Page 29 of Love at First Fright

Because today he arrived.

The lovely one.

The blond, beautiful one, with his golden wire-rimmed glasses and that perfect amount of stubble I wanted to trace with my fingers. Or my tongue. Preferably my tongue.

I’d seen a lot of people pass through Grimthorne. Surveyors. Estate agents. Historians with their notebooks and reverent whispers. The Lancasters themselves, with their designer luggage and their plans for luxury spas.

None of them had made my non-existent heart stutter.

But him.

Charlie.

The name suited him. Soft. Approachable. Nothing like that absolute waste of oxygen he’d arrived with.

When Charlie had climbed those attic stairs, I’d felt it. A pull. A magnetism I hadn’t experienced since… well, since I’d been alive. He’d picked up my guitar—my guitar, the one I somehow knew was mine, though I didn’t remember holding it.

And he played.

Really played.

His fingers moved across the fretboard with a confidence his posture lacked. The melody had ached. Raw. Honest. Music that carved out your chest and left you bleeding.

I’d wanted nothing more than to touch him.

So I had.

Just the ghost of sensation. Barely there. But his breath had caught, and I’d felt that too—the sharp inhale, the confusion, the heat radiating from his skin.

God, his skin.

I wanted to nibble every inch of it.

Then Brad—that meathead, that absolute thundering asshole—had ruined everything. Kicked the door open like some knock-off action hero. Worse, he’d kicked the cat.

Kicked the cat.

I’d possessed the poor creature in a blind rage, ready to claw Brad’s eyes clean out of his skull. But the logistics had stopped me. Brad looked like the type who’d kill a cat without blinking. The type who’d laugh while doing it.

The cat didn’t deserve that.

Plus, Grimthorne had enough ghosts without adding an angry feline to the mix. Lady Grimthorne would probably try to claim it as a pet. She collected grievances like some people collected porcelain.

So I’d settled for the satisfaction of Charlie throwing Brad out instead.

Watching him defend the poor creature—defend me, sort of, even if he didn’t know it—had been better than any revenge I could’ve scratched into Brad’s face.

Still in the cat’s small, warm body, I curled against Charlie’s chest. He carried me down the corridor toward the kitchen, murmuring promises about food. His voice rumbled through my ribcage, a sensation I’d never experienced as a ghost. Solid. Real.

“Let’s get you something to eat, yeah?” Charlie’s hand stroked between the cat’s ears, and I leant into it shamelessly. “Maybe there’s tuna. Do you like tuna? Of course you do. You’re a cat.”

Food. That sounded good.

Maybe he’d even hand-feed me.

The thought sent a thrill through the cat’s spine. If I were in my own body, I’d have been grinning like an idiot.

I’d never possessed an animal before. Never had reason to. But this? This was novel. Fascinating. The world looked different through the cat’s eyes—sharper in some ways, softer in others. Colours muted. Movement tracked with predatory precision.