“Melody’s credibility is a little shaky in the ghost department. Yesterday she told me Tess wanted chocolate chip cookies.”

Ivan stopped in the middle of Stephanie’s room, looked at the closed closet door, and looped his arms around Stephanie’s waist. “You know what I think? I think you just want me in your bedroom.”

Stephanie flinched. That hit home. It hadn’t been her motive for bringing him upstairs, but there was enough truth to it to make her uncomfortable. She was becoming more attracted to him with each passing day. And he loved making her uncomfortable, she thought grimly. Rather than ignoring the fact that he’d spurned her advances on board the Savage, he continually teased her. The man had a diabolical sense of humor.

Justice really should be served, she decided. Ivan Rasmussen deserved to sweat a little. And all she had to do was turn up the heat. She leaned back in his arms and looked at him. “You’re right. I want you in my bedroom. What are you going to do about it?”

There was a flicker of surprise, then his grin widened. “I don’t know. Suppose I don’t do anything?”

Stephanie moved closer. “Do it my way, or hit the highway, big guy.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“You bet. I was at the top of my class in police brutality and sexual harassment. I know how to do things to a man’s body that would make your hair stand on end.”

“I love it when you talk dirty.”

“I wasn’t talking dirty!” She punched him lightly in the chest. “This isn’t working, is it? Why aren’t you getting nervous? You always throw me off-balance. Why can’t I get you off- balance?”

His eyes grew serious. “I’m always off-balance. I just hide it better.”

“Really?” She wasn’t sure if she believed him. Pirates were known to fabricate every now and then.

Ivan noted the skepticism in her voice. She held the winning hand and didn’t even know it, he thought. He was in way over his head and sinking fast.

He had his arms around her, and she felt pliant and relaxed now that she was teasing him back. It’d be easy to kiss her, he thought. Her lips were parted in silent laughter and looked soft and inviting. Too tempting to resist. His hand trailed along her neck and the slope of her shoulder, and his mouth took hers

Stephanie had expected to be kissed, but she hadn’t counted on this sort of kiss. She’d expected the kiss to be impudent, like the bathroom kiss two days ago. The bathroom kiss had been a pirate’s kiss-infuriating but fun. Exactly what you’d expect from a charming rat. The kiss they were sharing now was fragile. It was a serious kiss, more demanding in an entirely new way-and much more confusing. Stephanie pulled away and looked into Ivan’s eyes, not sure of what she saw there.

Pay attention, Stephanie, Ivan thought. This is love. He kissed her again, pulling her in deeper, persuading her to respond to him. “Are you still off-balance?” he asked.

“More than ever.”

“Good. I hate being the only one who feels insecure and desperate.”

Ivan Rasmussen? Insecure? And then it hit her. He wasn’t going so slowly because he wasn’t interested in her. He was going slowly because he cared about her. Really cared. He didn’t want to rush things. Didn’t want to lessen their relationship by pressing the physical aspect of it. A smile surfaced.

“I think I’ve been dumb,” Stephanie said. “You like me, don’t you?”

Like her? Ivan groaned. She was his reason for getting up in the morning. She was the sun, and he felt himself revolving around her, held tight by some mysterious, overwhelming force that was much more inescapable than mere gravity. “Yeah. I like you.” His voice was husky. “I like you a lot.”

“I like you, too,” Stephanie said. She ran the flat of her palm across his chest, enjoying the feel of hard muscle and warm flesh beneath his shirt. Her fingertip stroked up the side of his neck and along the line of his bearded jaw. She wasn’t sure of his ultimate intentions, but she knew he’d shown her a part of himself that was very private. And she knew from the pressure against his zipper that the intimate web he’d woven around them was fueling more aggressive desires in him. He was a pirate after all, she thought happily. And he was making love to her, seducing her slowly and thoroughly.

“This is special, isn’t it?” she asked, winding her arms around his neck and sensuously brushing her lips across his. She felt his hand tighten at the small of her back, felt him stir when she pressed her hips forward.

She was taunting him, Ivan thought. She finally recognized her power. She was making him burn with each erotic movement of her body. She was telling him that she wanted him. And Lord knew, he wanted her.

“I’m probably making a mistake by not locking the bedroom door right now,” he said, “but I think we should put this on hold. I don’t want to make love to you, then discover Lucy and Melody have been listening on the other side of the door.”

“Speaking of doors-the closet is definitely locked.”

Ivan turned and tugged, but the door wouldn’t open. “Wait here. There’s a big old skeleton key in the master bedroom that might work.”

He returned a couple of moments later, tried the key, and gave Stephanie a wink when the lock tumbled. He swung the door open with a flourish, and a cadaver fell out, crashing onto the floor at Stephanie’s feet.

Stephanie made a strangled sound and clamped her hand over her mouth.

Ivan hung on to the door and took a deep breath to steady his heart. “Jeez!”

Both took a step back from the body.

“This guy’s been embalmed!” Ivan said. “He’s wearing makeup.”

“Looks to be in his seventies,” Stephanie said.

“This is sick. This is really sick!”

Stephanie reached out for Ivan with a shaky hand. “You know what’s even sicker? Me. I hate to be a wimp about this, but I think I’m going to throw up. Yes, I’m definitely going to throw up,” she said, rushing to the bathroom.

Five minutes later, she was seated on the tile floor, resting her back against the tub with a wet towel draped over her head.

Ivan massaged her shoulders. “You feel better?”

Stephanie nodded. “This is embarrassing.”

“I thought cops got used to seeing stiffs.”

“I was in narcotics, not homicide, and believe it or not, I’ve never had a dead person fall out of a closet at me.”

“I hope you’re not going to blame this on Aunt Tess.”

“Ivan, your house is a loony bin.”

“Honey, this is your house.”

She removed the towel and pushed herself to her feet. “We should call the police. Some undertaker is going nuts looking for that poor old man.”

They walked down the hall to her bedroom and stopped at the door, not able to believe their eyes. The body was gone.

“Am I imagining this?” Stephanie asked. “Did I just throw up over a figment of my imagination?”

“I can guarantee you he didn’t walk away.”

“So someone took the dead guy. While I was in the bathroom, someone came in here and bodynapped him.”

They exchanged glances and knew they were both thinking the same thing. “Melody!” they called in unison.

Melody came to the head of the stairs. “What do you want?”

“There was a dead body here, and now it’s gone. I don’t suppose you know anything about this?”

Melody looked interested. “A dead body? A grossly dead body?”

Stephanie furiously pushed her damp hair back from her forehead, feeling herself teetering on the edge of civility. She’d tried to be philosophical about the toilet, the porch, the water heater, and the multitude of bizarre things that had happened to her, but this was the end. Disappearing bodies were not part of the bargain.

She glared at Melody. “Someone took that body. That body did not just up and walk away. Even Ivan said so. Someone took it, and there’s only one person in this house who would be nutso enough to do it. You. I know you took that body. Now where is it?”

“She’s getting a little weird,” Melody said to Ivan. “Probably PMS.”

Lucy came up behind Melody. “What’s all the racket about?”

“They think I took a body,” Melody said. “They’re missing one.”

Lucy looked from Melody to Stephanie to Ivan. “Uh-huh.”

“It’s true,” Stephanie said to Lucy. “There was a body here.” She lifted the dust ruffle and looked under her bed. “My closet door was locked, so Ivan came up to unlock it, and this dead guy fell out at me, and I threw up, and then poof, the body is missing.”

Lucy looked doubtful. “You’re putting me on, right?”

“No.” Ivan sat on the edge of the bed. “That actually happened… I think.”

“And they think I took it.” Melody rolled her huge black-rimmed eyes. “What do I look like, a body snatcher?”

“This body, did it have a knife sticking in it? Was there a bullet hole in the forehead? A rope tied around the neck?” Lucy asked.

“No. It was an old guy in a gray suit with a maroon tie,” Stephanie told her. “He was fine, except he was dead, and he should have had a different tie. Maybe something with stripes.”

“Why do you think Melody took him?”

Stephanie looked under the bed one more time. “It seemed like something Melody would do.”

“Mmmm, that’s true. But Melody was with me, cleaning the kitchen.”

Melody’s eyes looked even wider than usual. “Are you going to call the police?”

Stephanie flipped her palms up. “I don’t know what I’d say to them. Some refugee from a funeral home fell out of my closet, then disappeared while I was throwing up? They’d give me a breathalizer.”

Ivan took Stephanie by the hand. “Come on. We’re going to check out this entire house, then we’re going to have dessert.”

Two hours later Ivan and Stephanie sat in the kitchen, eating ice-cream sundaes.

“This is very creepy,” Stephanie said. “This is one of the creepiest things that’s ever happened to me.”

“Coming from you, that’s quite a statement.”

Stephanie spooned more fudge sauce over her ice cream. “Being a narc wasn’t usually creepy. It was boring, dangerous, scary, and frustrating. Mostly frustrating.”

Ivan was curious about her past. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that she’d been a cop. If she’d been a secretary or a second-grade teacher, he would have been equally curious. He simply wanted to know about Stephanie. “Why did you become a cop? Can you talk about it?”

“Yeah, the beginning is easy to talk about. It’s the end that’s tough.”

She mashed her ice cream into mush. “I was in college, majoring in art for lack of something better. Lots of kids go to college and have this passion to learn or to go out into the world and be a doctor, or a CPA, or an astronaut. I didn’t have a passion for anything. I was just drifting through life. I was an average person, getting average grades, going to college because that was the average thing to do. Then one day my mom called and said my little brother was in the hospital from a drug overdose. My little brother!” She shook her head, still wondering how such a thing could have happened.

“He was a good kid. We lived in a decent neighborhood. It just blew my mind. There I was, marking time in college as if I were some zombie, and my brother was lying in a hospital bed, fighting for his life. My brother got over it, but I never did. I decided I wanted to do something about the drugs in my neighborhood, so I quit college and became a cop.”

“Any regrets about leaving college?”

She scraped the bottom of her sundae glass. “No. College just wasn’t for me.”

“Any regrets about buying my house?”

Stephanie laughed. “Lots!”

Ivan tapped his spoon against the rim of his glass. “There’s something strange going on here, Steph. Someone cracked that upstairs toilet. And someone purposely weakened the boards in the front porch. And someone put a corpse in your closet.”

“You think someone’s out to get me?”

“Someone is trying to make your life difficult here. You think someone from New Jersey followed you? Someone with a vendetta?”

She snorted. “If someone from New Jersey was after me, I’d have a bullet in my head. At the very least they’d burn the house to the ground.”

“How about someone local?”

“I don’t know many people. You’d be my only suspect. This house was in your family for generations. Maybe you want it back-at a lowered price.”

He slouched in his chair. “Sorry, it’s not me. I’m broke. I couldn’t buy it back at any price.”

Stephanie watched him, waiting for an explanation, but he didn’t offer any. How could he be broke? He’d just sold a house that probably didn’t even have a mortgage on it. He had a successful cruise business. He wasn’t supporting a wife and kids.

He stood and took his glass to the dishwasher. “You know, it really bothers me that we couldn’t find the corpse. Melody and Lucy were in the kitchen. You and I were in the bathroom. And in the space of ten minutes, someone got that body out of the house.”