told Hunter she’d been at the breaking point, and if Grace’s offer of help didn’t pan out, she might well and truly snap.
“Of course we can!” Danny told her, glancing around the room to make sure everybody was on board.
Everybody was definitely on board. Hunter knew he, for one, was growing bored. Their last caper—or rather their first caper, the one that had reunited Felix and Danny after a ten-year separation—had been nearly two months earlier, and Chicago was not quite out of the volatile spring season that tended to put everybody’s teeth on edge.
Hunter could swear the occasional hits of bright sunshine brought out the extra-rank BO in every man he passed. That must have been it, because he hadn’t gotten laid since… well, since Paulie.
Either way, Hunter was pretty sure it was all Grace’s fault that nobody in the damned city smelled good enough to fuck except the dreamy, otherworldly man sitting on the couch, making his long-boned hands swim like otters through the air.
Danny smiled at them all beatifically, as though thinking they were all the sweetest children, wanting to help their sister find a lost toy.
Given Hunter had no idea how many laws they were about to break, he still couldn’t resist that tug of praise, of gentle approval, that Danny, Felix, and Julia seemed to emanate. It didn’t matter that he’d been raised by good heartland people who still liked hearing from him at Christmas but would never know much else about him. What mattered was that these people seemed to think he’d done a good job raising himself, and he was a valuable member of their team.
He didn’t get it, and he wasn’t sure he ever would.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to take one more hit of that gentle approval-flavored Kool-Aid and love it.
“What do you have in mind, Uncle Danny?” Josh asked, his head cocked as though he were taking notes.
“Well, some reconnaissance first,” Danny said thoughtfully, looking over his shoulder for Felix’s nod. Tall, blond, as noble as a lion, Felix Salinger ran a highly successful cable news network. But Hunter had seen him manipulate people like chess pieces and had to admit the guy, like Danny, had the heart and soul of a true con man. Danny turned his attention back to Tabitha, but not without first giving Felix a secret little smile that made Hunter’s chest ache.
They were a little older than the rest of the crew—old enough for Felix to have claimed to have fathered Josh at an appallingly young age—but their love was apparently eternal.
“So, darling,” Danny said, his voice dripping reassurance. “When is your grandfather’s next trip?”
“Next week,” Tabitha whispered. “I know it’s got to be for Sergei because our show is so close to performance date. He’s not taking any dancers this time—there haven’t been traveling performances since his uncle died. But Grandfather is leaving us in the charge of an assistant director and the assistant choreographer right before showtime. It’s… he wouldn’t do that if he didn’t have to.”
“Hm. Bad form to leave the cast and crew to themselves before opening night, isn’t it?” Danny frowned when Josh nodded the affirmative. “What kinds of threats is Sergei making to Artur to keep him toeing the line?”
Tabitha swallowed and gave Grace a sideways look. “He’s threatening to set Grandfather up to take the fall. He’d be imprisoned, and the Conservatory would be shut down. I think… the way Sergei touched me that night….” She shuddered. “I think there’s been some innuendo about hurting me, and maybe some of the other dancers.” Her glance at Grace turned apologetic. “I was dancing so badly last night because Grandfather told me to tell you to watch your step. He was trying to laugh about it—don’t walk under ladders, stay away from black… cats….”
She trailed off as the two house mascots came chasing into the downstairs den in a tumble of playful black fur.
Abruptly she giggled.
“Oops,” she said, her cheeks dimpling into a smile that Hunter could appreciate. He scooped up the dervish nearest himself and scratched it behind its ears. Cary Grant—the older cat who’d been Chuck’s originally but had been adopted by the house—drooped automatically into an ecstatic purr.
Without a word, Hunter walked to the couch and dropped the creature into Tabitha’s lap. She cooed and started to rub the cat’s ears, and the cat—shameless attention whore that he was—went in for the whisker rub against her palm.
Tabitha’s desperation, her tremulous voice, her fear, melted to