I couldn’t remember the last time anyone cooked for me, and my eyes prickled as it grew a little harder to breathe. I ducked to pick up the cat and heaved him up, grunting with the effort of lifting his massive body. Dodge smirked as he glanced back. “He’s a work-out, right?”
“He’s a precious baby,” I said, nuzzling into the cat’s fur. Cricket purred louder and stretched out in my arms, eyeing the pile of ham that still sat on the counter.
“He’s an asshole,” Dodge said. He pointed the spatula at Cricket and shook his head. “And a terrorist. He’s just using you to get to the food.”
I rolled my eyes, enjoying the kitty snuggles, and opened my mouth to chide Dodge for being wrong. And then the cat launched out of my arms, skidded across the counter, and snatched up at least a pound of deli ham. I stared in horror as he disappeared into the living room, a sudden shout betraying he’d been spotted with his ill-gotten booty.
“Told you,” Dodge said under his breath, though he was smiling.
I shuffled over to stand behind him, and slowly leaned against his back, inhaling the scent of his detergent. “I’m going to blame that on you.”
“I figured.” He reached around and patted my butt with his free hand, then pointed at one of the cupboards. “Plates, babe.”
It felt so domestic, so normal. Like a relationship. Is that what he wanted? What he expected? Was it what I wanted?
“Persephone?” he asked, voice quiet. His free arm snaked to once more caress my back, to hold me closer against his back. “You okay?”
“Just tired,” I said, trying to sound like I wasn’t facing a major personal crisis. I straightened and retrieved the plates, holding them as he slid some scrambled ham and eggs, toast, and hashbrowns onto them. I laughed and tried to pull my plate away before he filled it with a small mountain of food. “Oh my God, I can’t eat all that. Stop. That’s enough.”
He grumbled but grudgingly took some of the mess back onto his plate. Dodge fished utensils out of a drawer and tilted his head toward the living room. “We can eat at the table while the detective says what she needs to say. Then we can go back upstairs to nap.”
And he waggled his eyebrows at me to make it clear that napping wasn’t what he had in mind.
At least I was smiling – and still blushing – as we went into the other room. Dodge pulled out a chair for me at the table and got me set up before going over to talk to the detective and others still in the living room. There was still laughter and teasing, but it sounded good-natured enough. There wasn’t anything shameful in sleeping with him. We were both adults, we were both single, and we had a hell of a lot of fun. It didn’t matter that I’d only known him for about three days. They weren’t in a position to judge.
But that didn’t keep my cheeks from burning as the detective strode up to the table, followed by Deirdre, Evershaw, and the guy who looked a lot like Evershaw, Todd. None of them commented on my red face, at least, though Evershaw didn’t bother to wipe away his stupid grin. Dodge sat next to me and lay his arm across the back of my chair, spreading out and also trying to pull me closer into the circle of his protection. It was oddly possessive, especially when the people at the table were all his friends.
O’Brien, at least, remained professional. She flipped open her notebook and studied a few pages, then looked up at the other people at the table. “I’ve been looking about. This sanctuary is definitely not what it seems on the surface. I can connect the financial backing to a holding company owned by a subsidiary of some other company that eventually connects to Bridger. The men who work there, particularly that Geordie fellow, are also connected to various organized crime families. There is nothing to draw them all together, but they are all spiders sitting on the same web.”
I shivered.
The detective looked at me directly, and the intensity of her gaze made my heart beat loud and slow in my ears. “You should probably plan to lay low for quite some time, and stay close to the pack so they can protect you. I cannot say there is a specific threat to you