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I’d just started to take a full breath when a tap on my shoulder sent me into a near seizure.
Cassie spoke as if nothing was amiss. “Stuff’s all here, but no devil cat. The door was closed, by the way. Whoops.”
I put a hand to my forehead and tried to stop the nearly brain-piercing urge to strangle her.
“What took you so long?” she went on, having beaten me up here by taking the elevator.
White-hot rage consumed every cubic inch of my insides, but I tried my best to tamp it down.
Is this what an aneurysm feels like?
“Hey, Thatcher, you okay?” she asked, her face turning serious as I sank to the floor and rubbed at the tension in my temples. Her bra-covered breasts pushed against the fabric of her T-shirt as she sat down beside me.
How in the fuck did I still find this crazy asshole woman attractive? What was wrong with me?
“Jesus Christ,” I mumbled, scrubbing at my eyes and hoping they had some kind of link to my actions. “I want to donate my brain to science.”
“Huh?”
“Like the football players are doing for concussions. I think this would be worthwhile research too.” As my head fell back to the wall behind me, she nudged me roughly with one of her feet.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about right now, but stop it,” she demanded. “You’re scaring me, and it’s pissing me off.”
I turned my head and looked into her eyes to find them actually angry, spitting blue flames and making the end of her nose pull slightly askew. She straddled the line between angelic and evil too easily. She foiled that boundary with the mystifying mix of her peaches and cream skin and powerful, knowing eyes.
Too wild to be innocent, too authentic to be wicked.
Her light pink lips pursed, and without a thought, mine were on them. They acted on their own, begging for an invitation from her or me, or both of us, to take it further. One moment bled into the next without thought or action until her lips moved under mine. Not far and not open, but not away either.
Stunned, I pulled back. I couldn’t understand it, but something in me didn’t want to hear her say no—so I said it for her.
“Thank fuck,” I said, a rough rasp lingering in the edges of my voice. “I finally found a way to shut you up.”
The vivid blue of her eyes clouded by derision, she jumped to standing. Though they were marred, they were still resoundingly powerful, chaining me to them. Even knowing her chest must have bounced with the movement, my gaze never left the confounded lines of her face. It was so out of character; I didn’t even recognize myself.
“Don’t ever kiss me again without permission,” she whispered shakily. The rough edge of her command cut like a knife. All traces of superficial playfulness had disappeared, and the look in her eyes burned through several layers of flesh until it met my soul.
Some kind of nerve had been frayed, and I wasn’t sure I was a talented enough surgeon to execute the repair. The only option was to move on, and the only tactic I knew how to employ was avoidance.
I climbed to my feet. “Let’s search for Walter one more time. Here, inside the apartment, and around this floor. If we don’t find him in the next thirty minutes or so, I’ll call Kline.”
“That deadbeat isn’t going to care! Georgie cares. Fuck, she’s gonna be mad.”
“Don’t worry,” I comforted her but didn’t move closer. “Kline gives no fucks about Walter, but he gives all kinds of fucks about Georgia. He’ll hire a fucking private detective if he has to.”
“A cat detective?” she asked as she considered my words, tilting her head to the side and grinning just enough to look normal again.
I shrugged and breathed out a sigh of relief. “Yeah. If there are cat burglars, there must be cat detectives, right?”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Yeah.” We didn’t agree on much, but on that, we were on the same fucking page.
I was thinking things I shouldn’t be thinking. Things that would probably never happen. Things I wasn’t even sure I wanted to happen.
And that made me the goddamn king of royally fucked.
Bora Bora, Thursday, April 20th, Afternoon
I glanced through the open bathroom door to the steam coming out of the shower and back down to the screen of my phone to confirm the name on the incoming call said what I thought it did.
It fucking did.
With a touch of the green phone icon and a frustrated groan, I answered and didn’t mince words. “You, Cassie, Wes, or Walter better be dead or in the process of getting that way.”
“What if I told you Wes is fine, Cassie’s crazy, I almost died, and the cat is missing?” Thatch said in my ear without pause.
