Seriously?
I turned, tossed my keys on the table beside the front door, pulled my gun and holster out of my belt at the back, set it on the table and moved to the left into my living room.
A huge, tan leather duffle was sitting, gapping open on my couch.
Fuck.
Fuck!
Seriously?
My eyes moved around the room and I saw the ashtrays had been cleaned, the beer bottles and dirty dishes cleared away and even the throws on the couches folded. My eyes moved up and I noted the wonky, hot pink, star-shaped fairy lights I had wrapped around my mantelpiece in disarray had been straightened and artfully draped.
They looked awesome.
Shit.
I stalked the other way, through my dining room, which still had the mess of magazines, newspapers and mail that had accumulated for the last month (maybe two) on the top of my dining room table. I stalked through the room even though, over the opened bar that delineated it from the kitchen, I saw Creed at my stove, his back to me.
“Uh, partner, I’m thinking I missed a memo,” I stated.
He twisted at the waist to look at me.
“You feed your cat once a day?” he asked and I stopped opposite the bar and planted my hands on my hips.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“She says two,” Creed informed me.
Shit. He spoke cat. This was not good. Gun knew all my secrets.
“Don’t let her bullshit you,” I ordered. “Though, if she’s been good, when I get home she gets five cat treats.”
“What constitutes bein’ good?”
“She’s breathing.”
He threw back his head and burst out laughing, the heady gorgeous sound of it filling the space, bouncing off the walls, slamming into me so hard, it made my legs get weak.
Therefore, I stalked to the fridge to get a beer.
“You like ziti?” Creed asked as I yanked open the fridge door.
“Yeah, I like ziti,” I answered, closed the door coming out with a beer in my hand and went on. “What I don’t like is your bag on my couch. What’s the deal?”
He continued to stir sauce as his eyes came to me. “The deal is, we got a job to do and to do it we gotta get close with zero time to find that. So we gotta find the time to find that.”
“How ‘bout I eat your ziti and we put together a puzzle and find it before you leave and find a hotel room?”
“Too late,” he replied. “Went over to meet Charlene and the kids, tell them I’m here, gonna be here awhile, I know about her situation and I’m on call if she needs anything. She seemed excited and not just ‘cause she needs the help. Apparently, she’s worried about your way of life and thinks you’re gonna die lonely. Also, her bathroom faucet is dripping. Something’s rattling in her car. And that motherfucker who left her didn’t switch the storm windows out to screens before he hauled ass, it’s hot and she can’t afford to run the air conditioning. So tomorrow, I’m gonna be busy.”
I stood completely still, staring at him and waiting while I made the superhuman effort to keep my head from exploding.
This took a while and Creed kept stirring the sauce even though his eyes didn’t leave me.
Once I ascertained my head wasn’t going to explode or, more aptly, I wasn’t going to attack and indulge in an attempt to break his neck, I whispered, “That was not cool.”
“I work and I don’t f**k around when I do. There is no cool and uncool in a job. You do what you gotta do,” he returned.