to rest on my hip. “But I also think I want to stick around to find out.”
I’ve never been the lovey-dovey type. I don’t go around holding hands or cuddling up or anything, but I smiled and relaxed, taking a moment to rest my head against his chest. I briefly realized I could possibly get used to it. “That’s a good answer.”
“I rehearsed all night,” he joked. “I also have a backup, in case that one didn’t work.”
“Which is?”
“ ‘No man, especially one who looks like me, is ever going to kick you out of bed before he has to,’ ” he replied.
I crossed my arms in mock seriousness. “Not bad, but it lacks a certain something. And I don’t know, for someone who was so resistant of my charms to begin with . . .”
“I’m beginning to see them in a different light,” he said.
He ran his hand down along my butt, and I resisted the urge to throw him on the bed and have my way with him. Barely. “We should probably go check in.”
“The EHJ can wait,” Cyrus replied, his hands now drifting under my shirt.
“They’ve waited twenty-four hours!”
“Then another won’t kill them. It’s not like we’re part of the team, anyway. Not officially. They don’t need us to fight Hacker and the Dragon cult; they just use us when it’s convenient. Did you notice how they never bring me along, even though I’m always trying to be useful? Now, please let me get my groping you out of the way so I don’t mess up and do it in front of your father and get myself killed.”
He continued to touch me in ways that would indeed get a man murdered by a parent. At least, by a parent who cared. “D-don’t mention him right now,” I gasped.
“If you want me to shut up, you’re going to have to make me,” Cyrus teased.
I did. I kissed him hard, stopping his mouth, and I realized all of our getting dressed had been in vain. But he was right: the EHJ could wait just a bit longer, and neither he nor I was a hero. We had slightly more realistic priorities.
“Nice of you to join us again,” Paul growled as we popped into the EHJ headquarters.
“I kept trying to call you on the transmitter,” Mindy said. “You just dropped out of existence!”
“Got waylaid by cultists,” I explained.
“I saved her.” Cyrus spoke in a deadpan. “There was an epic battle. You should have been there.”
“I heard that part,” Mindy retorted. “Then there was nothing.”
“We went back to my place,” I said, wincing at the truth implied by that statement. “The cultists tried to follow us, and I had to make us untraceable for a while.”
“You could have gotten word to us somehow,” Paul said.
“If we could have, we would have,” Cyrus interjected. “The only way we could get away from the cultists was to just get away from everyone.”
“Look, in case you’ve forgotten, I don’t work for you,” I snapped at Paul. I didn’t need Cyrus trying to smooth things over. “I don’t owe you anything. I don’t have to call in and tell you where I’m at. I’m not your teenage daughter breaking curfew, for God’s sake!”
“No. You’re not my daughter.” Paul shook his head. “Thank God. We’ve got way too much other pressing business to deal with your lack of empathy.” He turned on his heel and walked away.
I stared after him, not sure what to say.
Mindy cleared her throat. “All I could tell him was that someone named London set a trap for you with the Dragon’s people because some other mysterious power wants you. Oh, and that some kid named Dylan who you never saw as a threat before is working with the Dragon. He got that girl London pretty quick and she’s been cooling her heels in high-security jail ever since. He’s been trying to track down Dylan ever since.”
“Why would Paul care so much?”
Mindy gave me a look like I was a dunce. After a moment she said, “I was talking about Wesley.”
The reaction hit me strangely. Was Mindy saying that the Reincarnist was upset, thinking I’d been horribly killed, and that he was trying to track down the perpetrators? Was that why Paul was giving me a hard time for not checking in, saying I lacked empathy? Because I had unduly upset my father?
Mindy continued: “Thank God we called Luke and Kate back, because it seems like all hell’s broken loose since—or, just