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"Christ." My voice was a raspy hiss as my hand rose, scrubbing down my face, the scruff catching roughly on my palm, making me wonder when I had last bothered to shave.
Savvy was decidedly off-limits.
Friends of the family were forbidden fruit.
You didn't get to take a bite, no matter how tempting it might be.
I had no business picturing her half-naked in my bathroom.
Especially when she was coming to me for help.
"Well, what the heck was that, right?" Savea's voice broke into my thoughts, having me jerking and spinning around, finding her standing just outside the kitchen in a pair of my plaid pajama pants, the drawstring pulled tight to keep it from falling off her hips, my light gray tee - loose, but teasing over the shape of her breasts. My head had to shake to knock the thoughts loose that wanted to take root on the coattails of that one. Her long hair was braided loosely down one shoulder, left untied at the end, not having anything to bind it with. "With all the shaking and crying," she clarified when my clueless ass just stood there staring at her.
"You were just chased through town by a group of guys who clearly didn't want to catch up to you to ask you over for tea, Savvs. I think being freaked out was justified." Turning back, I reached for two mugs, pouring each, reaching for the cream and sugar for hers before turning back, patting the counter, inviting her to hop up before handing her the mug. "What's the matter?" Brows furrowed, her gaze was staring down at the almond-colored liquid.
"You know how I take my coffee?" she asked, looking up, those deep eyes full of more questions she wasn't letting herself ask.
"We've had dessert - and therefore coffee - dozens of times at Sunday dinner," I reminded her. "You see someone make their coffee a couple hundred times, you start to remember it."
A niggling little voice reminded me that I didn't, in fact, know how any of the other women at those dinners took their coffee.
"Oh, yeah. Of course," she said, shaking her head. "You take yours black. Then again, I think all the guys there do."
"Alright, sweetheart. Let's go over this from the top, okay?" I asked, reaching for a notepad and pen.
"Okay. Well, I forgot the lettuce. So I got out of bed..."
"You forgot the lettuce," I cut her off, brows furrowing.
"For the animals at the store," she clarified. "I always give them fresh vegetables before I close the shop for the night. But I forgot. So I got up to go back."
"To give them lettuce?" I asked. "Didn't they have like... small animal kibble or something to hold them over?"
"Yeah, but they like having their fresh food at night while they are up socializing and exercising."
Savea loved animals. It was one of her best traits. Anytime one of the kids at Sunday dinner would show up with some new critter to show off to their family, she would drop down on her knees with a giant smile, rubbing their furry bodies against her cheek, cooing over how cute they were, asking the kid - and their parents - if they got all the necessary items to give said critter the best life possible.
I swear she almost cried when she first saw Padfoot.
So if she thought that by forgetting the lettuce, she was negatively impacting the animals' lives, well, yeah, I guess she would lose sleep just to get it for them.
"Alright. So you drove to work. Nothing was off? No people hanging around? No unusual cars?"
"Nothing. The street was empty. Everything was closed. The front door was locked like it always was. The lights in the front of the store were off. Except for the lights over the animal cages and such. I didn't notice anything off until after I had given the animals their veggies. I heard a noise," she explained. "From the back room. Which isn't weird per se. We board animals back there. And we had some cats and big parrots back there. I figured maybe one of them had gotten loose and was causing a little chaos. It happens."
"You went to investigate."
"Of course. I mean, they can't be out all night. The birds could chew a wire or something. And I don't know how much you know about cat pee, but it is impossible to get that smell out of anything. So I wanted to deal with it before it got out of hand."
"But it wasn't the animals," I coaxed. In my experience, when you were trying to get information out of someone who had just gone through something traumatic, it either spilled out of them, words tripping over each other to get out first, or you had to pry every last detail out.
