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method,” Alex snapped.
    “Right,” Sam said with a little snort, and left.
    Alex turned to the ghost, who was watching him with a smart-alecky smile.
    “I can’t read your mind,” the ghost said. “But it’s not tough to guess what you’re thinking. Most of the time.” His gaze turned speculative. “There are times you don’t make any sense. Like today, the way you acted around that cute little blonde—”
    “That’s my business.”
    “Yes, but I have to watch anyway, and it’s irritating. You liked her. Why not talk to her? What’s the matter with—”
    “I liked it better when you were invisible,” Alex said, turning away from him. “Conversation’s over.”
    “What if I want to keep talking?”
    “Talk your head off. I’m going home, where I’m going to drink until you disappear.”
    The ghost shrugged and leaned nonchalantly against the wall. “Maybe you’ll be the one to disappear,” he said, and watched as Alex went to scrape off the caulk splatters.

Four
    “Justine,” Zoë said severely, “don’t eat any more of those. I need at least two hundred for the cupcake tower.”
    “I’m helping you,” Justine said around a mouthful of pink velvet cake with Chambord buttercream frosting. With her dark hair pulled into a high ponytail, and her slim form clad in a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, she looked more like a college student than a successful businesswoman.
    Zoë glanced quizzically into her cousin’s brown-velvet eyes. “How exactly are you helping?”
    “Quality control. I need to make sure these are good enough for the wedding guests.”
    Smiling wryly, Zoë rolled out a yard of ice-pink fondant with an aluminum rolling pin. “Well, are they?”
    “They’re terrible. Can I have one more? Please?”
    “No.”
    “Okay, then I’ll tell you the truth. Given the choice between eating this cupcake or watching Ryan Gosling and Jon Hamm wrestle each other for the privilege of having sex with me, I’d choose the cupcake.”
    “I’m not even finished yet,” Zoë said. “I’m going to cover each one with fondant and top it with pink roses, green leaves, and clear sugar dewdrops.”
    “You are the baking genius of our time.”
    “I know,” Zoë said cheerfully. When the fondant was an eighth of an inch thick, she began to cover each cupcake in a smooth, perfect casing, trimming the excess with a spatula. She had worked at Justine’s bed-and-breakfast for more than two years, handling the cooking, grocery shopping, and food orders, while Justine managed the business side. Immediately after the failure of Zoë’s brief but disastrous marriage, Justine had approached her with an offer that included a share in the business. Zoë, still shell-shocked by the dissolution of her marriage, had hesitated at first.
    “Say yes and you’ll never regret it,” Justine had said. “It’s everything you like to do, all the cooking and menu planning, without all the business stuff.”
    Zoë had regarded her uncertainly. “After what I’ve just been through, I’m afraid to make a commitment to anything . Even an offer that sounds as nice as this one.”
    “But you’d be making a commitment to me,” Justine had enthused. “Your favorite cousin.”
    Zoë forbore to reply that technically they were only second cousins, and furthermore, out of all the Hoffman cousins Justine hadn’t necessarily been her favorite. In early childhood Zoë had been intimidated by Justine, who was a year younger but infinitely more daring and confident.
    One of the things Zoë and Justine had in common was that they were only children being raised by single parents … Justine was being raised by her mother, and Zoë by a father.
    “Did your daddy run away from home?” Zoë had asked Justine.
    “No, silly. Parents don’t run away from home.”
    “My mother did,” Zoë had said, glad to finally have some bit of superior knowledge over her cousin. “I don’t even remember her. My daddy says she left