Page 6 of If I Stopped Haunting You

“Sorry for interrupting your evening. I really enjoyed the tour, though!”

“You’re not that sorry,” Laszlo muttered.

“No, no I’m not.” Louise shrugged, leaning back in her seat. “My brother is terrible at returning my texts or calls.”

“Only because you text me daily.”

“I’m your older sister,” Louise protested. “I get worried.”

“If I had a younger brother like Laszlo,” Pen said, “I’d be worried too. He disappears without a traceconstantly.”

“See, she gets it, Lasz.”

“Only because she doesn’t have an older sister,” Laszlo said.

“But if Idid—” Pen started.

“Penelope Skinner,” a familiar low alto interrupted with a drawl, “as I live and breathe.”

Pen sucked in a sharp breath, the whiskey blazing down the wrong pipe and igniting in her nose as she glanced past Louise. Clamping one hand over her nose and mouth, Pen pounded a hand against her chest as she gaped up at a woman she hadn’t seen in years. Not since her first retreat, to be exact. Pen looked from Laszlo to Daniela, eyes watering and cheeks heating as she sputtered.

“It’s been a while,” Pen wheezed as Daniela perched on the edge of the bench beside Laszlo. Daniela smiled coyly, dark eyes glittering dangerously as she took a drink of her cider, lips pursed in thought as she stared across the table at Pen.

Laszlo peered between the two women, worry coloring his round eyes. Wiping away the tears, Pen pried her glass from the table and drank down the rest of her whiskey, swallowing her questions. Because she hada lotof questions for her friend Laszlo. Like:Why? Just why? Why didn’t he tell her? Why was he insistent on keeping so much of this retreat and everything surrounding it a secret? Was this week going to be filled with the ghosts of Pen’s past?

Pen ran her finger around the rim of her glass, staring daggers at Laszlo. Pressing his lips into a flat line, he stood, climbed over Daniela, and wrestled Pen’s glass from her fingers. Grunting, he dragged Louise out of the booth before slipping out of their dark little corner and back toward the bar without a word.

Leaving Pen and Daniela alone.

With nothing to toy with, Pen leaned back in her seat. She hadn’t been near Daniela since the Boathouse Incident. Truly, well, not so much an incident as it was Daniela going down on her in a boat covered in cobwebs while the others smoked a blunt on the pier.

Daniela looked good, as always. Too good, if you asked her. Pen could see the hints of Daniela’s Irish and Choctaw ancestry, a mix that was indescribable in its perfection. Her curls fell into place even as she brushed them back, her full lips coated in gloss, cleavage exposed beneath a deep V-neck sweater. When she lifted her glass to her lips and took a sip, Daniela’s warm eyes never left hers.

She’d always been out of Pen’s league, and Pen hadn’t been surprised when Daniela never called her back. It was a one-off, a giddy mistake, a few minutes of connection, nothing more. Even still, Daniela’s smile was full of mirth.

“Wait, Neil—”

Pen’s head snapped toward the voice, dread climbing her throat as a person rounded the corner and stopped beside their booth. Behind her glasses, she wondered if she was mistaken. So,she pulled them off, wiped them down with a cloth from her bag, and checked again. Maybe she was drunk? But, no, she’d seen it correctly.

Stumbling back a step, hands limp at his sides, was none other than Neil Storm himself.

A torrent of emotions swirled through her at the sight of him with those shaggy black curls, that tilt of his lips, and that smooth, light brown skin. Anger, frustration, guilt, hate. But above it all (even the hate) was confusion. Because Laszlo hadassuredher Storm wouldn’t be there.

Yet even now, she remembered, there had been apause.

She sat frozen in place, mouth agape, eyes wide behind her dark-rimmed glasses. She felt betrayed. How could Laszlo tell her Storm wasn’t coming when lo and behold, here he was, gaze turning to the man who’d conned them all? Laszlo looked from Pen to Storm, guilt scraping over his kind features.

“What did you do?” Pen and Storm demanded at the same time. Pen swiveled and glowered at him. As if sensing her stare, Storm’s green eyes shifted to her, and she felt a jolt of warmth as he looked her over. What did he find when he surveyed her? Pen wished, not for the first time, that she could read his thoughts, get into that thick skull of his.

Louise peered around her brother before she leaned forward and grabbed her whiskey. She drank it down, shivering as she slammed the cup on the table. “Well, brother, it looks like you’ve gotten yourself intoanothermess. Did you learn nothing from the time you accidentally joined a vampiric cult?”

“That was a total accident and I still regret it to this day, but how can you even compare the two? They’ll be fine. Neil and Pen are adults.”

“I beg to differ,” Pen said.

Louise patted Laszlo’s shoulder and nodded to the others. “As much as I’d love to see this play out, I would really rather not.”She turned to Laszlo. “Text me sometime. Pen, it was nice to meet you.” Shaking her head, she zipped up her coat and squeezed past Neil toward the exit.

Laszlo set down the whiskey and cider, holding up his hands in surrender. “I can explain.”