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“How did that get open?” Emma said, taking off down the steps. “Caine, grab the green bag of treats off the shelf inside the door for me.”
Frowning, he did as she asked, and then he jogged them out to where she stood in the alley in a stand-off with Chewy. About fifteen feet away, he looked like he would bolt if she took a step toward him. Caine opened the bag. “Here.”
“Thanks,” she said, reaching in before crouching with a weird toothbrush-shaped green thing. “Chewy want a Greenie? I know you do.” Chewy trotted over like all was right in his world, and Emma scooped him up as he grabbed the treat in his teeth. “I never let him off leash, and on those rare occasions when he escapes, it’s not always easy to get him to come back. But Greenies are his favorite, so they’re my secret weapon.”
Back inside her little yard, she secured the black iron latch on her shoulder-high gate, and Caine frowned. It didn’t have an interior lock, but it was otherwise plenty stable. Definitely not the kind of latching system that slipped open by itself. So if Emma hadn’t opened it, who had?
Shaking his head, he followed her up onto the porch, and then he froze while she made for the door. Because the storm window on her kitchen window was part-way up.
“What?” she asked, turning to see why he’d stopped.
Caine walked to the window. When he’d done the security check for her last weekend, he’d lifted this window to see how easy it was to open from the outside. He’d been able to work it up about five inches, but no more because something in the old frame was bent, keeping it from going all the way up. That was good – because if Caine couldn’t easily lift the lower half of the storm window, an intruder couldn’t either.
Except, Caine was ninety-five percent sure that he’d lowered it again. Hadn’t he?
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize I’d left this up last weekend.” He worked it down again, unleashing a metallic screech as the bent frame protested the movement.
“Oh, geez. Don’t give it a second thought,” Emma said. “Not after everything you did.”
Right. Like examining this window. And putting it back in place when he was done. Which he would’ve sworn he’d done. Lifting his gaze, he looked through the window to Emma’s bright kitchen. The position of this window meant that he had a direct view of the L-shaped counter.
The counter against which Caine had just had Emma.
As casually as he could, he peered down at the ground outside the window. The snow hadn’t fallen enough to be useful for revealing tracks, but Caine’s instincts were screaming at him.
Dog flipping out. Gate being open. Window being up.
Made an equation that Caine really didn’t fucking like.
Even though there was no proof that those things actually made any equation at all.
“Something wrong?” Emma asked.
Yes. He shook his head. “Just irritated at myself. Security aside, that did nothing good for your heating bills.”
“Seriously, don’t worry about it. Come on. Let’s go back in.” She dropped Chewy on the floor and he took off for the living room. Caine watched as the dog made a circuit around the space before finally retreating to his dog bed, treat still in his teeth.
Yeah, I know something’s not quite right too, buddy.
He turned to find Emma clearing the table, so he pitched in carrying dirties to the sink. “Sorry about these,” he said, picking up the now room temperature boxes of ice cream.
Emma laughed as she pushed up her sleeves and turned on the faucet. “I would sacrifice Nutty Buddies for a shot at your mouth any day.”
He gaped at her, fucking stunned that she’d been that blunt. Jesus. The words wrapped around his cock as if they’d been her fist.
She laughed harder. “I told you I wasn’t any nun. Besides, there are more Nutty Buddies where those came from.” She rinsed a dish and placed it into the dishwasher.
His gut clenched. “Don’t walk up to that store alone again.” He hadn’t meant for the words to come out that harshly, but following what he’d maybe just stumbled across on her back porch, the thought of her walking around at night again, of getting hurt this time, made him want to break things with his bare hands.
She put another dish into the rack, then looked up at him. “Okay.”
He gave a single nod. “I’m…I’m gonna go.”
Her expression was almost cartoonish in its surprise. Not that he thought it was funny. He knew he was being abrupt and awkward, but there was no way around it. At some point, it was going to be both of those things. So there was no point putting it off. “Why?”
“Dinner was fantastic,” he said, meaning it. The food in his belly made him feel like he had more gas in his tank than he’d had for a very long time. “And…making you come was something I’ll never forget. But we should leave it at that.”
