the food was repugnant to Midas.
Thinking it over, I picked up a cold rib and nibbled even as my stomach cut into the button on my jeans.
The shift in Midas’s focus from his plate to my hands startled a flinch out of me.
“Do I have sauce on my chin?” I collected a paper napkin out of the bag and started blotting. “Cheeks? Nose? Cleavage?”
“No.” He resumed eating, but he kept glaring at the bone I set down from the corner of his eye.
Yep.
Definitely male nonsense.
Figuring this was as good a time as any, I made Ford’s pitch. “We need to get ahead of the killer instead of always playing catch-up.”
He lowered his fork. “How do you propose we do that?”
“We need to draw out the killer.”
His very sharp teeth made short work of his toast. “You’re not acting as bait.”
Tapping the rib bone with my fingertip just to watch him scowl, I said, “I was thinking of Bonnie.”
“Oh.” He sipped his water. “She’s not acting as bait either.”
“Why would I be bait?” I licked the sauce off my finger, pretending not to notice him watch the motion with painful intensity, an almost tangible curiosity. “Bonnie is who he wants.”
“He’s following her, which means he’s noticed you. He’s seen you two travel together the past few days, and he’s aware you’ve been rooming together, which is likely why he broke into your apartment. He wants to know what you are to her. Odds are good he wanted to determine if you’re leverage that can be used against her.”
“Classic meet me at the woodshed near the stump with an ax sticking out of it or your friend gets it?”
Midas set the last corner of his toast aside. “You watch horror movies too, don’t you?”
“Oh, come on.” I stole another napkin. “Everyone knows there are ax murderers in the woods. That’s why people leave axes in stumps, ripe for the plucking, in the first place. They’re feeding the local wildlife.”
“I wouldn’t worry about the mark.” Midas wiped his hands clean. “No one will smell it over your geek.”
“I see you’ve been talking to Ford about me.” I wrinkled my nose. “Did he braid your hair while you gossiped?”
Midas self-consciously raked his fingers through the wavy length. “No?”
The only thing that stopped me from teasing him more was the fact his hair was obviously a hot-button topic for him. Looking the way he did, I wondered if he got challenged more often than others in his position might. I wondered if packmates mistook his reserve for weakness. Then I wondered how, if they noticed his arms, and all of them must have, they could ever think he was less than a survivor.
Whatever happened to him, he wore the experience in silvery scars down his forearms. Just because they didn’t put the story into actual words on his skin, it didn’t silence the message. If anything, it amplified his mystique. He hadn’t snapped under pressure. That much was evident. He was still functional, still able to laugh, to enjoy friendships, to…
I don’t know what he was doing with me. Not flirting, not courting, not anything I could put a name to, but it was something all the same. Otherwise, he would have left me under Ford’s supervision. Midas didn’t strike me as the micromanaging type. He didn’t appear to be the managing type at all.
Power and leadership abilities weren’t the same thing. Plenty of gwyllgi were formidable. That didn’t mean they needed to be in a position where they made decisions that affected their smallest and weakest members. Midas, through his concern for the latter, might cripple the growth of the pack if he led unchecked. He would forever be looking behind him, circling back, when it was up to the alpha to forge new paths, blaze new trails.
“You’re staring.” Midas shifted in his chair. “Do you want to braid my hair?”
Gears in my head ground and crunched, but it didn’t compute. “Are you offering?”
“No.” A smile lifted the right corner of his mouth. “I’m not.”
“Meanie.”
“Watch your language.” He gathered his dishes and stood. “What if there were children nearby?”
“They would laugh at a woman my age name-calling like I’m still in kindergarten.”
A text chime prompted me to check my phone, and I did to make sure Ford wasn’t nudging me.
“Bishop got a hit on a rental house on Braddock Street Southwest.” I read down to what flagged his attention. “The agent in charge of the listing disappeared two weeks ago.” I kept going, expecting