Kelley St. John - Shiver And Spice (Harlequin Blaze)

Spicy cooking, hot weather and sizzling sexthree of the most notable staples of life in Louisiana. Add a little voodoo, vampires and ghosts, and you ve got enough to keep life interesting for several generations of Vicknairs .

Every member of this unique family can cook a mean gumbo, stay cool in thick humidity and sure enough knows how to burn up the sheets. And while they may not have had firsthand experience with voodoo and vampiresyetthey make up for it in spades with ghosts.

Currently, six Vicknair cousins are doing their part to follow family tradition, guiding lost spirits who need a little help finding the light. Obtaining their spectral assignments from grandmother Adeline, the family matriarch, even in death, the cousins generally don t have much trouble fulfilling a spirit s requirement for crossing. However, every now and then, things tend to go awry. A medium might fall in love with a spirit, the way Monique Vicknair did, or a medium s assignment may help a ghost to save a friend from a killer, which recently happened to Gage Vicknair . But what happened to Monique and Gage isn t anything compared to what has happened to their brother, Dax .

Dax Vicknair fell in love with a spirit that was helping another to cross over .

Unlike Monique s husband, who was on his way to the light when Daxs feisty sister sidetracked him, Celeste did cross over, the whole way. And now Dax is stuck over here, helping other ghosts, while the one he wants is an eternity away. Based on this assessment, Dax has determined that life, quite simply, sucks.

But everything isn t always as it seems, especially when the powers that be, and Grandma Adeline, have anything to say about it.

Celeste Beauchamp was in the middle again. Where was this place, this dark room that had become her existence? And which way should she go to get out?

She stood in the center and surveyed her surroundings. A door on her left led to a pathway that she d traveled before and that she wanted to travel again. A pathway to him. But that door was closed. Another door on her right was open, as it usually was, but she couldn t remember where it led. And in the center, straight ahead of her, the entire wall looked smooth and complete, but Celeste knew that the middle held a doorway too.

That door was only visible when the light came.

She held up her hand and surveyed it, glowing faintly. Her hair also shimmered, as did the rest of her body. With that center door closed tight, she provided the only source of light in this place.

Was she dead? Yes, she supposed she was, because a dream wouldn t be this vivid .

But if she were dead, then why didn t she head on to her final destination?

Faint voices, calling her name, caused her to step toward the path to her right .

Open and ready, that path would be easy to access. She d gone there before; she remembered that much. But she never stayed there very long. She always came back here, to this middle place, because this was the way to him.

A soft pop sounded, and a pinprick of light, like a star pushing its way through a stormy cloud, pierced the middle wall and caused Celeste to turn back. It grew a bit, then a little more, until the opening was the size of a dime. Compared to the darkness around it, the radiance was exquisite, and Celeste suddenly longed to touch it. She stepped toward it, then the voices to her right screamed, and she stopped.

Rapid footsteps suddenly echoed in the confines of the room, and then a little girl bolted out of thin air and ran toward the light. Most certainly a ghost, she glowed faintly at first, but then her dressno, her entire bodyabsorbed the light, until Celeste had to shield her eyes from the child s brilliance. Two pigtails of straight brown hair were capped in hot-pink bows that matched the trim on her yellow dress.

That s it! She clapped her hands together until the light grew into a door-size opening that illuminated the entire span of the room. I m going on in. Tell Prissy, my sister, to follow me. She s coming. Tell her where I am, okay?

Prissy? Celeste asked, but the girl was too focused on the light to hear.

Granny s in there. She s waiting for me. Granny, I m coming! Oh wow, I smell cookies. Chocolate oatmeal, my favorite! She took another step, then merged with the gleaming light.

Wait! Celeste shouted at the same moment that the wall absorbed the light and the girl.

She stepped forward and placed her palm where the light had been. Cold, smooth stone met her touch. She d seen the lighted doorway before, right after the accident, but she hadn t entered it that time either. That time, another young ghost had stopped her from passing through. The girl, Chloe, needed help crossing over, and Celeste hadn t wanted to leave her behind, so she d ignored the beckoning light and helped Chloe find her way.

That was the only time that the pathway to the left had opened, and Celeste had met Dax .

Dax . As long as she was here, in this strange middle place, she could remember him, think of him, want him. She could see the hazel eyes that had touched her soul, the sexy mouth that seemed always on the verge of a smile, those dark brown waves that framed a face full of sincerity, of kindness, and a touch of mischievousness that had made Celeste s entire body tingle.

They hadn t spoken of it before, that amazing chemistry that zinged between them, because they d both expected her to cross over with Chloe. Plus, he was in the land of the livingand shewasn t.

But she didn t cross with Chloe, and she still wasn t sure why not. Instead of entering the light, she d gone down that path toward the voices, but that was all she recalled. And on several occasions, she d returned here, to this middle room, in the hopes of seeing Dax again, or of finally entering the light.

Neither had happened.

Before, she didn t try to start a relationship with Dax , didn t even tell him how she felt. Why start something that they couldn t finish? But now she realized that that may have been her last chance to really be with a man, to be with Dax . And she d blown it.

She wanted another shot.

Celeste hadn t had a lot of experience with men when she was living, only one relationship, and that had basically been two inexperienced teens fumbling their way through the motions. She d always looked forward to the day when she would experience the kind of intimacy that she d heard about, where the earth moved.

She d certainly never had that, but she sure thought about it a lot when she was in this place. And every time she thought about it, she thought about it with one man Dax .

She wanted to forget those voices to the right, forget that light in the middle, and head leftto Dax . She stared at the crack in the wall that identified the closed door to his world, where he could show her everything she d never known about the desire between a man and a woman. She wanted to have that, to taste that pleasure, if only once. Was that too much to ask before she headed to the light?

I want him, she whispered.

A loud creaking penetrated the silence, and the blocked entry to her left eased open. An elderly woman, her silver hair glowing around her shoulders, leaned out from the darkness and crooked an elegant finger toward Celeste.

Come, chre . You can t stay as long as before. You re weaker now. She peered down that other path, the one with the voices, and shook her head. Why didn t you go to them more, chre ? You re weak because you didn t go.