smiled. “You’ve given me a home and a devil cat. What do you need to make your dreams come true? How can I help?”
She cleared her throat. “Maybe we could start doing more stuff in the art community? Like, I don’t know, gallery openings or something?”
“Done.”
Lulu looked at me, brows lifted. “Seriously?”
I shrugged. “It’s snacks and champagne on someone else’s dime. If the art’s good, you can enjoy it. If it’s not, you can mock it.”
“A cruelly practical approach.”
“That’s me,” I said. I sat up again, looked at her. “I’m sorry if we don’t spend enough time doing Lulu stuff. There has been a lot of my nonsense since I came back. Not caused by me, but I end up in the middle of it.”
“You put yourself in the middle of it.”
My first instinct was to respond with a sharp, defensive denial. But she was right. “I do. I have to,” I admitted. “I can’t just stand around and let other people do the dirty work.”
“I know. You’re good people, Lis.” She sat up, scrubbed hands over her face, looked at me. “It’s just damned inconvenient sometimes.”
I smiled. “I can’t argue with that. We good?”
She nodded. “We’re good. You think Benji would let us have a party here?”
“No, not if you call him Benji.”
“Lassie?”
“Quit while you’re ahead, Lulu.” I gave her a hug. “Does going to those paint-your-own-pottery places count as artistic? I’ve always wanted to do that.”
“Sure. If your pottery turns out good enough.”
I was getting judged on everything this week.
* * *
* * *
I walked through the conservatory, a narrow room of framed glass with pretty rattan seating, to the stone patio outside, where several chairs fanned around a stone firepit. Connor wasn’t at either, so I took the path along the ivied wall that bounded the yard and found him on a blanket in the middle of the long rectangle of grass.
I’d already pulled off my boots, and the grass was deliciously chill beneath my feet.
Connor lay on his back, hand beneath his head, gaze on the sky—and the few stars he’d be able to see through the haze of Chicago’s lights.
He turned his head to look at me. “She’s okay?”
I nodded. “She will be. She’s getting used to my working for the OMB and dating and then there’s this house. I think she’s feeling . . . left out. She needs to find her people, and thought she had with Mateo.”
“Alexei would be happy to entertain her.”
“I know. And she does, too, believe me. I think she needs more time with me right now. More time on Lulu activities.”
“Which would be?”
“I think I’ll be painting mugs.”
He blinked. “If that’s a euphemism, I don’t know what for.”
I sat cross-legged on the blanket beside him. “Not a euphemism. Artsy stuff.”
“Ah.”
“I saw the books,” I said, when we were nearly eye to eye again.
His brows lifted. “Books?”
I poked him in the shoulder. “The ones in the front room. About vampires.”
“Ah.”
I brushed a lock of dark hair from his temple. “I think it was very thoughtful. And I look forward to lengthy discussions about the order in which ranked vampires can enter a room.”
“Not in a million years.”
“Speaking of millions,” I said, grateful for the segue, “can I ask you a personal question?”
His grin was wicked. “Of course.”
“Not that kind of personal question.” But still, very personal. And awkward. I gestured around us. “How did you pay for all this?”
His brows lifted in surprise; whatever he’d expected me to ask, it hadn’t been that. “With money?”
“I mean—I can’t believe I haven’t asked this—I assume you get paid by the Pack for working at NAC or . . . ?”
“Pack members get a portion of the profits from NAC Industries and the businesses that make it up. They’ve been mostly very successful. Our family’s share is larger because we put up the initial investment money.”
I could buy that, and knew they operated several businesses, but his individual sliver of Keene family profits still didn’t seem to be enough for all this. “And?”
“And,” he said flatly. “Other means.”
I thought of the leather, the bikes, and what little I knew of old-school motorcycle clubs said they ran heavy in drug and protection rackets.
“That’s an ignorant stereotype,” he said, apparently having read the look on my face. “And no, I didn’t use those other means to buy the house. The funds were entirely legitimate.”
“From the profits of NAC Industries?”
To my absolute surprise, faint pink rose across his cheekbones. “And other sources in my account.”