Page 289 of A Vicious Love

Her gaze moved over my face, then toward the open windows, then back to me.

“Oh,” she said. “You’re doing the dangerous silence.”

“You have no sense of danger.”

“I’m in a bath.”

“Yes. With every window open.”

Her eyes drifted toward the nearest window, then back to me with a faint, guilty little smile she tried to hide by sinking lower into the bubbles. It did dangerous things to the waterline.

“The trees are pretty.”

“The trees had armed men in them.”

“They’re your armed men.”

“Still men.”

She blinked at me for a second, then her mouth curved. “Are you jealous of your own security?”

“I’m practical.”

The smile she tried to suppress became much harder to ignore.

I crossed the room, stripping the cuffs of my shirt back down as I walked. I had been in work clothes too long. Black shirt. Sleeves rolled. Shoulder holster still on. The heat had followed me upstairs and the room was damp from steam, making the cotton cling between my shoulders. I took the holster off first and set it on the chair beside the bath, close enough to reach. Then I unbuttoned the top of my shirt, poured whiskey from the decanter on the low table, and sat on the marble ledge beside the tub.

Sienna watched the glass in my hand. “Are you still grumpy because of charades?”

“No.”

“You seemed grumpy.”

“I was forced to act out a lighthouse in front of adult men.”

Her eyes shone with amusement. “You did a very good lighthouse.”

“I raised one arm and stood still.”

“That was why I guessed it so fast. Very architectural.”

I took a drink. The whiskey burned down my throat and failed to solve anything. “Adult men should never be asked to act out structures.”

“It was family charades, not a criminal sentence.”

“You say that because your word was butterfly.”

“I did a beautiful butterfly.”

“You flapped your hands with a scarf.”

“And you guessed it.”

“Because I know you.”

Her expression softened so quickly it nearly irritated me.

I looked at her hand resting on the bath edge.