The pungent aroma of waterlogged floorboards hit her first. The light poking through showed no more than the gloomy outline of a leaf-strewn floor and a decaying stone fireplace.

Okay, so at the moment, she didn’t feel like she had this. What she felt mostly…was creeped out.

Something skittered up the patterned wallpaper to her right, but she refused to turn her head. Her peripheral vision made out enough of the long, shining body and waving antennae to know who she’d be bunking with tonight. She shuddered.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t thought to put Raid on her shopping list.

Disgust sat like a lump in her throat, but she gulped it down with purpose and tossed her supplies onto the center of the living room floor. The massive space would make for a workable ground zero. She could blow up the air mattress and surround herself with the comforts of home. It probably wouldn’t even feel like an allegedly haunted mansion by the time she got set up.

She kicked a downed spindle, and it rolled and hit the baseboard at the edge of the staircase with an echoing thud. One last thought about the shadow-faces peering down at her from upstairs, and it was decided: downstairs would have to do. No way was she going anywhere near the second story.

A doorway stood to her left, and she ventured over, poking her head inside. The wide kitchen was big enough for several servants, and well lit thanks to a few large, still-intact windows on that side of the house. But the warped linoleum, bones of dead mice or rats—hard to say at that level of decomposition—and door-less cabinets encrusted with cobwebs kept the room from being mistaken for cozy.

Funny, she thought as she turned back, the living room is charming by comparison.

A loud bang made her jump and a pathetic little Meep! exit her lips. The front door hung open, leaves blowing across the entryway. After her heart restarted, she blew out a breath of relief. It was only the wind. Likely a sister gust to the one that had dropped that shutter so near her head earlier.

Certainly not a ghost trying to spook her out of her room and board for the night.

A few structural uncertainties weren’t going to send her fleeing. Wouldn’t Marcus love that? If one little bump in the waning daylight sent her running…Nuh-uh. No way. He wasn’t winning this bet before it started.

If the only prize from this ridiculous bet was her proving she was strong and brave and capable, then it would be worth it. Even better, she could reflect on her personal growth while sipping a rum-infused drink out of a hulled coconut in Oahu. Ah, that made her smile.

She made one final trip outside to retrieve the rest of her supplies. As she shouldered her purse, she recalled Marcus’s smug expression as she’d pulled that same handbag over her shoulder at the bar on Wednesday. He thought she was girlie and delicate, but she was about to prove herself part warrior. Or something.

Let’s do this.

Bravery renewed, she reminded herself she’d suffer nothing worse than dust allergies during her night behind the mansion’s walls.

The grocery bag in the crook of her arm was filled with the essentials. Wine, check. Bottled water, check. iPad, check. Dinner from her favorite local restaurant, check.

At the mansion’s front door, she cast one last look at the surrounding woods and long, cracked driveway. She’d parked off to one side, behind a low-hanging weeping willow and overgrown brush. Satisfied her car was hidden from the road, she punched the lock button on her key fob and smiled at the answering cheery beep.

“Hawaii, here I come.” With that last thought warming her, she headed into the dark house and shut the door behind her.

Chapter Three

“I don’t know why I had to come with you.”

Marcus stopped climbing the weed-infested hill to glare at his recently-turned-wussy best friend. “What are you bitching about? I’m the one with Hawaii on the line.”

“Yeah, and that trip was technically mine.” Clive pointed the flashlight into Marcus’s face. “Plus, I’m the one in danger of an early grave if Joanie finds out we aren’t really playing darts at the Shot Spot.”

Marcus shielded his eyes, and Clive swept the beam off his face. “I swear you traded in your balls at the altar a year and a half ago.”

His buddy only smiled. “That’s a helluva trade, considering how much sex I get.”

“Married people don’t have sex,” Marcus grumbled, resuming his climb to Willow Mansion. “Everyone knows that.”

“Yes we do. But unlike you, I don’t have to sneak out in my underwear in the morning.”

Rather than argue, mainly because Clive had made a compelling and, other than the underwear part, an irritatingly accurate point, Marcus continued his stealthy approach to the mansion. As stealthy as one could be toting a duffel bag full of Halloween costumes.

Hey. It was Hawaii. He may as well try to salvage it.

They rounded the house and found a reasonably clean window that hadn’t been busted out. Marcus peeked through one lower corner and Clive through the other. He could make out a kitchen, and beyond that, a doorway. Lily’s face was lit with ambient light one room over.

Marcus swore under his breath. “Is that…sushi?”

Clive chuckled.

His strawberry-blond, lethally sexy co-worker lounged in the center of an air mattress inside like the queen of freaking Sheba, pillows fluffed behind her. When she lifted a pair chopsticks to her mouth, Marcus’s own mouth went dry watching those plush lips close around the food, her delicate throat working as she swallowed. Damn.

Those lips would be the death of him. Mainly because Lily refused to let him close enough to get a taste.

“Mmm. Dragon roll,” Clive said, snapping Marcus out of a fantasy that had begun brewing. “Do you think she went to Sushi Café? I love when they throw in a free crab rangoon.”

“Unbelievable,” Marcus grumbled.

The soft bluish glow that lit her face came from the computer tablet on her lap. It must’ve been tuned in to something funny. She tossed her head back and laughed, and he felt a punishing jolt of attraction as he watched her—the same unrelenting attraction he felt for her at work. Made no sense. He’d asked her out. She’d said no. He’d been shot down plenty of times, and typically bounced back quickly. He’d bounced back, or so he thought, but dating other women seemed…wrong with Lily around. Which made no fucking sense whatsoever.

“Yes, she looks truly terrified,” Clive said, chuckling again.

“That’s why I brought these.” Marcus dropped the duffel bag at his feet.

“You don’t think that’s a tad against the rules?”

“I think all is fair in love and war and hard-won trips to islands.”

Clive scrubbed a hand over his sandy blond hair and shook his head. “I don’t get it, man. If you want a date with her so badly, why don’t you just ask her out?”

Well. Shit. Was he this transparent? Marcus shot him a look. “What are you talking about?” He tried really hard to make it sound like he was shocked, or like Clive was barking up the wrong tree, but his voice came out thin and a little guilty.

Damn. It.

Clive grinned knowingly. “Yeah. I kind of figured out you liked her, like, a millennia ago.”

Marcus accepted defeat, dropping the innocent act and glad for it. He was a horrible actor. “Does Joanie know?”

“No, man.” He clapped Marcus on the back.

Relief.

“I asked her out once,” Marcus admitted.

“No way. Lily turned down the Marcus Black?”

“Shut up.”

Clive laughed. At his expense, if he had to guess. “So, ask her again. She didn’t know you then.”