Page 47 of A Wolf After My Own Heart
He’d half-turned toward the door, but at her words he came back and sat down so hard the bed jostled. And speaking of jostling the bed, Oz dressed in nothing but boxers was just…yum. Which was altogether irrelevant and thus annoying.
She jabbed a finger in his direction. “I have a tragic backstory that I won’t be discussing with you.”
“Okay. But if you change your mind—”
“Pass. And if you tell anyone about my nightmares, which have been stuck on repeat since I was a kid—”
“So this happens a lot?”
“—youwon’tlive to regret it, get it?”
He raised a hand, solemn as a court clerk. “I get it.”
“That said.” She coughed into her fist. Gratitude was hard. She had a horror of being pitied. “Thanks for coming in.”
“Anytime. Really. That’s not just me being polite. I’ll come in here anytime. Anytime at all.” Pause. “Hot Vincent Price?”
“And now we shall never speak of this again.”
“Whatever you want,” he agreed, rising and backing toward the door. “We established that you’re not seeing anyone, right?”
“Nnn.” She tried to spit out “no,” but her mouth had gone dry so quickly, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Why?Why?It was more than the thrill of knowing a gorgeous guy seemed to be interested. It was knowing she was single andhe was, too. Like something could happen. And nothing so easy as a date. Something permanent, like a family. Which was a deeply nutty thought to have about a man she’d just met. “Nuh-uh. I’m not. We established that during the lunch of betrayal.”
“Oh,” he replied quietly. “That.” And then he slipped out, leaving her irritated, glad, and sad, which added up to deeply,deeplyconfused.
“Goddammit,” she muttered, and punched her pillow.
* * *
“More! Please, please more?”
“Dev, I’ve got a pound and a half going already.”
“Did you readOliver Twist? Please, Mama Mac, some more. Not gruel. Bacon.”
“There’s loads of it. Heaven’ssake.”
“You can never have too much bacon, Mama.”
“Not your call, boy.”
“Beg to disag—ow! I can’t believe the first thing you did in Lila’s kitchen was find her wooden spoons.”
“Not the first thing. Go wash up and—” Macropi turned away from the stove to smile at Lila, who was yawning in the doorway. “Oh, good morning, m’dear. Would you give Oz a shake? Eggs are almost up.”
“He can sleep through bacon wars?”
“He can sleep through anything.” Devoss grinned. “Rallies. Tornados. His own death… It’s a pretty long list.”
“Good to know,” she muttered as she trudged into the living room and beheld a site more terrifying than the woman in Room 2175. Oz was…sprawled, there wasn’t a better word for it. He filled up her couch by being…everywhere. He was a drooling, snoring tangle of long limbs and blankets. “Jesus. I heard the noise but assumed someone was mowing the garbage cans.”
Caro, meanwhile, had come up behind her, given her a nudge, and held up her pad:A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
“Ha!” When he didn’t stir, she added, “That didn’t even make him twitch.”
Waking Oz is like an exorcism: You need holy water and a couple of priests, and in the end, you’re driven to throw yourself out the window.
Lila laughed. “Damn, you write fast.” She reached down, found one of Oz’s big toes, tweaked it. “Hey. Wake up. There’s bacon and probably, I dunno, work? You’ve probably got work today? Since it’s a weekday?”
