her hotel room, even if only because she thought he was a ghost.

She stirred and Caid backed up a step before he remembered that she couldn’t see him. So he lingered, fascinated by the way the woman stretched all over before she opened her eyes. Her two arms went over her head in a long slow reach for the ceiling and she inhaled deeply.

Then—and by now, Caid had stopped breathing completely—her whole body undulated in one long…luxurious…sensuous…writhe.

His throat went dry.

Then her mouth parted in a dainty kitten of a yawn, and she slowly opened her eyes….

And screamed at the top of her lungs, nearly giving him a heart attack.

She was fumbling frantically at the bedside phone only to drop the receiver between the nightstand and the bed before he came to his senses.

“What is it?” he managed to gasp, by now on his knees groping under the bed in an effort to retrieve the receiver for her. “Are you having a seizure? What?”

“You! Who…How…”

Caid, finally finding the phone, handed it to her and sat back on his butt, their faces now at a level.

“Who the heck are you and get the heck out of my room!” she finally managed to get out.

Well, hell. They were back to this.

“Marlie,” Caid said patiently, “I told you last night who I am. Remember?” He was the one with the head wound here.

“Caid?” Her tone sounded disbelieving.

“Yeah. Caid Matthews.”

She stared him right in the eye as he squatted by her bed. Her eyes were a pale silvery gray, he noted, and looked mad as bedamned.

“Caid Matthews,” she screeched, setting his ears to ringing and escalating his headache up a notch, “you’re naked as a jaybird! Get out of my room!” and she threw a pillow at him.

But Caid didn’t move. “You can see me?”

And Marlie finally seemed to grasp the importance of the moment. She blinked in startlement, then slowly, wickedly grinned. “Yes, Caid, I can definitely see you.”

“Thank God.” Leaning forward, Caid bussed her on the cheek, stood and all in the same movement, tossed the pillow in the air, pumped a triumphant fist and caught it when it came down.

Marlie tried to keep her gaze on the flying pillow, or on Caid’s exuberant face. She really did.

But she really couldn’t.

From sheer self-preservation, she reached behind her and threw the other pillow at him, hitting him right in the midsection. Fortunately, it was a large pillow.

“Don’t you have any clothes?” she asked.

“Clothes?”

Comprehension dawned. “Oh. Clothes.”

He clutched the pillow to him strategically, trying to look nonchalant as only a man with red ears can. “Well, don’t just sit there. Close your eyes.”

Marlie obligingly closed her eyes, opening them as soon as she heard the wardrobe door open, the better to admire Caid’s rock-hard little rear as he took his jeans off a hanger. As soon as he stepped into his pants and turned around, she snapped them shut again.

“You don’t fool me, Cutes. You were peeking.”

“Was not.” Well, not actually peeking. Her eyes had been wide open.

“So, like what you saw?”

She tried her best to look righteously indignant. “I didn’t see a thing.”

“Huh.”

Once Caid left for the bathroom, Marlie hopped out of bed to get her pillows, then jumped back in again and leaned against them. She didn’t want to get up just yet.

For one thing, the two of them milling around the room in states of semidress was just a little intimate for her peace of mind. It was far easier to deal with this cowboy’s disembodied spirit than it was his materialized substance. And what a substance!

But Caid was definitely on his way to somewhere and once he left the room, she’d get up herself. In the meantime, she’d savor the mental image of the tightest tush she’d seen in a long time.

When he emerged from the bathroom, Caid’s hair was damp and curled the least bit, and Marlie took a couple of seconds to get a good look at his face, the rest of his anatomy being already etched in her mind.

It was a good face, she thought, angles and planes in all the right places, a nose just a trifle large and definitely arrogant, eyes the color of pine needles.

One eye, however, had a dilly of a shiner, with its bruise taking up half of Caid’s smooth cheek below and reaching into his hairline above. On the same side, his forehead bore a big knot topped with an ugly-looking gash.

He sat down in a nearby chair to pull on his boots. “Damn, I hate dirty socks,” he muttered. “Do you have any idea where my bag is?”

“Ann took it when she gave me the room.”

He sighed. “I’ll get it later. And I need my kit. It’s hell shaving with a pink razor.”

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