Page 39 of The Devil's Daughter

He winces. “Don’t call it that, okay? It isn’t anarrangement—it’s a relationship. I don’t care that I’m sharing you with them. Calling it anarrangementmakes it sound like it could end, like it’s temporary. I don’t want temporary with you.”

I gingerly shift my hips so he finally slips out of me, then turn and curl up on his lap. “I don’t want temporary with any of you.”

“Good.” He lays us both down, cradling me against his chest and kissing the top of my head.

His breathing slows and evens out, the soft cadence lulling me into a doze. The boat is too big to really rock, but deep down I still feel a gentle, slow sway to the world, like the ocean is telling us we’ve done the right thing by letting our feelings see the sun for the first time.

I only wake when Baz shifts beneath me, carefully rolling to deposit me on the bed and rise. When I murmur a complaint, he bends and kisses my cheek.

“We’ve got work to do, baby. Two days until Drake’s gala. We need to know who might be coming for him.”

Blinking, I roll over and rise too. “I’m helping, remember? I’ll come too.”

“I need to get a shower first, and no, don’t volunteer to ‘help,’ because we won’t get anything done if you join me.”

“But what if I need a shower too?” I need a dedicated scrub-down of my own without distraction, but it’s fun to tease him. He looks like he’s actually thinking about it, then scowls.

“There’s a bathroom in my cabin. You can have yours to yourself. Meet you up in the dining room.” He bends down and gives me a peck on the lips.

Just as he’s turning away again, I grab his hand. He looks back with raised eyebrows.

“Baz. I love you. I just need you to know that this reallyisreal for me. I love you both too much to screw with your feelings.”

His shoulders settle and he nods. “I love you too,” he says gently. “But what about Drake? He’s part of this, and you haven’t known him as long as us.”

He has a point, and I take a deep breath, trying to put my thoughts together, to quantify what I feel for Drake, but it’s too mixed up and complicated right now.

“It’s too soon, but all I know is there’s something there and I believe it goes both ways,” I say.

Baz presses his lips together and nods. “Fair enough. Knowing you, I’m sure you’ll tell us if anything changes.”

“You do know me well, don’t you?”

“Better than anyone,” he says, bending to kiss me again.

When he’s gone, I fall back onto the bed and sigh, closing my eyes to replay the craziness of the last few days. God, it feels like a lifetime. I’m sore and exhausted, but happier than I’ve been in ages. But the imminent threat of someone coming after Drake rears its ugly head and I haul myself to the bathroom, pee, then hop in the shower to scrub off the stickiness of sex, hoping I’ll get to get sticky again with all of them later tonight.

Then I put on my game face, along with a more sensible set of sweats—withunderwear this time. I’m all business by the time I make it up to the dining room and join Baz to continue our deep-dive into the gala guest list.

We exhaustourselves searching for clues. An hour in, Drake comes in with a set of wet erase markers and points out that the partition between the dining room and the sun deck where we eat breakfast is only frosted on the outside. The inside is smooth, so we can put our notes right on the glass.

“You could sit down and help,” I suggest when he pauses to lean over my shoulder and peer at my screen for several seconds.

“You guys have got this. What’s Ben up to? Maybe he can help.”

Baz snorts. “He hates this kind of shit. He’s waiting for Duffy to pick him up so he can go check out the gala site and make sure security there is up to snuff.”

“Guess he and I are on the same wavelength. I’ll be in my office working on my speech for Saturday, which is really more of a pitch to get people to hand over buckets of money to the cause.”

“Well, it’s a good cause,” I say, craning my head back and smiling up at him. “You’ll do great.”

He gives me an indulgent smile, then kisses me slowly. “Mm, thanks, but that was never in doubt.”

As he’s leaving, Baz calls out. “Hey man, I almost forgot. I need whatever info you have on your former chief of security. Anything you think might be useful that isn’t in his personnel file. I want to check it against some of the details we’ve gathered so far, see if he might be connected. It’s probably a long shot, but I need to look at everything.”

“It’s as good as sent,” Drake says, disappearing back down the hall.

“This reminds me of high school,” I say. “Except we aren’t working on a coding project. This might be life or death.”

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