“You’re so beautiful,” he said, his eyes searching her face, as if he were trying to memorize her down to the tiniest detail. Hot friction burned at her core, mounting with every slow, steady thrust. She could feel the pleasure coiling tight, the pressure building. She was going to tell him that they needed to slow down, but it was already too late. Her body, her entire being was sucked under into a whirlpool of pleasure. Rob growled and tensed as he came.
And as good as it felt, she was almost sorry that it was over, that it hadn’t lasted longer. Of course, if this was anything like that night in the hotel, they weren’t anywhere near finished.
* * *
Carrie woke the next morning and sat up in bed, disoriented by the unfamiliar room. Then she remembered that she was living in the condo now. In Chicago.
And last night…
She looked over at the empty spot beside her and sighed. The son of a bitch had sneaked out on her again. She looked around for a note, but once again, he hadn’t bothered to leave one.
It figured.
In a huff, she tugged on her robe and trudged sleepily to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. There was a handwritten note stuck to the refrigerator door with a magnet:
Sorry, had to work. I had a great time last night. Left at 7, no skulking involved. Wanna not be friends again tonight after the party?
It was silly, but the fact that he’d listened, and really
heard
her, that he remembered to leave a note this time, and especially one so sweet and funny, made her dislike him a little less. And that scared her. What they were doing now was simple and impartial. It didn’t mean anything, which made it very, very safe. But what if they really started to like each other?
Oh, what was she worried about? The next time she saw him he would say something rude or chauvinistic and she would be back to hating him.
Carrie showered and dressed, and was standing in the kitchen getting ready to call a cab to take her to the nearest mall when she heard a creaking sound, as if someone had opened the inside garage door. Expecting to see Rob, or even Terri, she stepped around the corner, but there was no one there and the door was still shut and locked from last night.
What the—
That was when she looked over at the basement door and realized it was open. But it had been closed and latched when they came in last night. She recalled feeling the hand over hers and her heart skipped a beat. It was possible that Rob had opened it this morning before he left. But why?
The more likely and logical explanation was that the door wasn’t latched all the way and had drifted open.
She grabbed the doorknob and pulled it closed, making sure that it really latched this time. Feeling better, she called the cab and left to go shopping. She found herself some nice casual things, and most of them from the clearance rack.
She forgot all about the basement door until she was in the kitchen fixing herself a cup of hot tea later that evening, and she had the sudden, eerie sensation that someone was watching her.
She knew she was just imagining things, but feeling the tiniest bit apprehensive anyway, she edged her way over and peered around the edge of the wall…sighing with relief when she found the door firmly latched.
Of course it was still closed, and the hand she’d felt had just been her imagination. She felt silly for believing it could be anything else.
The kettle whistled, and she shut off the burner. She poured water into her cup, and was about to take a sip when she heard it. The distinct creak of a door.
No way. She had to be imagining it.
She forced herself to walk over and peek around the wall.
“I’ll be damned,” she said into the silence. The basement door was open again.
* * *
Rob knocked on Carrie’s front door at ten minutes to seven.
She opened the door a crack and peeked out, blinking with surprise. “What are you doing here?”
“Picking you up for the party.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m confused.”
“The party at Nick and Terri’s. You are going, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but I told Terri I would find my own ride.”
“Well, I didn’t talk to Terri.”
“Oh. So why are you here?”
“To save you cab fare. Because it was on my way. To be nice.” He shrugged and said, “Pick one.”
“To get laid.”
“That would work, too.” He stamped his feet to keep the blood from freezing in his veins. “Whatever it takes for you to let me inside before my feet freeze to the porch.”
She hesitated. “We are not friends.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
She finally moved back to let him in. He stepped inside and she shut the door. When he saw what she was wearing, he nearly swallowed his own tongue. In a figure-hugging denim miniskirt, knee-high spike-heeled boots and a clingy pink sweater, she clearly had no qualms about showing off her figure. “Wow. You look nice.”
“You don’t think it’s too much?”
Even if it was, he would pay her to keep wearing it. Each time he thought he’d seen her at her sexiest, she managed to outdo herself.
“If we drive there together, people are going to get the idea that we’re a couple,” she said.
He shrugged. “Does it really matter what anyone thinks?”
“It’s different for you. You’re a man. If you score with a woman at work, you’re a stud. If I do that, I’m a slut.”
“Really. Was there a particular woman at work that you’re interested in?”
She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“We could just tell people the truth, and say that I picked you up because it was on my way. Or, if it makes you feel better, you can go in first, and I can come in a few minutes later.”
“That could work,” she said. “And even if people suspect we’re together, they’ll eventually get the idea that we don’t like each other. At all.”
“Exactly. Get your coat.”
She hesitated. “Before we go, I have to ask you something.”
“Okay.”
“You have to promise not to make fun of me.”
Oh, this should be good. “All right. I promise.”
“When you told me that thing about the lady in the basement, you really were kidding, right?”
“Of course I was kidding. Why? Did you feel the hand again?”
“No, I did not.”
“But something happened, didn’t it?”
“At first I thought it was a fluke…”
“What?”
“The basement door has been sort of…opening by itself.”
He cast her a disbelieving look.
“I’m dead serious. I close it, then check it a little while later, and it’s open like an inch or two.”
“You probably aren’t latching it all the way.”
“No, I most definitely did latch it.”
“If you did, it wouldn’t have opened.”
She propped her hands on her hips, glaring at him. “Are you honestly suggesting that I am incapable of latching a door?”
It was more plausible than the door opening by itself. “Let’s take a look at it,” he said. She followed him through the kitchen, her heels clicking on the tile floor. The basement door was open about an inch.
“See?” she said. “I closed and latched it less than fifteen minutes ago.”
She was letting her imagination get the best of her. He pulled it closed and made sure that it was latched securely. He tried to open it without turning the knob and it wouldn’t budge. There was no way that door would open without someone physically turning the handle. “Okay,” he said, watching the knob. “Let’s see it open.”
“It doesn’t work that way. I sat and watched it for like fifteen minutes and it didn’t move, so I walked away. Five minutes later it was open again.”
“Then let’s go in the other room.”
“I have to finish getting ready.”
He looked her up and down. “You look ready to me.”
That earned him another eye roll. “If you want to drive me, you’ll have to wait.”
It wasn’t that he wanted to drive her. It just seemed rude not to. And if it increased his chances of getting her naked again tonight, why the hell not?
Knowing how long women could take getting ready, he shrugged out of his coat and made himself comfortable on the sofa. After a moment or two, curiosity got the best of him. He pushed himself up from the sofa and quietly sneaked through the kitchen to look around the corner. The basement door was as he’d left it. He tried the knob and it was securely latched.
As he suspected, there were no supernatural forces at work here. She had probably been in a rush and hadn’t latched it, or maybe she really didn’t know how to properly latch a door.
He went and sat back down on the sofa to wait for her, checking the door two more times with the same results. It was still closed tight.
Carrie reemerged several minutes later, pulling on her coat. If she’d done anything different to her appearance, he couldn’t tell. Maybe she was one of those women who just didn’t feel the night was complete unless she made a man wait for fifteen or twenty minutes.
“So, did you check the door?” she asked him.
“Three times. It didn’t budge.”
Looking discouraged, she said, “I
swear
it opened by itself.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what to say. If it had mysteriously opened I would have told you.”
“I
did
close it all the way.”
“Okay.”
“But you don’t believe me.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” Exasperated, she looked over at the clock and said, “We had better go.”
She grabbed her clutch from the coffee table. “I want to go out the garage door so I can grab the opener. If we’re going to ‘not be friends’ after the party tonight, I want you to put your car in the garage.”
“Why?”
She shot him a look.
Clearly she didn’t want anyone to know he was there. Like he would argue over such an inconsequential detail when sex was involved. “Fine. Paint it camouflage for all I care.”
He grabbed his coat and was tugging it on as they walked through the kitchen to the garage door, and she stopped so abruptly that he actually ran into her.
“Rob, that’s really not funny,” she said, looking at the basement door. Someone or something must have been making a point because the door wasn’t open an inch or two this time. It was open all the way.
Eight
“I
t opens by itself?” Terri looked as skeptical as Rob had when Carrie told him about the basement door. They stood in Terri and Nick’s kitchen with several of their friends, including Tony’s sister Elana, and a guy named Mark who was making no secret of the fact that he found Carrie attractive. He was cute in an average way. Average height, average weight, naturally blond hair that was thinning a bit on top. And though he went a little gung ho with the aftershave, he seemed very nice, if not slightly forward in his intentions. But when he stood close to her, the air didn’t crackle with energy, and her heart didn’t beat faster, and when he touched her arm, her skin didn’t shiver with awareness. In other words, he was no Rob.
She had already formed a gentle rejection in case Mark asked her out. Which seemed inevitable at this point.
“I take it that never happened when you lived there,” Carrie said.
Terri shrugged. “If it did I never noticed. Far as I remember, the door was always closed. I hardly ever go down there. I mostly just use it for storage.”
“Storage of what?” Elana asked. “Human remains?”
Terri shot her a withering look. “Old furniture.”
Lisa, who worked in Nick’s department at Caroselli Chocolate, asked, “Haunted furniture?”
“Not that I know of. But some of it is pretty old. Things my aunt had in her attic when she died. Stuff that has been in the family for a couple hundred years. I doubt I’ll ever use any of it, but it seemed wrong to sell it.”
Carrie glanced over to the living room where Tony, Rob and a very attractive Asian woman Carrie hadn’t yet been introduced to stood by the sofa talking. The woman had come to the party late, and whoever she was, Rob seemed utterly enthralled by what she was saying, hanging on her every word.
Abruptly, as if he’d sensed her eyes on him, Rob looked over at Carrie and caught her staring. The corner of his mouth tilted into a wry smile.
Even though they had arrived together, they hadn’t said more than ten words to each other in the two hours they had been there. A few times when he’d walked past, his arm had brushed hers, and once, when they reached into the chips bowl at the same time, their fingers touched. He’d given her his “look” and all she’d been able to think about since then was how they would go back to her place and “not be friends” all night long.
As far as she had seen, Rob had been nursing the same drink since they arrived, confirming what Terri had told her about his not being much of a drinker. Carrie on the other hand was on her fourth glass of wine. Each time she drained her glass, Mark would automatically refill it. She was beginning to think that he was trying to get her drunk. He seemed a bit tipsy himself.
“Anything else weird happen?” Terri asked her.
“There was one other thing. I was in the garage and reached inside to feel around for the light switch, and I felt a hand settle on top of mine. A very cold hand.”
“Eew,” Elana said with a shudder, rubbing her arms. “That just gave me goose bumps.”
“Me, too,” Terri said. “I definitely never experienced anything like that, and if I had, I think I probably would have moved. In fact, if you want to look for a different place, I totally understand.”
“The idea that someone or something is there is a little creepy,” Carrie admitted. “But I don’t get a negative vibe. I don’t feel threatened at all. Or even scared.”
“Have you been down in the basement?” Mark asked.
“I don’t know if I’m that brave,” she said.
He slipped an arm around her shoulder, grinned down at her and said, “I’ll protect you.”
The strong scent of liquor on his breath actually burned her eyes. She waited for him to remove his arm, but he left it there. It didn’t feel
awful
exactly. Just a little…awkward. And not sexually stimulating in the least. Which had her automatically looking over at Rob, who was leaning in somewhat close to the Asian woman. He laughed at something she said, then slipped an arm around her shoulder.