Tell me, she thought to whatever spirits were listening. Tell me what this has to do with Oscar Pruitt.
Her insides got very quiet, the silence opening in her head and spreading out. She felt a pulsing beneath her thighs, coming up through the blanket from under the ground. The cadence was slow and steady, thick as honey but clear as sunshine. It carried a scent like wet leaves and earth, and its warmth seeped into her flesh, making her aware of how big this planet was. Perhaps it was an illusion, but she had the sense of tree roots reaching deep for water, of flowers straining toward their bees. She understood then that every living thing wished to grow in some way—to be taller or stronger or more fruitful. The thrumming of that universal drive coiled unexpectedly in her sex, the sudden unexpected tightening making her so wet so fast she gasped.
"What?" said Alex. "What did you see?"
Zoe blinked her eyes open and hoped her voice wouldn't sound too husky. "Um, there's a lot of earth energy around here."
"What does that mean?"
"That the Sierra Club should be really proud of us."
Alex swore under his breath.
"I can try again in a few minutes. Narrow my focus more on Oscar. That was just kind of unsettling. Maybe this spot is a power vortex."
And maybe reaching out for answers had activated it.
"Earth energy, huh?" Alex peered at her. Knowing she was flushed and unlikely to grow less so with him looking at her, she struggled not to evade his perusal too obviously.
"So," she said, hoping to nudge his thoughts from where she feared they were veering. "You remember Johnny Thurman?"
Alex leaned back on his hands, his legs stretched out in starched khaki trousers, his head turned to consider her. He wore a beautiful, European-styled business shirt. Even with the sleeves rolled up and the collar open, it fit so well it must have been custom-made. Alex had never been a slob, but his new adult polish increased her sense that she was out of her depth with him. Clearly, he was no hand-to-mouth PI. An expensive looking Tag Heuer circled his left wrist with perfect casualness. The bone it rested on looked strong.
You're really losing it, she told herself, if some man's wrist is pushing your buttons.
When she began to think he was just going to stare at her, Alex finally spoke. "You'd be referring to my best friend and running back, Johnny Thurman—until he decided I was the devil incarnate who needed to be frozen out of my team."
"That's the one," Zoe said, relieved that he remembered what she was talking about. "He owns a firing range outside of town."
"Oh, great." Alex snorted. "Now I have to watch my back for a new reason."
"Everybody isn't like Mrs. Fairfax. I think he feels bad for helping run you out of town. He asks about you now and then. What you're up to. If you're okay. I tell him I only know what your mom tells me, but that seems to satisfy him."
Alex sat up straighter. "Johnny Thurman asks you about me?"
"Crazy, I know. Unlike you, I wasn't his favorite person."
"He hated your guts. I almost lost him as a friend when I started dating you."
Embarrassed, Zoe rubbed the side of her face. "That was because of what I did to him my second week of school."
"What did you do?"
"I'm only telling you because these days I don't think he'd mind if you knew."
Alex laughed softly at her foot dragging. "What did you do?"
"Actually, it was more what his dad did."
A funny look crossed Alex's face, superseding his amusement. "Johnny's dad was dead by the time we got to high school."
"Five years when I met him, according to him, and every day of those five years he'd been looking for someone who could give a message to his son. I spent my first week of freshman year being yelled at by this colonel guy whose son I'd never met, who I was pretty sure didn't want to hear from lowly little me. But the more I tried to ignore him, the louder he got. It was no wonder my classmates thought I was spacey. I barely heard a word anybody said until I gave in."
"What did he want you to tell Johnny?"
Zoe smiled at that. "To stop being a bully. Which I could have lived with, except the colonel told me all this other stuff about his son that I knew Johnny wouldn't want me privy to. Most ghosts are more considerate, but I guess Johnny's dad wanted to be sure his son couldn't blow me off. He didn't, either. Once Johnny knew his dad was watching everything he did—and I do mean everything—I never heard of him beating up another person. I think he hated me because that felt better than thanking me for bullying him into doing what he knew was right."
"Huh." Alex scratched the fine gold stubble on his jaw. "I always wondered what made Johnny straighten up. I have to admit I thought I'd finally gotten through to him about leaving the nerds alone."
"His dad did like you," Zoe was happy to say. "He thought you were a good influence. In fact, the colonel told me he tried to talk to you for a while. He thought you might be sensitive enough to hear."
Alex gave a shiver that was only part exaggerated. "Now you're giving me the willies."
"It's not an insult. You were sensitive enough to see I wasn't just a freak, despite most of your friends thinking that you were nuts."
"I'm not convinced I deserve much credit for that. I fell for you too hard to care what they thought."
He grinned as he said it, his lazy, wolfish smile, but Zoe wasn't sidetracked. "You always were hard on yourself. You never wanted to give yourself credit for being a good person."
Alex's smile faded. He drew a circle on the dull blue blanket between their hips. "I wasn't very good to you."
"Yes, you were. The bad part was only the end. The good parts were some of the best times I ever had. My own parents never made me feel as loved as you."
"Zoe, I—" He stopped, turning toward her like she'd turned to him, their knees bumping lightly through her gauzy skirt. Color suffused his down-turned face, rising up his strong, tanned throat. Zoe's felt as if some power outside herself were tugging at her gaze. When it hit his groin, she couldn't miss how turned on he was. His erection looked like it was ready to tear right through the placket of his nice trousers.
She made an involuntary noise—hunger or apology. Alex looked up, his eyes a dark, swimming blue. For a second Zoe felt like she was falling.
"I can't talk to you like this," he said hoarsely. "I can't just…"
"Just?"