Page 4 of Claimed By the BRATVA Grump

Gerald's office light is on. Second floor, third window from the left. He'll be at his desk by now, pulling up whatever it is cautious, soft-edged men pull up when they sit back down after lunch. Spreadsheets. Columns. Numbers arranged to tell a story that isn't true. He'll do it with the quiet confidence of someone who has never been caught at anything, and that confidence will be the thing that eventually destroys him.

People underestimate the cost of being good at something they shouldn't be doing. The better you are, the longer you do it. The longer you do it, the more you're exposed. Gerald has had eight months of clean, careful work, and every month has made him slightly more certain of his own invulnerability. I've watchedit happen before. I know exactly what it looks like from the outside.

He'll make a mistake. He probably already has. Jasper will find it.

"Ready for your next cup?"

I hadn't heard her approach. That's unusual enough that I register it, though I don't let it show. She moves quietly for someone who talks as much as she does.

Sammie is standing at a slight angle to the table, coffee pot in one hand, the other holding a small plate with something on it. A square of shortbread, by the look of it. She sets it down without asking.

"House policy," she says, before I can speak. "You've been nursing that cup for forty minutes. Fresh coffee comes with a snack. Non-negotiable."

I look at the shortbread.

"I didn't order it."

"You also didn't order Lucifer, and look how that turned out."

She places the fresh black coffee on the table and then the small plate with the offending treat, and she's already stepping back before I can form a response.

Gerald's light stays on across the street. I note it without moving my eyes to it.

Lucifer purrs.

I don't reach for the shortbread immediately. I watch the window for another thirty seconds. The pattern holds. There's nothing left to see that I haven't already seen.

I pick up the shortbread.

It's good. Buttery, slightly salted. The kind of thing made by someone who knows what they're doing and does it well.

When she leans across my table fifteen minutes later to clear the shortbread plate, her forearm brushes the sleeve of my jacket, and my hand tightens around my coffee cup with enough pressure to register as a tactical error. I don’t look up immediately. But I inhale, and the scent is vanilla, likely from all the baking she does, and lightly floral, which must just be her. For three full seconds, I can’t recall Gerald Finch's window position or the time.

I tell myself it is vigilance. She is an anomaly in my perimeter, loud and alive and utterly unpredictable. But my eyes follow her to the counter when she retreats, watching the sway of her hips, and the way she tucks a strand of honey-blond hair behind an ear.

She is the opposite of every survival instinct I have ever cultivated.

Sammie

The coffee machine hasn’t been on for long when he arrives. After he left yesterday, I had to spend real time reconciling the fact that his visit to my little cat cafe was probably a once-in-a-lifetime thing for him. I’d spent the evening ignoring every single thought that popped into my head about him. What he does for a living, what his last name is, whether he is already married with kids and a big house on the hill.

He's wearing another suit. Dark charcoal over a white shirt, no tie, top button undone, which somehow makes him look more intimidating than if he'd been fully buttoned up with a tie. He does the same thing he did yesterday: takes three steps inside, stops, and reads the room. Every table, every person, every corner.

He spots the corner table. It's occupied. A couple sharing a muffin, fingers almost touching across the surface. I watch mild irritation flicker across his face. His eyes move to the next best option, a window seat two tables down.

My hands are already on autopilot making his coffee, same as yesterday’s.

I turn just as he arrives at the counter, sliding the mug across towards him. "Your table will be free in about five minutes," I whisper to him.

He looks at me. Those gray eyes are something else, I'll tell you that for free. The kind of eyes that feel like they're reading the footnotes of whatever you just said.

"I can wait," he says, hovering his phone over the card machine.

He stands near the counter while I go back behind it, and I don't offer him the stool because I have a feeling he's not a stool-sitting kind of person. He just stands there with his hands in his pockets, looking like a very expensive statue, while Delilah materializes at my elbow.

"That's him from yesterday," she says, very quietly, directly into my ear.

I don’t reply.