Page 9 of The Beast's Betrayed Mate
“Probably isn’t.” She shrugged, sipping her coffee.
He tilted his head. “Exactly. So, maybe we should play scrabble.”
She smiled, putting the cup down and leaning back, resting one arm on the armrest as she observed him. “But we’re not going to do that,” she surmised.
“Yousure?” he asked. Better to make certain than for her to not think this was her choice later.
She mirrored him and tilted her head. “You think I’m going to use this against you somehow?”
She rolled her eyes at him, making as though she was about to get up, but he surged forward, hands out, stopping the movement as he said, “No, I don’t. It’s not that. At all. It’s… The dog that bit me… I feel like it was… guarding Michael’s house. Like… That’s why it attacked me.”
She stared at him.
“That’s insane.”
“So is this,” he said, pulling his sweater up to show her his completely healed wrist.
There was not a trace of the bite.
Her eyes had gone round, and she reached out, sliding her fingers over the spot.
“Well, that’s a mystery on top of a mystery,” she remarked, raising her gaze to his as she removed her touch. “And there’s no way that I can leave now. Get on with it, please. Also, do you have anything stronger than coffee?”
He smirked, shaking his head at her as he sat down next to her again.
“It’s barely noon,” he said.
“Okay, fine,” she muttered, making his smirk widen.
He exchanged a look with her, and she gave a nod that there was nothing to wait for. He clicked the first link.
***
“I don’t think we’re looking at these in the order they were visited,” Olive said an hour later. “I think that’s what’s messing us up.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “There just has to be something here, you know?”
“I can’t see the connection,” she admitted. “At least not clearly.”
He had to acknowledge that she was right in that. He glanced at the clock on the laptop. It said 11:45.
“It’s noon somewhere,” he stated, getting to his feet.
She frowned, but when he walked over to a cabinet and opened it to display his liquor collection, she huffed a laugh. “Gin, please,” she said.
“I don’t have any lemon.”
“That’s fine.”
He had a feeling she knew that he didn’t want to be left to his own devices, and he couldn’t quite put a tag on what level of gratitude it was that he felt. Was it the same as when someone had brought his lost kitten home or was it more the sort he’d felt when he first met Michael and knew, beyond a doubt, that here was finally one person who truly got him? Perhaps it was somewhere in between.
He brought her glass of gin over. It swirled at the bottom of a whisky glass, and he shrugged at her raised eyebrow. He didn’t have any proper gin glasses, at least not unless she wanted a gin and tonic. And he was out of tonic. And lemon. She accepted the glass, smelling the liquor. He did the same with his whisky. They had a taste.
He should excuse her.
Let her know it was okay for her to go.
But the truth was that he was beginning to feel bone tired. He wanted to sleep but couldn’t imagine doing it with no one to keep watch on the door.
