Page 103 of Cross + Catherine: The Companion

Not that he minded.

Over two decades of marriage taught him not to mind the small stuff. They just didn’t matter in the grander scheme.

“So … about that coffee?” Catherine asked.

Cross laughed, and smacked his wife’s ass over her boy shorts. “You’re so goddamn spoiled, babe.”

Catherine rolled off him, and preened all the while. “But who made me this way?”

He rolled his eyes at her as he moved out of the bed. “You say that like it was me. We both know you already came to me being spoiled rotten to your fucking core.”

“But you love it.”

Cross tugged on sleep pants, and called over his shoulder as he left the bedroom, “Yeah, can’t deny that.”

Her laughter chased him from the room. He really didn’t mind getting up to get coffee, or to spoil her more than she already was.

Whatever made her happy.

He would do it.

Cross was in the kitchen and waiting for the percolator to finish filling the carafe when a noise from outside the entryway caught his attention. A curse, it sounded like. And it didn’t belong to a voice he recognized, either.

Now, when someone unknown was in Cross’s house—they signed their fucking death warrant being there.

Simple as that.

Cross reached for the gun hidden in the drawer where Catherine kept dish cloths. He had the weapon tight to his palm, and ready to fire just as the unknown intruder came into view at the entryway.

Instantly, he relaxed.

Set the gun down to his side, too.

“Who the fuck are you?” Cross asked.

The young woman—she was maybe eighteen, or nineteen—trying to sneak by the kitchen with her high heels dangling from her fingertips froze like a statue on the spot. She spun around to face Cross as he came closer.

Her wide blue eyes were a mess of smudged makeup, and smeared mascara. Sleep still lingered in her gaze, though, as if she hadn’t been awake for very damn long. Her blonde hair looked like she hadn’t run a brush through it that morning, and the wrinkled, sparkly club dress she wore showed off a hell of a lot of leg.

Embarrassment snaked up the girl’s cheeks in a bright red.

Jesus Christ.

The walk of shame.

Oh, he knew that look well.

Sure, it had been years since he sent a woman home looking like that, and he couldn’t remember a time when he had been the one to go home in that state. But Cross wasn’t so old or foolish that he didn’t recognize what he was seeing.

The young woman gaped like a fish—she was a pretty enough thing, but he doubted this was the kind of morning the woman had planned.

Cross chose to throw her a bone.

This was humiliating enough.

He waved the gun and gestured at her. “I don’t want to know your name—just go. Don’t even tell me a thing.”

“Okay,” the girl squeaked.