“Nope. I’m not doing anything that means leaving this bed before morning.”
“I’m quite sure it is morning.”
“Don’t care. Not moving.”
“See? I told you this one was an improvement over the sofa bed.”
He snorted. “It’s not the fucking bed, you gorgeous dope. Agh,” he added when she poked him.
“Thanks for indulging me.”
“Anytime. That’s literal, just so you know. Day or night. Winter or summer. Upside down or right-side up. Northern Hemisphere or Southern Hemisphere.”
“David, you say the loveliest… Good God, I have beard-burn everywhere,” she marveled. “Even on my elbows! How the hell did you manage that?”
He laughed. “Don’t remember. I haven’t made out like that since I was a teenager.”
“It’s been a while for me, too.”
“That’s…almost impossible to believe,” he confessed.
“I’m picky,” she said simply. “Thanks for breaking your I-won’t-date-Annette rule.” She yawned. “However temporarily. Actually, this isn’t a date. So your rule is still intact.” She was sweaty and sleepy, but the intense sexual frustration was starting to ebb just a bit and she had a belly full of milk and the dead were dead, nothing would change that, but every corpse at that table would have wanted her to move on. Some days it was easier, that was all.
“Annette? What are you saying?”
“Shhhh. Sleeping.”
“Okay, but I don’t have a rule about—”
“Talk ’bout it t’morrow.”
“Wow. You fall asleep really fast. But just so you know, I don’t have any rules against dating you. And if I was dumb enough to have one, I’d have broken it ages ago. Okay? Annette? Oh hell…”
Chapter 27
Warm. Warm and comfortable and fragrant and luscious. What kind of pillow is this? I’m buying a dozen. Oh, it had everything; it was soft and yielding and snoring, all the things any red-blooded werebear wanted in a—
He cracked open an eye.
It was not a pillow.
It was Annette.
Which was even better.
How long can I stay like this with her? I hate to wake her up and ruin the… Ouch.
“Ten more minutes,” she mumbled, then smacked him on the arm again with a small, closed fist. He had a vague memory of her saying something about needing a new alarm clock… Was it just yesterday? Christ, how many did she go through a week?
He also had a vague memory of Annette having a nightmare, going to the kitchen, guzzling something (the gulps were pretty loud), then returning and pouncing on him to initiate the hottest make-out session he’d ever had, and that included Tanya Finn the morning after senior prom. The things Annette could do with her mouth! Her ripe mouth, all soft lips hiding sharp little teeth that nibbled and kissed, and she’d had him hard and aching in about half a second, and probably not even that long. Holding back from just picking her up, slamming her on her back, shoving her knees apart with his, and burying himself inside her sweet center had taken Olympian-level willpower.
But he’d meant what he said: she could have whatever she wanted. Even if all she wanted was nothing.
And then: back to Snoresville, population Annette. Christ, just thinking about it was enough to make him want to rip the covers off, beg her for a fuck (quick, long, mercy, hate…whatever category of fuck she was up for, though he’d have to fake hate), then doing things that would forever destroy the box spring.
None of which was on the table, not least because Annette seemed to be laboring under the laughable idea that he didn’t want her. At least, that’s what he thought she’d said. It had been late, they’d been horny and exhausted, and the next thing he knew, it was the crack of eight.
He reached out and gently shook her shoulder. “Annette, it’s me. Uh, David. It’s time to get up and go back out into the world and get disillusioned all over again.”
“Don’ like this brand of clock. Makes the bed shake,” she whined. Then again with the fist: SMACK!
Jesus, my entire forearm just went numb. He moved out of smacking distance, like every alarm clock she’d ever had would’ve if they could’ve, and said, “Breakfast?”
She sat bolt upright, like a sexy Frankenstein’s monster coming to life after the electric jolt. “Nnnnnnn?” She looked around blearily and yawned. “Why does my bed smell weird? And why are you in it? And where are we? And is there bacon?”
“Ask me again when you’re all the way awake, if you still have questions. We’ll find the answers together,” he vowed, bounding out of bed and not caring how silly he sounded. “Rise and shine!”
“Good God, a morning person,” she moaned, and flopped back down.
* * *
“What in the name of all that’s…” Annette stared at her reflection and tried not to gasp in horror. She was covered in love bites; dark-purple hickeys were dotted all across her collarbone and neck and (after a quick peek beneath the nightgown) her breasts. And as the events of last night came back to her, she’d be willing to wager David was sporting a few, too. If she ever wagered. Which she did not.
What am I going to say to him? ‘Sorry about molesting you…again’? ‘Please don’t read into it’? ‘Even though I know you’re not interested, I wanted to find out what your nipples tasted like anyway’?
“It didn’t happen, it will never happen, stop trying to make it happen.”
Well, she’d ignored that and gone ahead anyway. So now what?
There was a polite rap on the bathroom door, and thank goodness, because she didn’t have an answer and welcomed a distraction. She could scent David on the other side. “It’s open.”
He stuck his head in and grinned when he saw her. “Morning.”
“It is. Yes.”
“How’d you—” He cut himself off as she turned to face him, then stepped inside, closed the door, then joined her at the mirror, showing off his own set of toothmarks and love bites.
She stared at their reflection. This is the first time we’ve shared a mirror. And a bathroom. And a bed. “This will only confuse the rumormongers,” she said, and she hadn’t been teasing but he burst out laughing anyway, and she couldn’t help smiling. If she’d overstepped, he appeared to be fine with it. Or would at least overlook it. The former was the ideal, but she’d take the latter, too. This wasn’t high school. There was no time for drama. That kind of drama, anyway. They were trailing killers, or killers were trailing them, or both
(probably both)
and nothing was more important than solving the riddle of Caro.
“You okay?” David asked, tracing a finger over the darkest hickey on her neck, which sounded like the title of a romance novel.3
“Fine. You?”
“Everything’s good on my end.”
“Good. That’s…good.” Oh my God. Reduced to single syllables. The shame of it.
David cleared his throat, which seemed to be his way of announcing “I would like to contribute to the conversation now.” Either that or he was coming down with something viral. “Listen, about—”
“If you say ‘about last night,’ I’ll get to mark off another X on my romance-cliché bingo card.”
“Regarding the events of the past evening…”
She snickered. “Nice. Listen, I’d just like to focus on the case. All right? That’s got to be our priority.”
“Okay.” His smile faded as if someone had drawn a shade over his expression. “No problem.”
“Really?”
“Of course.” He nodded. “The kids come first.”
“Right! They absolutely do. So let’s get back to it. Please tell me that the bacon I’m smelling isn’t a hallucination.”
“What bacon?” he replied, and smirked at her gasp of horror.
/> Which was followed by another gasp of horror when Annette walked into Jim and Jenn’s kitchen to see Oz Adway gently fending off Jenn’s attempts to smother him with a wet washcloth, most likely because his nose was streaming blood all over her sink.
“Well, hiya,” he said, his usual enthusiastic greeting muted by a good 60 percent.
“Good God! What happened? Your clothes are—”
“Don’t talk about it,” he groaned, and she knew why. Oz’s bespoke navy-blue suit and crisp white dress shirt were shredded and bloodstained. He was missing a shoe, and the exposed black dress sock looked like it was on its last legs (so to speak). His monthly clothing budget was larger than her car payment. This clearly
“I’ve worn this shirt once. Once!”
wounded him deeply. Not to mention the actual wounds; aside from the nose, he was a mess of contusions, and there was a gash just over his ear that might need a stitch or two.
“What happened?” she cried. “Please tell me you were doing something stupid on your own—”
“No promises.”
“—and this was not a consequence of our case.”
“Again, no promises… Argh, thank you, stop it now.” Oz all but yanked the washcloth from Jenn. “Look, I’ll just keep the rag, okay? Bleeding’s stopped. Well, mostly.”
“You said you got hit by a car!” Jenn protested. “You might have a concussion!”
“Who cares? Thank God it was me and not my car.”
“You’re definitely concussed.”
“He’s not concussed,” Annette interjected. “He just has a lot of feelings about his car.” To Oz: “What happened?”
She’d known Oz was returning for them. He’d appointed himself their chauffeur, God knew why, and not only dropped them off at Jenn and Jim’s but also promised to return the next morning.
“I got a message from my contact at Citigroup—I’d talked to him about shell corporations. At least, I thought it was from him. Figured I’d meet with him, then come get you. But only one of those things happened.”
“Let me guess,” David said. He’d come up silently behind Annette and laid a hand on her waist, listening, then moved it before anyone could see. Kind of like how she’d held his hand during Oz’s shell corporation lecture. She’d let go before David could get the wrong idea. Because that’s what this week was: day after day of wrong ideas. “Nondescript black SUV with blacked-out windows, and you didn’t get the plate number.”
“Sorry. Too busy counting my cracked ribs.”
Meanwhile, since Oz had spurned her rudimentary first aid efforts, Jenn, still sleep-tousled and wearing a pair of Jim’s old pajamas—the size and spatula pattern gave it away—pressed a cup of milk into Annette’s hand. Oh, good, she hadn’t drunk it all the night before. “We were just talking with your brother.”
“Nuh-uh!” Oz protested. “I barely said hello and then you tried to choke me with a wet towel that smells like onions. That’s what we’re doing.”
“He’s not my brother. He was my foster brother. Soon he’ll be my late foster brother. Very, very soon. And very, very late.” Annette rubbed her temples. “I knew it. I knew this would happen. Well. Not this exact thing. But something bad. Is it too early for a glass of orange juice and vodka and please tell me you’re out of orange juice?”
Oz, for his part, was staring at her and David, nostrils flared and eyebrows arching in surprise. The bruises were hidden, but she knew he could smell David all over her and silently dared him to say something, anything, just. One. Thing. But all he did was limp to a chair and sit.
“Shouldn’t we call an ambulance?” This from Jim, who had just now come upon the bloody kitchen scene.
“Why?” Oz replied. “Are you sick?”
“He’ll be fine,” Annette said with assurance she didn’t quite feel. Oz would be fine if he simply dropped everything and obeyed her every command like a slavish robot programmed for compliance.
(This seemed unlikely.)
“I’m so sorry for all of this,” Annette told her bewildered hosts. “It was kind of you to let us stay here. If Oz has ruined anything tangible—”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Oz asked, trying for indignant but settling for peeved. “How’s tangibility a factor here?”
“—I’ll of course pay to replace it.”
“Don’t even worry about it,” Jim said at once. “The important thing is your brother wasn’t killed.”
“He’s not my… Yes. I agree, that is the important thing.”
Oz beamed. “Aw.”
“Shut up. Gentlemen, shall we?”
“You’re all welcome back anytime,” Jenn added with credible sincerity, walking them to the door.
“Really?” Oz asked as he limped past her. “Why?”
“Yeah, we’ve gotta get going… Thanks, guys. Great seeing you again. Sorry about…” David gestured vaguely in Annette and Oz’s direction, shook Jim’s hand, and hugged Jenn, who still seemed inclined to fret, but fretting without impeding Annette could handle.
“The bleeding has stopped. And the gash by your ear—it looks smaller. How is that… Are you, uh, are you like David?” Jenn whispered, which was asinine because they were all occupying the same small room so whispering was pointless.
Oz grinned. “Naw, I’m straight. Ready, gang?”
“Huh?” From David. “Wait, I’m st—never mind, it’s too early to get off track already. Let’s get going. Jesus, Oz, you really are a mess.”
“Yeah, but a sexy mess.”
“You know what? I’m gonna let you have that one.” David gave him a gentle shoulder chuck. “You are a sexy mess.”
“And if you don’t die working this case today, you’re welcome to come back here tonight and crash again,” Jim added, and got another elbow in the ribs from his wife for his trouble.
When the three of them were free and back on the street, they were able to settle some particulars.
“Of course I’m driving.”
“Did that car knock the remaining sanity out of you? You can barely walk.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t drive. Otherwise, what am I here for?”
“I’ve asked myself that same question, Oz. Many, many, many, many, many times.”
David shouldered past Annette and gave Oz a piercing once-over. “No bullshit, pal, how are you? Hospital bad or going home and sulking and having booze for breakfast bad?”
“Honestly, it’s worse than it looks. The car didn’t get me head-on, just clipped me. End of the week, you’d never know I got hit. My gorgeously expensive clothes protected me, and they deserve a hero’s farewell. And regardless of the state of my health, neither of you have a car here. So it’s either wait for a Fubar (Shifter Uber) or let me give you a lift. So do that, and then I can check on the kids while you guys take the investigator.”
“Do you promise to go straight home and rest after?” Annette asked, unable to keep the anxiety out of her voice. “Wait—is it even safe for you to go home? Someone set a trap for you.”
“I’ll rest up somewhere safe,” he promised. “Cross my heart and hope to God Mama Mac never finds out about any of it.”
Annette shivered. “Amen. Addendum: I hate you.”
“Naw. You don’t.”
Once the oddly cheerful Oz had dropped them off, David asked, “Is he right?” out of nowhere.
“Sorry?” She’d been wondering how there was beard burn on the inside of her wrists, and it took a second to focus.
“Oz. He said you didn’t hate him. Is he right?”
“No, no. Of course not. Is that how I come off?”
“Uh…”
“I don’t hate him,” she promised. “I just don’t want him around me under any circumstances.”
“Sure, sure.” David was nodding. “Totally normal.
”
“Oh, stop it. If you want normal, join a book club.”
“I can’t tell if you’re slamming me or book clubs.”
“When I slam you,” she warned, “there will not be a doubt in your mind.”
“Got it.”
“I like your friends,” she said, because a subject change seemed in order. “And I’m glad they kept your secret. Though I’m not sure how much of your nature they understand. It was adorable when Jenn worried I’d accidentally bite through the toothbrush she lent me.”
“Ha! I think she was messing with you.”
“And if we’re together in another strange bed tonight, remind me I still need to get a new alarm clock.”
“Maybe more than one. Maybe a baker’s dozen of alarms, if what I’ve experienced is any indication.”
“One problem at a time,” she replied. “I’ll worry about the sorry state of alarm clock craftsmanship after we get through this morning. And I talked to Pat—he and the kids had a quiet night. But I have to come up with a better plan for them besides ‘hide underground indefinitely with limited resources while we try to stay one step ahead of arrest warrants and hopefully Oz won’t get hurt worse.’” She nibbled her lip as she stared out the window. “One way or the other, we have to take definitive action today.”
“Agreed. Which is why we’re on our way to see Brennan.”
“Why are you narrating? I’m aware of why we’re on our way to Brennan.”
“And I’ll bet you a metric ton of watermelon Jolly Ranchers that he’ll dodge us.”
“I never bet, David.”
“Sure. But if you did.”
“How much is a metric ton? Oh, never mind. Even if I won, what in God’s name would I do with all those Jolly Ranchers? It’s really… Are you growling?”
“No,” he lied. “Just thinking about naked you and a shit-ton of unwrapped Jolly Ranchers.”
“That may well be the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”
David let out a snort. “Good thing this isn’t a romance, huh?”
She had no reply to that and went back to staring out the window.
* * *
Bears Behaving Badly Page 20
