Page 77

“Deceptively dangerous.” She turns in a slow circle for me. “Appropriate?”

My alpha has several answers. None of them are about field safety. “Hat,” I say.

Her face falls. “The scarf is doing important aesthetic work.”

I hold out the wide-brimmed sun hat.

She takes it with a sigh. “Protection ruining beauty once again.”

Ezra plucks it from her hands and settles it over the scarf at an angle. “There. Now you look like a naturalist with a profitable children’s television program.”

Pepper beams. “Perfect.”

Last night has left her loose and bright. She moves through the kitchen with the satisfied confidence of someone who knows exactly how well she fits between us. Every time her gaze catches mine, heat moves through my body, and her scent warms as though she remembers too.

I set a plate in front of her before either of us starts remembering too hard. Eggs, fruit, and the last of Junie’s bread, with tea the way she likes.

Pepper hops on the counter instead of the chair and hooks one boot behind my calf while she eats. Ezra takes a seat beside her and steals strawberries from her plate. When the berries are gone, they both turn their eyes on me.

“You both have food,” I say.

“Yours tastes better,” Pepper answers.

Ezra nods. “Enhanced by alpha vigilance.”

I give them each another strawberry.

Pepper’s smile could make a man sign over his land.

The camera monitor sits beside the coffee pot. Gate clear. Dock clear. East access clear. The chain hangs in place beneath the palmettos. No motorcycle has returned.

That should ease the fear burning behind my sternum. I check the weather again.

“You’ve looked at the radar four times,” Pepper says.

“Three.”

“Four. Once before coffee.”

“That one doesn’t count.”

“Pre-caffeine meteorology is still meteorology.”

Ezra lifts his mug. “She has you there.”

I point toward the map spread across the table. “We go as far as the old footbridge. No farther.”

Pepper nods. “Unless the bridge is secretly ten feet from the dock.”

“It isn’t.”

“Then it’s geographically reasonable and I accept.”

“Daylight only. We turn back if the current changes, weather moves in, or Ezra starts fading hard.”

Ezra raises one hand. “I object to being treated like a tropical depression.”

Pepper kisses his knuckles. “You’re a handsome weather event.”