Page 12 of The Hard Way

“You trusted me.”

“With my ass,” I joked.

“No—Isis. You trusted me.” He was really serious. Like the trust meant something.

“I’ll always trust you.” I pressed my face to his neck and kissed him there.

Zeus was sitting on the stone edge of the bridge, a totally dangerous thing to do. I’d long since stopped scolding them about things like that.

Odin shoved a hand into my hair, holding me close. I planted a kiss higher on his chest, on his neck, working up. I felt like we were communicating on a different level. Like we’d mind-melded. “Let me stay with you tonight. Let me sleep in the bed with you.”

“I can’t.”

“You said your nightmares feel less intense when I’m near. You should let me.”

“My nightmaresareless intense when you’re near, but you can’t be in bed with me when I sleep,” he said. “You know that.”

“Why not try it?” I begged.

“I can’t. It’s how it is.”

“Let me chase them away. Let me in like I let you in.”

“I can’t.”

“No matter what happens, I won’t care. Whatever happens, I won’t care,” I said.

“I will—I’ll care.”

I sighed and leaned into him. If his nightmares were less intense when I was nearby, what if I could just out-and-out sleep with him? Maybe they’d actually go away.

I hated that he wouldn’t let me.

Chapter 2

Thor was sittingon the veranda when I rose, sunlight making his long blond hair look like spun gold. He’d ordered up coffee and pastries; you could see the steam rising off his mug.

He looked up as I stepped out. “Another perfect Roman holiday morning,” he said, putting his tablet aside.

I took a seat. We liked to sit out there early in the morning and watch the street wake up—the shutters would get flung open, the shop gates would be pulled up. The tiny cars would start buzzing around. It was still early for that, though. Just sunrise.

From his serious mood, I guessed he’d been checking in on the clinic. “Things okay at the clinic?”

He hesitated. Then, “Yeah.”

He was a doctor by trade, though being a fugitive made it a bitch to get hospital privileges. He’d started a clinic in Mexico, but we’d had to leave even that behind last month when we fled. He’d left another doctor in charge, a woman named Rosa. It supersucked. He loved that clinic.

Zeus had started a detective agency, and we’d had to leave that, too, even though we’d been awesome at solving our first case.

When you were a fugitive, you got used to leaving things behind. You got used to missing things.

You got used to having no home. I never imagined that with all of the glamorous places we visited all the time, and our many adventures, that I’d long so fiercely for a real home. I didn’t like to talk about it much. My men—my husbands now—wanted to give me everything I desired. They’d hate that there was this one thing they could never provide.

In addition to a real home, I missed my sisters something awful, and I worried about them all the time. My only contact with them was through the newsletter they sent out—I’d signed up with a fake name, of course, because I had to maintain the fiction I was dead—for their protection. But they hadn’t sent out a newsletter in forever.

What was going on? I told myself it was just the success of the artisan sheep cheeses. Too many orders to fill!

I also missed our Los Angeles safehouse, but now that our deadly and powerful enemies knew about it, it was as dangerous as it was awesome, like wading through a vat of gasoline and while juggling flares.

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