to brush a kiss across her temple. “I tried not to be too long.”
Ania joined them as well. “I really enjoyed meeting Flambé,” she said. “Thanks for bringing her over, Sevastyan. She knows so much about plants. Indoor and outdoor.”
“I had a good time,” Flambé added.
“Good. You look like a sleepy kitten.” He wrapped his arm around her and brought her under his shoulder, up close to his body, a claiming move, a bit proprietary, waiting for her to stiffen or object. She did neither, but she didn’t settle or relax against him either.
“Thanks, Ania. Flambé is important to me.” Sevastyan wanted to make that very clear. “She had a traumatic day.”
“That bastard hit her,” Ania acknowledged. “She told me.”
Before Flambé could protest the topic of conversation, Sevastyan tightened his arm around her, pressing her front to his side. “I don’t want her thinking about him anymore. He’s my problem now. She’s going to be designing the landscaping for the property. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with. Since she’ll be staying with me, I’ll get to see her process. She’s going to be working hands-on. Maybe you’d like to come over and watch sometime, Ania?”
“Would you mind, Flambé?” Ania asked, excitement edging her voice. “I can bring your crew Evangeline’s baked goods. Trust me, I won’t make them myself. I nearly burned down her bakery trying to help her once and learned my lesson when it came to that kind of baking crap. It isn’t as easy as it looks. She even had the dough made up.”
“Really?” Flambé tried to keep a straight face but couldn’t. She burst into laughter.
Sevastyan didn’t make the mistake even though both women were laughing. He’d seen his cousins fall for the same bullshit over and over and get into trouble. He just looked down at the two women impassively. Ania sobered up first, looked up at him and rolled her eyes.
“Don’t be all judgy, Sevastyan. I know you want to laugh.”
He didn’t say a word. He simply turned toward the door, taking Flambé with him. At the last moment, he remembered to keep his strides shorter to allow her to keep up. They headed out to the small Jeep he had purchased so that it could fit in the tunnel he’d renovated, allowing him to drive between the two properties unseen.
“I like her. I’d never had a chance to meet Ania Dover. She was always working or taking care of her father. We only went out a couple of times when her father wanted more trees planted. That was before the accident and then the robbery.”
He settled her in the Jeep. “You do know what happened with her mother and grandparents wasn’t really an accident, right? Someone deliberately ran them off the road and killed them. The same people tried to murder her father and make it look like a robbery.” He walked around the hood of the car to slide behind the wheel. He really detested telling her the truth, but mates didn’t lie to each other. Even if some did, he wasn’t built that way. He expected her to trust him. In order to do that, he had to tell her the truth, no matter how difficult it was.
By the silence, he could tell she hadn’t known or even suspected. He glanced at her as he put the vehicle in motion and drove it straight toward the entrance to the underground passage.
“Is that true?” Flambé put one hand to her throat defensively. “Why would anyone target the Dover family, Sevastyan? They’ve been around for generations. That’s not right. Was it because they’re a shifter family?”
“Unfortunately, it’s more complicated than that.”
Flambé rubbed her temples as if she might have a headache. “I don’t understand why people are so ugly to one another.”
“I don’t either, baby. Just put your head back and rest. I’ll get us home and you can go to sleep.” He kept his voice pitched low and soothing.
“If I fall asleep and don’t have a chance to tell you, thank you for dinner and stopping by my house to get my clothes and my own garden tools and laptop. Things like that are important to me.”
“Naturally. If we couldn’t have gone ourselves, I would have sent for them. It was just nicer for you to choose what you wanted to bring with you.” He wanted the chance to see her home. To see how she lived and what she surrounded herself with. Whatever made Flambé comfortable was