A Second Chance with My Grumpy Detective: A Next Door - Lovers Romance

By Kasia Kain

I am Tia Tucker and I see dead people.

Cra-a-ashh

Yep. I'm pretty sure we've got ghosts here.

Was I hiding? Why, yes, I was.

Hello, drop dead freaking gorgeous!

Wait a damn minute! I know this guy.

Man of my dreams he is not… more like nightmares, at best.

Ethan Wilson…

A foul taste in my mouth at the memory that I kissed this guy in high school – with tongue!

His lips hover near mine, a question in those blue eyes.

I bite my bottom lip.

I want to kiss him, damn it! But I shouldn't want to! This is insane.

Woman. Mid-forties. Died while shopping at the comics store this morning.

No foul play suspected.

Oh come on, you know that's not how this is going to go right?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kasia Kain
• Release date: Jun 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227065643

Book preview

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Copyright 2024 by Kasia Kain - All rights reserved.

In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher.

All rights reserved.

Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.

Contents

1.We’ve Got Ghosts Here

1. Tia

2.The Comic Store

2. Ethan

3.Wanda Smith

3. Tia

4.Let Me Taste You, Tia

4. Ethan

5.The Missing Pieces

5. Tia

6.Murder in Beavercreek!

6. Ethan

7.The Security Camera

7. Tia

8.Another Death

8. Ethan

9.The Will

9. Tia

10.You’re No Cat Whisperer, Are You?

10. Ethan

11.I Don’t Want Joy, I Want You!

11. Tia

12.Detective Ethan Wilson

12. Ethan

13.Changes

13. Tia

14.Carlton…

14. Ethan

15.Tia, It Reeks in There

15. Tia

16.Means, Motive, and Opportunity

16. Ethan

17.The Viewing

17. Tia

18.Another Attack!

18. Ethan

19.One Large Wooden Box

19. Tia

20.Murderer

20. Ethan

21.Epilogue - Three Months Later

21. Tia

The End.

Acknowledgements

To ALL the hard working Indie Authors out there. Don’t stop! Ignore the haters, they do NOT define you.

Remember Life is short, so be Kind! But that doesn’t mean you have to take anyone’s BS either!

AND

To GOD,

because without you, I know nothing in my life would make sense.

Chapter 1

We’ve Got Ghosts Here

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Tia

I work with dead people.

Embalming, cremating, helping people pay their final respects – it’s been my thing for two years now. Is it weird to say I love it? Because I do.

I fluff the white satin liner in the show coffin, knowing I’ll have to adjust the body to fit. He’s a 6’4 male, with the sweetest widow who was very concerned about him needing a special order coffin. Contrary to popular opinion, we don’t have different lengths of coffins sitting around. Just the one. If you’re tall, we’ll carefully bend your knees a little and make sure you look picture perfect and nothing less.

There, I say with a final fluff. I step back, tucking my curly red hair behind my ears only to have it pop back out again. Stubborn. Just like me.

Cra-a-ashh.

I don’t even flinch when one of our framed photos of pastel flowers jumps from the lobby wall and lands on the ground. It doesn’t break. In fact, it never breaks. Thanks, ghost.

Yep. I’m pretty sure we’ve got ghosts here.

The framed photo seems to move a few millimeters to the right on the floor, as if someone is toeing it with the tip of their shoe. I shrug. It’s just another day in the office for me, Tia Tucker, funeral director of Tucker’s Funeral Home: Where your family is our family.

Don’t judge. That last part was my dad’s slogan for the place back in the 1970s. I bet it sounded a lot cooler then.

Maybe.

Tiaaaaa, Mrs. Florence yoo-hoos at me as she breezes into the lobby from the back of the building, jet black hair in a poof so poofy that even Dolly Parton would envy her; lips as red as any 1940s movie starlet.

Oh boy. She’s had the hots for my dad (gross!) since she went through mourning for her late husband… fifteen years ago. Yeah, not weird at all. I basically grew up with her wanting to be my stepmother. Not the Cinderella kind, though. She’s nice enough. But she’s not Mom. No one will ever be Mom.

Also, she still wants me to call her Mrs. Florence. Not Florence. Or Flo. Or even Auntie. It has to be Mrs. Florence.

In her hand is a nasty fruit gelatin wonder. It’s a wonder that no one died from eating it, that is. Today’s variant is green. I think Julia Childs would roll over in her grave if she saw the stuff. Or not. I know for a fact that bodies remain put exactly as we bury them.

I was four when I first saw a body of the deceased. That’s how Dad put it back then. It sounded so formal, mysterious, even. He tapped me then on the shoulder and told me one day I would run this place. I thought sure, why not? Then I grew up, ran away, got my nursing degree… only to come back.

Maturity for the win, I guess.

I can smell Mrs. Florence’s perfume and feel its insta-gagging effect. She’s closing in on me. Was I hiding? Why, yes, I was. Coffins on a stand are huge. I used to play hide and seek in here with my friends. I know all the good spots.

I straighten up from behind the coffin just as a fake flower wreath joins the pastel flower painting on the floor.

Okay, Harold. Mind your business, I say in my mind to the probably-ghost that probably-haunts the place.

Hi Mrs. Flo—

Hello handsome. The voice of my internal monologue suddenly changes from annoyed girl in slacks to seductress with red heels and a plunging black dress with sequins. Hello, drop dead freaking gorgeous!

Mrs. Florence is not alone. A slightly bearded wonder stands behind her, partly out of sight, but clear enough for me to notice big biceps and broad shoulders. I know literally everyone in Beavercreek, Oregon. Who the heck is this guy?

There you are, child, she says, her Southern roots showing in that twang of her voice… though not one strand of silver roots is showing on her head. She must get her hair dyed every other morning at Tootsie’s Salon & Spa Extraordinaire. Thirty years in the Pacific Northwest hasn’t taken one bit of Mrs. Florence’s Southern charm away.

Oh, and Tootsie’s? Trust me, there is nothing spa or extraordinaire about the place.

Mrs. Florence’s perfume is thick like a misty cloud that billows around her and her perfect poof of hair is tall enough that it’s hiding the muscular wonder’s face. I gaze toward him and prepare to give him my most charming smile.

I only pull this particular smile out for special occasions, like today, meeting the man of my dreams in the lobby of my shabby little funeral home and getting swept away into a romantic whirlwind…

Wait a damn minute! I know this guy.

Man of my dreams he is not… more like nightmares, at best.

Ethan Wilson? I retort, a foul taste in my mouth at the memory that I kissed this guy in high school – with tongue! That was before he turned all jerk on me and… well, that’s a story for later.

Allison Katrina Tucker. He looks me up and down, sort of. Just from the top of my curly red hair all the way to my waist, since I’m still standing behind the coffin. It’s a short trip for those eyeballs, which is fine with me.

Just Tia. Thanks. What do you want? I try to sound badass, like I don’t need him now any more than I did ten years ago when I was eighteen and he… never mind.

Tia, my would-be stepmother scolds me gently. She hoists up the gelatin. I’m going to find your father, Robert, and visit for a while. She looks at Ethan with a grandmotherly smile covering the once-over she gives his body. I’ll look forward to having you in town, sergeant.

She floats away with dainty steps toward the modest split level duplex home I grew up in, conveniently located just behind the funeral home. Dad and I still live there, me in the upstairs unit and him in the downstairs unit.

Ethan clears his throat as I remove myself from my hiding place, promptly ignoring him.

Actually, it was your dad I expected to see here today. I didn’t know you were in town. You here for long?

I chortle. I’d say so. I own the place now.

His jaw twitches as his lips fight not to turn up into a smirk. You? He laughs. You were the one hell bent on getting out of this town after high school. He steps toward me, his blue eyes steamy.

Oh boy. Heat rushes through me and my heart starts to race. I remember the tingles that are building up in my belly all too well. I’ve only ever felt this type of arousal from Ethan. Not that he needs to know that.

And I did. Then I came back. Dad needed me, I say, shifting my body away from him, away from the attraction that I feel taunting me in the air between us. What’s your reason, hotshot?

I cringe after I say that last word. That’s what I yelled at him in anger when I discovered that he was secretly sleeping with my best friend Valerie from high school… while dating me. Needless to say, after accusing him of being full of himself and thinking he was such a hotshot just because he could land any girl in this Podunk town… well, I didn’t really stick around to gather the facts. I just ran out. Then I left town. Real mature, right?

You got it all wrong in high school, Tia, he says his voice so warm it could melt butter… or my insides, apparently as I want nothing more than to fall into those muscled arms.

It doesn’t matter anymore, I say, finishing my third round of fluffing the coffin’s white liner. I move over to the picture frame on the floor and put it back. No more funny business today, Harold.

I left to get real world experience, Ethan is saying, but I’ve lost interest. Seeing him here has triggered me and honestly, in my right mind, I just want him to crawl back into whatever loser hole he came from and leave me alone. He really hurt me, but he doesn’t deserve to know that. I always knew I’d ride out my career here, not in New York. The city was amazing, though.

I turn to face him, coming boobs to pecs with him. I draw in a sharp intake of air.

You should work on your situational awareness, he says, his tone cocky even as his eyes study my face, a softness in them.

In a town as safe as Beavercreek, I don’t need any awareness, I retort, about to add that I certainly don’t need him coming around my funeral home again.

But I don’t get the words out. The next second Ethan is kissing me. And what a kiss it is, slow, exploratory, warm, arousing. I moan against him, my bitter thoughts of how he treated me in high school out the window. He’s hot. I always knew women would throw themselves at him. I just didn’t know he’d accept any of them with open arms, arms that should have been mine alone.

Valerie told you everything in Miami… let it go… my mind tells me.

But I don’t want to forget my anger from high school. I don’t want to forgive either of them. Because the moment I do, I lose my only reason to keep Ethan Wilson at arms’ length when everything in my heart is yearning to pull him close.

I feel his hands running up and down my back, one hand lowering to squeeze my ass. His touch feels good. He feels good. Our hips rub against each other, and I can feel the start of an erection in his pants. I can’t help myself. I place a hand on his pants over his cock, squeezing it. His cock was always superior – thick, long, and such a pretty cock with its perfect head and smooth shaft.

Oh, baby, he says in his lusty voice. That voice used to do me in every time. It promised a good time. It was a voice I thought was all for me.

I can’t do this. I can’t let him rope me in again. His thumb is rubbing on my shirt across my pebbled nipple when I break the kiss, our foreheads still touching. I breathe in one last whiff of his sexy scent – it’s piney and masculine.

Ethan! the gravelly voice of my dad sounds from behind Ethan’s broad shoulders.

Ethan’s look is amused when he opens those blue eyes and steps back. My cheeks