I frowned. "Do you mean humans?"
He nodded, still smiling.
"I carry a badge; it’s sort of my job to care about them."
"First, let’s be very clear. If anything happens to me, then your people die."
"What people? You mean the people in the restaurant?"
"No, but knowing you care does make it easier." He nodded a little behind me. "It’s a visual."
"If I even feel you move too much, I will just pull this trigger." The lioness in me snarled at the air, and the edge of it trickled out between my lips. It made the threat better, but it was not a good sign for my control. One problem at a time, Anita, one problem at a time. Talking to myself wasn’t a good sign, either, but sometimes using my own name reminded me that I wasn’t the beast, but the person.
"I believe you," he said, voice dropping lower. "I will sit very, very still, kitten."
I would have protested the nickname, but I had called him kitty first. I turned and found Ahsan almost at our table. He smiled, thinking I was looking for him, and in a way I was, because there was a second bad guy behind him. He had a blond skater’s cut, complete with a wedge of bangs that covered his right eye completely. He wore an oversized tank top and baggy shorts, which could hide a lot of weapons. How did I know he was a bad guy? Maybe it was the gun in his hand that he hid under the oversized shirt. The shirt was so big it hung off one shoulder and showed off that his upper body hit the gym a lot.
If I’d had concentration left for it, I’d have tried to taste whether he was shapeshifter or human. If he was shifter he was trying to hide his energy, or the energy coming off his friend drowned him out. Either way, he was following behind Ahsan, and he had his gun out. He was wearing exercise gloves like for biking or weight lifting, the ones that covered all the front of the hand. Leather gloves in this heat—seriously paranoid, or seriously had his prints in the crime-stopper databases. Either way, I got to watch him follow the waiter to "our" table. The threat was no longer subtle.
"Nick," the man at the table called out, in a happy voice, "thought I’d have to eat lunch alone."
The second man grinned at us both, and it reminded me of Jason’s grin. It even filled his blue eyes with laughter. He was damn near six feet and not built like Jason at all, but there was something about him that reminded me; maybe it was a meaner edge of that urge Jason always had to fight off, to keep pushing a situation. That was not a good personality trait in someone with a gun.
Ahsan made room for Nick to take the seat nearest the waiter, so that he and the first guy were sitting across from each other, and so Nick’s gun was still very close to Ahsan. I still hadn’t figured out how to sign the check one-handed, I couldn’t keep the gun pointed at both of them anyway. I’d gone from having some tactical advantage to none. Shit.
Ahsan had pity on me and held the pieces of paper while I signed, and I even managed to give him a generous tip. I mean, if I was going to get him shot it was the least I could do. His fingers brushed my hand, and I realized he thought I’d given him an excuse to touch me. Normally, it would have bugged me, but I had bigger problems than his fingers tracing over my hand. I even let him take my hand and give it a little squeeze. God knows what he might have said, but he glanced at my two "coworkers" and just wasted one more really good smile on me. I tried to return it, but wasn’t sure I managed. His smile didn’t fade, though; maybe he assumed that I didn’t want to show too much around my "coworkers"?
"He’s cute," Nick said, in a voice that matched the hair and the clothes, but his hand, under the table, was pointing at me. I didn’t have to see the gun to know it was there, and that he’d hit me somewhere between stomach and chest.