“Don’t go getting soft on me.” I punched him in the upper arm. “I won’t know what to think.”
Ducking his head, he huffed out a small laugh. “How do you want to handle this?”
“I’ll take the warehouse.” I had a feeling about it. A bad one. “Are you up for tackling the store?”
“We are happy to help any way we can,” Grier chimed in before he could answer. “Right?”
“Right,” he said, the black of his eyes fading to dark blue with her near.
The two of them went to prepare for their drive, and I stood in the hall to wait on Midas to finish. I could have gone back in, checked to see if he needed any help, but it was as if every word I had spoken lingered in the air of that room, and it threatened to choke me if I reentered it.
“Did I hear right?” Midas tugged the end of my hair. “You picked Buckhead for us?”
Oh, yes. He had been eavesdropping. He was almost as sneaky as Grier.
“You do that a lot now.” I readjusted my ponytail. “Touch me.”
“I like touching you.”
“I like that you like touching me.” I smiled. “It’s nice. Different. But nice.”
“I haven’t acted on instinct where women are concerned in a long time.” He walked with me down the hall. “I was always afraid of what would come of it.” He placed his hand at the small of my back, like I had cracked something open by verbally approving his more tactile side. “I don’t have to worry with you.”
“Because I can kick your butt.”
“Yes.” He rolled his eyes. “That.”
“I mean, I could. I don’t have long legs, but they’ll stretch that high.”
Midas dug his fingers into my ribs, and I burst into giggle-snorts that horrified me to my core.
Future potentates weren’t ticklish, and they didn’t respond to personal assaults with giggle-snorts.
Since it needed saying, I fended him off with my elbow. “I would never use that power against you.”
I’d had enough power stripped from me in my life to never do it to another person without grave cause.
“But you could.”
“If I had to.”
“If I had to,” he repeated with the solemnity of a vow. “I’m beginning to understand the appeal of what you have with Linus.”
“Oh?”
“It’s nice to know there’s always someone there to pull you back from the ledge.”
Rising onto my tiptoes, I kissed him gently. “Failing that, I’ll be your parachute.”
He took the kiss but looked at me funny, not for the first time.
“I made it weird, huh?” I spread my hands. “Honestly? What else did you expect?”
“I can pull you back,” he said after a moment. “I can probably manage parachuting too.”
I read between the lines. “But you can’t be what Linus is for me.”
“No.” He cupped my face in his hands and smoothed his thumbs across my cheeks. “Never.”
“It’s cute that you don’t think you could murder me to save potentially dozens of lives.”
“You would think so.” He trailed his fingers across my jaw then down my throat. “You are so weird.”
“But you like it.”
“I do.” He frowned. “I wonder what that says about me.”
Preening for him, I fluttered my lashes Southern belle style. “That you have excellent taste?”
A laugh almost escaped him. “Let’s go with that.”
Buckhead was too far for the average Swyft, which left us with few other possibilities.
Namely Ford or Remy.
And no one willingly got into a car with her behind the wheel.
We had one other choice that overlapped our usual suspects, and I grinned as I dialed her.
Seventeen
“Hadley,” Lisbeth chirped when she answered her phone. “I heard your foot didn’t fall off after all.”
“It seems to be right where I left it,” I agreed. “How’s your stomach?”
“Let’s not talk about it.” She cleared her throat. “How can I help?”
“I like that you assume I’m calling you for help.”
“Yes, well, if you’re up and moving, then I have the right to be suspicious.”
She wasn’t wrong. I would be suspicious of phone calls from me too. In fact, I would block my number.
“You sound really chipper.” I imagined I heard her blush. “What’s up with that?”
“Ford kissed me,” she sang. “Full on the mouth and everything.”
Because I was a terrible person, I couldn’t help poking at her. “And everything, huh?”
“I’m not that kind of girl.” A loud groan escaped her. “I lied, Hadley. Oh God, I am that kind of girl. I want to climb that man like a Christmas tree and plant a star on top of his head.”
That was a new one for me. “Thank you for ruining Christmas.”
A loud snorted laugh blasted the receiver. “Like you don’t want to—”
“Whatever you’re about to say, don’t. Hold it in. If you can’t do it for me, do it for Tiny Tim.”
“You’re an innocent babe in a manger, aren’t you?”
“Do not bring Jesus into this.”
As a necromancer who attended public school with humans, I was well versed in Christianity. I even picked and chose from their bigger holidays to celebrate as much for fun as habit. Lisbeth’s fixation on Christmas trees didn’t mean she was a Christian, but she often wore a pair of earrings with small golden crosses, which implied that’s how she leaned spiritually.
I showed others’ religions the respect I showed my own, even that one guy who worshipped—I kid you not—a package of beef franks whose brand stickers had peeled off since it hit the dumpster where he found it. He swore it was a divine message on not labeling others, and no. That didn’t stop him from eating his gods a week later. Then almost dying from food poisoning. Under the circumstances, it counted as divine retribution, I guess?
That said, I hoped she didn’t think I was being flip about her religion. Then again, she started it.
Jesus would know that, right?
“Okay, I’m seriously not that kind of girl.” Lisbeth tried for prim. “I’m not going to bring baby Jesus into this conversation.”
“You just did.”
“Dang
