Demon Hunting with a Dixie Deb - Lexi George Page 0,124

would be heady and sweet. Unable to resist, Grim lowered his head and kissed her.

“Then I should like another,” he murmured against her mouth. “And another and another. Someplace romantic.”

Grim was not sure what that meant, exactly, but he intended to follow Evan’s instructions to the letter. Anything that involved Sassy’s happiness required his utmost attention.

“Romantic is wherever you are.” Sassy pressed closer, molding her curves against Grim. Her hair and skin began to shimmer. “I vote we start with the master bedroom. After that, we can move to the other rooms in the house.”

Grim lifted her in his arms, his heart and blood singing. “Your plan has merit. We will start where you suggest.”

Striding into the bedroom with his love in his arms, he did just that.

A Dalvahni warrior is true to his word.

Chapter Thirty-Six

A door slammed, followed by the heavy tread of footsteps down the hall, and Mr. Houston stomped into Sassy’s office.

“Damn band saw’s busted again,” he announced. “Third time this week.”

Sassy looked up from her computer. “What now?”

“Nail in one of the logs.” Houston seethed with frustration. “Call the saw file.”

“Right. I’m on it.”

Two minutes later, Sassy hung up the phone. “He’s at a mill in Washington County. It will be a couple of hours before he gets here.”

“Great,” Houston said. “Just great. We’re shorthanded and now this. What else can happen?”

Sassy flung up a hand in warning. “Please. That’s not a question you ask around here.”

A series of incidents had plagued the mill in recent weeks. Conveyor belts stopped working. Planers and edgers went on the fritz. The chipper malfunctioned. Trucks got stuck or broke down.

And Fran the hormonal saw had lived up to her reputation as a steel cold bitch.

To add to Houston’s frustration, they were three men short. One had been injured when a gang blade edger kicked back a piece of wood, breaking his collarbone. Another sliced open his hand trying to unclog the chipper. The third landed in the hospital following an unfortunate run-in with a yellow jacket nest.

Poor Grady Roberts had swelled up like a balloon.

On the plus side, Houston had agreed to rehire Burke and Furr, on one condition. Furr was to keep a lid on the doom and gloom. No more talk about curses or ghost hounds.

So far, Eddie had kept his mouth shut, though it couldn’t have been easy. Furr was a demonoid. He had the purple eyes to prove it. His supernatural genetics probably had something to do with his ability to see ghosts, and Trey haunted the mill on a regular basis. With every appearance by the ghost hound, something went south. Regular as clockwork.

Sassy would dearly love to put a bug in her brother’s ear . . . if she could catch him. But Trey was a hit-and-run spook. The ghost dog flickered into view and disruption followed. Fran was a favorite target. The Dalmatian made his presence known and the saw choked on a bit of metal or got snagged in the wheels.

Sassy understood Trey’s obsession with that particular piece of equipment. Fran had been the instrument of their father’s death and Trey had been forced to watch. If it were up to Sassy, she’d close the place and turn Fran in for scrap. Personally.

Not an option, though; people depended on her for their livelihood.

A new band saw was on order. Sassy hoped Trey would lose interest in the replacement. But like it or not, Fran was a necessary evil for the time being.

Houston noticed Grim leaning against the wall, and scowled. “You live here or something?”

Grim folded his arms across his massive chest. He could stand like that for hours, immobile as a rock, keeping watch over Sassy while she worked.

“I stay near Sassy.” Grim stared straight ahead.

“Newlyweds,” Houston said, and stomped back out.

Though there’d been no sign of the witch, Sassy’s insistence that Grim’s continued presence at the mill was unnecessary had fallen on deaf ears.

“I go where you go,” Grim had said, and that was that.

Secretly, Sassy was relieved, and not because of the witch. The freshly hewn trees lying in oozing piles and the sharp tangy smell of cut wood brought bile to her throat. And the sounds . . . The shriek of the saws as they bit into the wood was torture. Grim’s presence eased her physical distress. To his credit, he did not urge her to quit, instead he used his magical abilities to buffer the toxic effects of the mill. At best, it was a