Pike (The Pawn Duet #1) - T.M. Frazier Page 0,58

lot like pride in his voice, mixed with confusion and…lust. “No, you are not.”

He removes his hand and follows Jo Jo. “Come on, Mic” he calls out, disappearing up the stairs. “Maybe, Jo Jo and I can teach you a thing or two about Monopoly.”

I slide off the stool and follow. I love Monopoly and am damn good at it. I’ve been my family’s reigning champion since I was six. There’s nothing he can teach me about the board game that I don’t already know.

But there is one thing I’ve learned today: the device on my ankle isn’t a bomb. Although, that’s another thing I won’t be telling Pike.

Chapter Twenty

Pike

I’ve learned a few things about Mickey over the past few days.

She’s a perfectionist. My entire apartment has been organized and cleaned. She even managed to get the old linoleum floor to shine when I thought it wasn’t possible. She’s also empathetic as all get out. Where I feel nothing, she cries at every commercial and tears up at every sighting of a stray cat. Odd for a thief and soldier of an unknown army, which is why I grow more and more intrigued about the enigma that is Mickey with each passing day.

She’s also competitive as fuck, taking Jo Jo and myself all the way to the bank in Monopoly and rubbing it in our faces with a victory dance that again had my eyes fixated on what her shirt was covering.

After a long day of meetings that have me tired and irritated, I find Mickey in the alley behind the shop. She’s crouched near a wall, setting out paper plates of food and Tupperware bowls of milk.

My eyes land on where the material of her pink pants stretches across her perfect heart-shaped ass. Who is torturing who here? “And what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” My words again come out harsher than I intended. It has nothing to do with the cats, but old habits die hard, and lashing out is all I can manage to do these days. Gutter said to be nice to her. To gain her trust.

I’m fucking failing at both. Eye-fucking? Now, that I’m acing.

“Feeding the cats,” she replies without looking up.

Adds empathetic to the list of things I’ve learned about Mickey.

I glance around the empty alley. “What cats?” No sooner do the words leave my lips than a half dozen of the little dirty fuckers saunter over to the bowls. Each one pausing to rub themselves against Mickey’s legs before hissing claim over the food at one another.

She runs her hand across the back of a cat that I think might be white under all the grey dirt and grime. “These cats,” she says with a tight-lipped smile as if she’s trying not to laugh.

I raise an eyebrow and lean against the wall. “So what? You’re the neighborhood cat lady now?”

She picks the smallest one of the group, cradling it in her arms and scratching behind its ears. It’s beige with black ears and feet. “How would you feel if you were hungry and no one fed you?”

She’s probably referring to herself during her first days here but a mental image of one of my many foster homes comes to mind. “They’ll get over it and learn to fend for themselves. That’s what I did.”

Mickey’s mouth opens, and her eyes fill with sympathy I wasn’t looking for. “You’ve been hungry before?”

Her empathy apparently doesn’t just apply to cats, it also extends to me. The man holding her against her will. I’m the last person she should feel sorry for, and yet I can feel the sorrow radiating off her skin like warmth from a buzzing fluorescent light.

I shrug and light a smoke. “Not a big deal. I wasn’t the first kid, and I won’t be the last.”

She sets down the cat gently, parting some of the larger ones to give it access to the bowls. “Is that why you take care of Jo Jo? So that she doesn’t have to go through what you went through?”

After the day I had, I’m not in the mood for her analysis, mostly because I don’t need to hear my past repeated back to me. For years, I pretended it didn’t exist, but Mickey has the uncanny ability to bring shit up I’ve been shoving down like she was there with me.

“Forget I ever said shit.”

She cringes. “That’s not really possible. Not with me. Good memory and all.”

Right. “Fine, then pretend like I didn’t say anything.”

She