Page 97 of The Sweetest Obsession

Like the fact that right now, I have a quasi-date.

Grant is waiting for me tonight and I’m ready to let him take my mind off all the worries streaking through my brain.

11

ONE BAD SEED (GRANT)

I’m just leaving A Touch of Grey, our main local furniture store, after a late call came in from Talia Grey. Easy business after wrangling pigs for over an hour.

The poor girl was flustered, panicked about somebody lifting money from their cash register. Turns out, it was her own grandfather.

Gerald Grey is still one hell of a master artisan with everything wood, only he’s going a touch senile in his seventies.

When the old man told his granddaughter he’d make the bank run to drop off the cash, he wound up losing it under an old box of chair legs stuffed in his truck. Damn good thing I thought to look when I saw how upset he was, swearing up and down that nobody ever stole from the store in its fifty plus years—and of course, there was no way they’d start on his watch.

I walk out with two happy, relieved faces behind me, trying not to dwell on the ravages of time.

Sometimes, it comes in like a berserker, daggers drawn and ready to shred the heart.

Other times, it’s just a slow, insufferable march to heartbreak.

We all have an invisible hourglass counting down our minutes like grains of sand.

That makes me all the more eager to get the hell home.

Knowing I’ll see Nell and Ophelia again is the only thing that keeps me from slipping into a fully shit-mad melancholy mood—until I walk past December Fifth just off Main Street.

There’s a familiar, ugly damn mug staring at me through the green-tinted window.

The place is one of our most popular local bars, styled like an old-timey speakeasy and named for the day Prohibition ended.

It’s the first time I’ve seen Aleksander Arrendell there, tucked into the small wooden booth and gesturing to me through the window.

What now? What could human slime possibly want?

I’ve got half a mind to storm past and keep going, pretending I never saw him.

Too bad I’ve made eye contact.

Worse, he’s not alone.

I find that out the second I step into the dimly lit bar with its tall black leather booths and shelves of glossy bottles soaring to the ceiling.

“Captain!” he calls to me, snapping off a half-mocking salute which jostles the sleeping lump of Ros on his shoulder.

What does this asshole need?

Nothing good.

I can already guess that much as I stalk forward, trying my damnedest not to show my teeth like the angry wolf he turns me into.

“Something I can help you with?” I growl.

“Relax. I wouldn’t dream of putting any trouble on your very broad shoulders while you’re presumably off duty,” he says smoothly. “I just wanted to thank you for coming by the house and dealing with our nasty situation. Mummy wassoupset, finding that poor gal swinging there.”

My eyes narrow.

The polite response would be a curtyou’re welcomeand a cold, quick escape.

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