Page 99 of Always: A Legacy Novel

“Cross!”

“You started this,” he said as Catherine headed for the bag of flour. “You can stop right now; take that warning, babe, before this turns into something you can’t handle.”

Catherine gave him the finger; all pretty-faced, grinning lips, and daring eyes. “Try me.”

What ensued her words could only be described as a hurricane of flour. The kitchen looked to be destroyed by the time the two stopped flinging the white powder back and forth at one another. Catherine laughed as she tried shaking her hair to get the flour out.

Cross just wished he’d taken his damn leather jacket off.

“This was … not a good idea,” he mumbled.

And his mouth tasted like flour.

Catherine, with flour on her eyelashes, poked him hard in the chest and faux glared. “It’s only a draw because I ran out of flour.”

Cross nodded with fake enthusiasm. “Yeah, that’s why it’s a draw. I need a damn shower—”

“Oh, crap.”

Catherine was already heading out of the kitchen before Cross could ask her what was up. She left a flour trail in her wake, and that only made him start laughing again.

“Where are you going?”

“Just watch the stove for me. I forgot to turn the outside cameras back on.”

Ah.

Well, Cross could do that.

He shrugged off his flour-covered jacket, and his shirt underneath because it too was a mess. Setting the items on one of the kitchen chairs, he turned just in time to see a black Mercedes pull up the Marcello drive.

“Shit.”

Cross didn’t know who that car belonged to, but he was pretty sure whoever it was would not appreciate seeing him there.

“Catherine!”

She didn’t answer his call.

Cross panicked.

“Catherine!”

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

He didn’t wait to see who was getting out of the car, simply grabbed his things off the chair, and bolted for the closest door he could find. Which just locked him in a goddamn pantry.

The universe was laughing at his dumb ass.

Laughing.

“Catherine!”

Cross took one giant step back from the pantry door, and turned into a human statue at the older, male voice coming from inside the kitchen.

Zeke was right.

He was going to die.