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“You don’t have to sound so bored,” I barked at him, my patience gone.
He gasped, which was bad for me, and then I heard him stomping across his floor again.
“Fuck,” I muttered, leaning on the door, wondering why I couldn’t explain things to him without being defensive.
He didn’t walk back to the door even to check on me, so I took a seat on a ledge next to some potted plants and waited.
A patrol car showed up first, and the two uniformed officers came up the path to find out who I was, check my ID, and determine whether or not I was allowed to be there.
When they knocked on the door, Sasha answered and told them to please remove me.
“But do you care if he’s out here or not?”
“He can stay there and wait for the Rapture if he wants,” Sasha replied frostily, slamming the door shut.
Which wasn’t exactly an answer.
“What’d you do to him?” the first officer asked me.
“Pissed him off.”
“Yeah, clearly.” He chuckled; then he and his partner returned to their car.
The next person to pull up was Wade in a matte black sedan, and then a huge SUV came to a stop behind him and a man got out of the front passenger door, went to the back passenger door, and held it open for Graeme, who got out and then waited for Avery. I realized that there was a chauffeur/bodyguard driving, and another bodyguard who had held the door for Graeme. He took no chances with his safety now that he was a husband and a father. He was never leaving his family if he had any say in the matter.
I waved from the porch.
“What are you doing out here?” Wade asked belligerently.
“I came to talk to him,” I said, gesturing at the front door, “and arrived in time to get Royce Kimball out of his house.”
“Royce Kimball who’s out on bail?” Wade asked, even as he got on his phone.
“Yeah, that one.”
“What the fuck is going on?” It was a rhetorical question, as he immediately started talking to someone on the phone about a warrant.
Avery rang the doorbell. It took a minute, but finally it opened only as far as the chain would give. Sasha glowered at me again, but took a breath on seeing Avery. He closed the door, then opened it quickly, chain removed.
“Why does he need to be here?” Sasha asked Avery, tipping his head at me.
“Because I’m not going over this twice. It’s too late, and he knows things you should know and vice versa.”
“Fine,” he muttered, walking into his home. “As it is, I’ll have to have Lucrezia over tomorrow to sage the whole place.”
“Why?” Graeme asked him.
“Because I had Royce Kimball in my house spilling all kinds of bad energy, and Wyn Coe totally had me thinking he wanted to date me, being all flirty, and all of that needs to be expelled as soon as possible.”
“So that’s the guy who was here?” I bristled, thinking about the handsome man in Sasha’s living room.
He rolled his eyes like I was ridiculous, then walked over to his sofa and flopped down.
Wade closed the front door behind him and walked over to Avery, and I took the opportunity to hang back, stand in the entryway, and look around my mate’s home.
It was incredible.
The whole place smelled like cardamom and cream, with a trace of cinnamon and black tea so it wasn’t too sweet, and was all done in sepia and mahogany, with warm amber light. The rugs were textured in shades of brick, burnt orange, and saffron, and all the accent pillows were in shades of forest green. There were movable bookshelves with one of those sliding library ladders, artwork of flowers and birds that I would need time to really look at, and the fireplace was huge. There was a light on in the kitchen over the stove, and I loved the glass cabinets, the black granite countertops, the large vase filled with dried wildflowers, and the stainless-steel dishwasher. Everything, all of it, had been chosen with care and was thrumming with warmth.
