Page 102 of Indigo Sky

“Thank you for meeting him,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around my waist.

I held her, rested my chin on the top of her head, and replied, “Thank you for letting me.”

“I was worried about it,” she admitted. “He doesn’t always react well to new people. God, when I brought Angela in to help me out, he wassoupset.”

“But he got used to her.”

“He did,” she agreed with a breath of relief. “I want him to get used to you too.”

She kissed my chest and breathed me in, then took a step back to wipe her eyes and swallow the rest of her tears.

“I hate crying,” she admitted. “It just gets in the way of the shit I need to do.”

“What do you need to do right now?”

“Well!” she exclaimed. “I have to throw in some laundry, get my stuff ready for tonight …”

She headed for the stairs, and I followed, feeling a certain kind of déjà vu.

“Tonight?” I asked, cautiously ascending, like I might run into a hologram of my former self.

It’s a different house. Stop it.

“I work tonight, duh,” she answered over her shoulder.

I stared at the lift and drop of her delicious ass and wished I were in a different frame of mind. I would’ve enjoyed the view a lot more.

“You’re going towork?” I asked, hardly able to believe she’d think it was safe.

“Uh, yes. Why wouldn’t I work?”

She reached the landing, and there was a door on the right. It looked exactly like the one Nate and I had passed through. But this one was closed, and I had never been here before, dammit.

We headed farther down the hall, past a bathroom, and into a large bedroom with a bed way bigger than mine.

I huffed a self-deprecating laugh and dropped onto the mattress. “We slept in my tiny bed when you had this waiting for you?”

“Your bed isn’ttiny,” she argued, shooting a teasing glance over her shoulder on her way to a closet on the other side of the room. “Mine’s just bigger.”

“Sure,” I grumbled. “And you’re not working tonight, by the way. Not until we figure this shit out.”

Kate didn’t like being told what to do, and she expressed as much by turning on her heel with her hands planted firmly on her hips. “Excuse me? I don’t have the freedom to not work, Revan.”

“Oh, but I do? I took off today because you’d asked me to.”

“Right, for one day. But the way you’re making it sound, you’re asking me to not work indefinitely until we know who the hell is following me this time. I can’t do that. I need the money; I need to work. End of discussion.”

She didn’t wait for me to reply before returning her attention to the closet, digging through what looked to be a sizable collection of skimpy outfits. Costumes.

I rubbed a spot of crinkled scar tissue on my forehead and huffed a begrudged sigh. She was right. I couldn’t ask her to stop working when there wasn’t an end in sight to the mystery at hand. We didn’t even have a name, for fuck’s sake. The cops had nothing to go off of. I needed a plan, I needed to be more proactive, and I needed to catch the fucker in the act. But until then, I couldn’t ask her to put her whole life on hold. It was unrealistic, no matter how unsafe.

“Then, I’ll tell Saul I’m off door duty,” I said in a low voice.

“And, what? You’re going to follow me around everywhere I go?” she asked, flipping through the hangers.

“Yes.”

“Oh, that won’t hurt business at all,” she said with a sarcastic snicker. “You want a private lap dance? Sure, baby. Just ignore the broody, scary, hulking guy in the corner, watching your every move. Who is he? Oh, don’t worry, just my protective boyfr—“

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