“I’m probably overreacting?—”
“Grace. Come. Here.” It wasn’t a request. It was a command. Like Garrett’s had been when he told me to callhimif the guy came back. “Now.”
I exhaled slowly. “Okay.”
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe there was a reason he knew so much. Old client, maybe? Someone else who knew Didi, like the Russian apparently had? But I still took the next corner too fast.
Chapter 6
Galahad
Tristan’sfront door wasn’t locked. Stupid. A house full of people, and none of them had thought to turn a deadbolt after what happened at Grace’s café yesterday?
I shoved it open and locked it behind me. “Your door’s unlocked!”
“We were expecting you,” called Tristan from deeper in the house.
I marched through the foyer, into the kitchen, following his voice. I’d been riding high on adrenaline since he called me this morning to tell me about a second man who’d shown up. First the Russian we’d confronted, then hours later, someone else.
Both on the same day. Both interested in Grace. I hadn’t worked out whether I was pissed because she hadn’t called me, or relieved because someone actually did. My money was on pissed.
Grace sat at the small round breakfast table, one leg pulled up in front of her, with a half-empty mug between her hands. Too casual. The forced kind of relaxed. She looked up, smiling like I hadn’t spent the past twenty minutes grinding my teethover the fact that she hadn’t called me. “Good morning! Coffee’s fresh.”
Good morning? Seriously? “You were supposed to call me.”
Before Grace could reply, Tristan took over. “Good morning to you, too,Galahad.” He leaned against the counter, coffee in hand, like this was any normal day.
“Don’t fucking call me that.” I jabbed a finger in his direction—I wasnotin the mood for this—but my eyes stayed locked on Grace. “I told you to call me if the Russian came back. And now there’s someone else? And you still didn’t call?”
She scrunched her nose, as though she wasn’t bothered in the least by her failure to contact me. “Isabella was closer.”
“So?”
Her head tilted, that bright, unconcerned smile not slipping. “So I called her, and Tristan invited me over. They fed me, and I crashed here.”
She was testing my patience. It was the only explanation.
I exhaled slowly, trying to shove down memories of another woman who hadn’t called when she needed help. Someone else who’d thought she could handle things alone. The image of shattered glass on the floor flashed through my brain, and I shoved harder on the memory.
How was Grace so calm?
How wasTristanso fucking calm? He’d seen the kind of shit the world dished out.
Fist clenched at my side, I said as simply as possible, “I told you to callme.”
“She’s fine.” Tristan, acting like the mediator he had no business being, came closer. “She was perfectly safe here.”
“Safe?” I turned the glower on him. Why was no one taking this seriously? “Did you go to the café? Check it out? See if either of them came back?”
“They weren’t there this morning. I asked Vanessa to keep an eye out.” Grace’s fingers drummed against her mug. “I mean… the Russian guy didn’t hurt anyone, and the other guy didn’t get past the door. That’s why I’ve got locks, right?”
“Locks?” was all I came up with. Was that a shot about what I’d said when I came in?
“That’s exactly what they’re for.” Tristan chuckled and widened his eyes at me like he expected me to follow suit. “There’s always a silver lining, right, Grace?”
“Always,” she said, but the smile she gave him didn’t convince me.
Because I knew that smile. Not from her, but from another woman with the same kind of bright green eyes.‘At least the bruises will fade quickly,’or‘At least he left us fifty dollars,’or‘At least he said sorry this time.’My mother had always had a silver lining, and no amount of lectures from me had ever fixed that. And my lectures would be ignored this morning, too, wouldn’t they? Maybe Tristan’s girlfriend would back me up. “Where’s Isabella?”
