Shadow of Doubt - Hailey Edwards Page 0,39

while the third one closed the flap behind them.

“They’re watching each other’s backs,” I murmured to Ford. “There are empty tents, but they’re crammed in together.”

“Lee.” He placed a hand on my arm. “Violence is not the way to fix this.”

Until he touched me, jarred me out of my own head, I hadn’t felt the comforting weight of steel in my hand, and that terrified me.

Laughter jarred the shadow unspooling from my feet as Ambrose relished my fear.

Laugh all you want. I rallied before he gained the upper hand. I go down, you go down with me.

Thankfully, we didn’t share a mental bond, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t catch the drift of my thoughts or emotions. Hard to miss when he was bound to me. The reminder of just how tight we were tied sobered him into quiet reflection, which I trusted about as much as the aforementioned lion with a steak on my palm.

“You’re right.” Done playing with Ambrose, I turned my attention back to Ford and set out for the truck. “Let’s go.” I waited for him to get in the cab before I hit him with my request. “Give me Midas’s number.” Fine, it was more of a demand. “Please.”

“I can’t do that.” He had the grace to sound sorry about it. “Midas guards his privacy.”

“Then take me to him.”

“I’m not his PA. She’s drooling on your thigh. I have no idea where Midas is tonight.”

“Take a wild guess.”

“Probably on a date.” He shrugged. “The alpha wants him mated sooner rather than later.”

The slight hitch in my breath pissed me off that much more. “Where does he take the candidates?”

That’s how he would think of them, I was sure. A man who avoided touch, limited his contact with women to self-defense classes hosted at various shelters, wasn’t going to view them as mate material. He was going to see them as a duty to be fulfilled, one of the terms of his new position. All he had to do was decide which particular cross he wanted to bear.

“Joelle’s.”

“I’m hungry. How about you?”

“I could eat,” he said with a laugh. “Might as well make it good. Once Tisdale catches wind we invited ourselves to dinner, this could be our last meal.”

Seven

Midas shredded his buttery roll into pieces so small he would need a toothpick to spear one into his mouth, not that eating was on his mind. He had trouble choking down more than a drink on these dates, and he made a point to keep it nonalcoholic.

“What do you think?”

The voice, as buttery soft as the roll, perked his appetite just as much. “About?”

Forcing a smile, Rebecca took a breath. “Where did I lose you?”

At the beginning.

Then again in the middle.

And, oh yeah. Also there at the end.

A commotion at the front of the restaurant spared him from admitting he hadn’t paid attention to her since the moment they sat down except to make sure she ordered whatever she wanted from the menu, regardless of the price, as payment for enduring his company for a painful couple of hours.

A blonde tornado with a brewing storm in her eyes whirled past the startled hostess, all bouncing curls and attitude, and aimed her path of destruction right at him.

For the first time all night, he found his interest piqued, and he regretted that the woman across from him could tell. More than that, he resented she would rather grit her teeth through the interruption than lose her shot at landing him.

He wasn’t a damn whale.

Hadley wore jeans with blood crusted on her thigh in a sharp line. She must have cleaned one of the twin blades she often carried on her pants, which made him curious who had pissed her off enough to earn the bite of her swords. Sweat made her tee cling to her, and corgi hair stuck to her like glitter.

Dodging the hostess, who was now calling for security, Hadley cut through the restaurant, ignoring the looks, the whispers, the pointing fingers, and slammed her palms down on his table hard enough to rattle the silverware. “We need to talk.”

“I’m on a date,” he stated the obvious.

“You haven’t touched your food except to play with it. Your water glass is mostly full, and I’m betting it’s your first of the night. I don’t know why you haven’t turned to booze since you’re so obviously bored out of your mind, but I get that you can’t risk getting drunk without waking up mated to goddess only