Page 21 of Fire and Ice Cruise

“I sure did. In fact, I had a front row seat to the whole nightmare.”

“Well, who did it?” I ask.

“Isn’t that the million-dollar question,” she says, pulling her gaze from the sea and focuses in on us. “But where’s the fun in just telling you?” she belts out a hearty belly laugh and the sound echoes off the walls and vibrates deep down into my chest. “Honey, I’ve got nothing but time, and I’d like to enjoy myself a little before I’m sent packing once again.”

“Celeste—”

“Trixie.” She mimics my tone with a tinkling little laugh. “Do you know how long I’ve been dead? Thirty-two years of nothing. Thirty-two years of watching Giddy Bear live his sensible little life with his sensible little wife while I sat around being beautiful and incorporeal. I think I’ve earned a vacation.”

“A vacation?” I balk at the thought. “This is a murder investigation, not a spa week.”

“Says the woman who was just eating a cinnamon roll on the lido deck. Don’t think I didn’t see that.”

“You were watching me eat?”

“Who wouldn’t look? You had frosting on your chin and a look in your eye I can only describe as devotion.”

I shrug over at Wes. “It was a very good cinnamon roll.”

“Oh, I could tell,” Celeste muses. “The cinnamon roll was getting more attention than most husbands.”

Not my husband, but I think better of saying that in front of Wes.

She zips over to Wes and trails one ghostly finger down the front of his uniform. “Speaking of enjoying myself, what do you say we grab a drink? Or you grab a drink while I watch you drink. I’m not picky about the details.”

I quickly remove her hand from Wes’s chest, my fingers passing through her cold, tingly essence. “He’s taken.” By Tinsley, apparently, but I leave that detail out.

“Taken?” Celeste begins to pout, her lower lip pushes out in a way that I’m pretty sure is a move she’s used before. “By you?”

“No. By someone else.”

Wes takes a moment to frown at me and I mouth the word sorry.

Celeste shakes her head, her glowing boobs practically jumping out of her dress. “Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is he’s not looking to hook-up with anyone right now, dead or alive, and we have a murder to solve.”

She sighs dramatically and about a dozen tiny pink stars emit from her head. “You’re no fun at all, are you?”

“Not even a little,” I don’t hesitate with that truth bomb. Okay, so I’m some fun, but not getting-drunk-in-a-bar-with-a-ghost fun.

“Fine.” She openly glares right at me and her entire countenance turns a brilliant shade of red. “But I’ve never been good at following rules. My mother said it would be the death of me, and she was absolutely right.” She brightens another notch. “But there are thousands of other handsome men on this ship, and lucky for me, it seems I’m coming along for the ride. I’ve got a whole buffet of man candy to sample, and I intend to make the most of my unexpected vacation.”

She blows Wes a kiss before turning to me. “I’ll see you around, Trixie Troublemaker. And Captain Delicious, if you change your mind about that drink, you know where to find me. I’ll be wherever the handsome men are congregating.”

She glides straight through the bridge window—because walls and physics mean very little to the dead—and vanishes into the gray morning like a wisp of expensive perfume.

I let out a breath, and suddenly the bridge feels far too quiet.

“Come here.” Wes pulls me into a strong hug, his arms wrapping around me with fierce protectiveness. His cologne surrounds me—woodsy and clean and familiar—and I let myself lean into him for a moment. He’s solid and warm and alive, which feels important after talking to someone who’s none of those things.

He pulls back just enough that we’re nose to nose, his green eyes searching mine with that intensity that makes my stomach flip despite the fact I’m very happily married.

“Are you okay?”

I nod, though I’m not entirely sure it’s true. “It never gets easier, Wes. Talking to dead people, I mean. You’d think after a year of this I’d be used to it, but every time it happens I’m reminded that someone was murdered. Not to mention, someone loved them enough to come back to help hunt down the killer. And I’m standing here acting as a translator between the living and the dead because I got hit in the head with a vodka bottle.”

“You didn’t ask for this ability.”