Cold Touch by Leslie Parrish

it.”
    “Those who are alive usual y do,” he said, managing to sound pious, which
    didn’t suit him. Throwing himself back on the love seat that stood in the corner,
    he added, “I’m so bored!”
    “So go find a Christmas tree and perch on top of it.”
    “Ha-ha. I’m not an angel.”
    “No, you’re a devil,” she said, not believing she’d let him suck her into this
    conversation.
    “There’s no such thing.”
    “How do you know?”
    He suddenly frowned, his brown eyes darkening to near black as he
    became very serious, indeed. “Because nothing in creation could be as bad
    as an evil man.”
    Their stares met, his good humor melting away along with her irritation. Yes,
    they knew a lot about evil men. More than most ever would. Among those men,
    the one who had kil ed him and the ones who had hired him. Someday, I’ll find
    them. I swear it. Someday.
    Instead of making that promise again, she merely whispered, “Touché.”
    His frown stil in place, he nodded once, then crossed his arms and stared
    out the window, letting her get back to work. She hated to leave things on that
    note, far preferring a mischievous ghost to a melancholy one. But his moods
    were always mercurial; he was an eternal twenty-six years old, energetic, hard
    to keep down.
    Funny, when they’d met, he’d been the older one, the experienced one
    who’d taken her, the fresh-out-of-col ege rookie, under his wing. Now she’d
    moved past him, right into her thirties, growing, maturing, aging. She had a
    business and a mortgage and a lot of responsibilities to go with them, while
    he would be forever young. Free.
    Dead .
    Throwing off the thought, she turned back to her computer, needing to finish
    this report she’d been typing. It was for a client who was looking for her
    missing sister-in-law, who had disappeared weeks ago. Bad enough to tel
    the woman she was correct in her suspicions that the sister-in-law had met
    with foul play. Worse to tel her that the woman’s husband—the client’s own
    brother—had been the one who’d made her disappear. Then again, if the
    client hadn’t suspected her brother, she would have gone directly to the police
    with some evidence she’d discovered, rather than to a group of private
    detectives, especial y a group of private detectives as specialized as
    eXtreme Investigations.
    “Specialized? I think you mean ostracized.”
    “Stop it, Morgan,” Julia snapped, knowing he’d already gotten over his brief
    bout with the dead-guy blues. “Get out of my head.” He couldn’t do it often,
    especial y because she was very careful to guard her thoughts, but obviously
    her stress was speaking loud and clear.
    “ Shh , pipe down,” he said, laughter evident in his voice. “Do you want our
    new receptionist to think you’re crazy and quit the first week on the job?”
    “I am crazy,” she muttered.
    “Nah, if you were real y crazy, you’d think you were perfectly sane.”
    Maybe. Or maybe she’d just gotten real y good at convincing herself
    Morgan was here because she so wanted him to be. But, if the issue had
    merely been about not being able to let him go, wouldn’t his “ghost” have been
    around since right after his death?
    It hadn’t been. In fact, he’d been gone for months after he’d been shot down
    in the street. She’d almost begun to think she real y could go on living without
    him, if only so she could catch the men who’d kil ed him. Then she’d come
    face-to-face with a punk aiming a gun at her, and who should show up to save
    her life but her old partner. Her old love, Morgan Raines.
    “If I weren’t real y here, could I do this?” he asked.
    She sucked in a breath, watching as he lifted a vase fil ed with fresh flowers.
    “If you drop that, you’re going to clean it up.” Julia glanced at the closed door,
    wishing she’d locked it, since she was the only one who could see the solid-
    looking man holding the vase. If her new receptionist walked in