Page 63 of Until Joy

“Sleep, baby.”

“S’okay.”

As I smoothed the tee over her torso, I looked at the scar on her side, just under her breast. I’d asked her about it before, and she’d said it was just a foolish accident. Now that I took a good look at it in the moonlight, I thought Accident my ass. My gut clenched. Terror and fury mixed together as the cold thought that her stalker in London had stabbed her slithered through my mind.

Motherfucker!

Was this the same guy?

As soon as I got the shirt on her, I wrapped her close in my arms and listened to the soft sounds of her breaths. They finally lulled me into a fitful sleep.

When Joy entered the kitchen, I turned around with a smile on my face.

“My God, Graham, who’s coming over?” she asked. “Your entire motorcycle club? They better be, because there’s no way the two of us will be able to eat all this food.”

I looked down at the strips of bacon on the paper-towel-covered plate, sitting beside a good-sized bowl of fried potatoes and a platter of cut-up fruit, and now that she was up I was pulling out the stack of pancakes that I’d been warming in the oven. Ten pancakes, to be exact. I’d gotten up at five o’clock, and after an hour and a half of reading the end of a bestselling thriller, I figured I’d cook her a good breakfast before the day started.

“Now that you’re up, you can tell me how you like your eggs,” I said as I took the carton of eggs out of the fridge.

“I like them cold. As in, left in the fridge. I’m serious, Graham. You feed a fever, not a freak-out.”

I snorted. I put the eggs back in the fridge and opened my arms. “Come here. I need a hug.”

She flew across the room into my arms. I caught her close and held on tight. I shoved my face into the side of her neck, drinking in her scent. Honeysuckle and Joy, how could I ever be anything but happy when I was surrounded by that smell?

We stood that way for a long time, neither one of us wanting to break away from the other.

“Graham?”

“Yeah?”

“I like my pancakes warm.”

I chuckled and let her go. She sashayed over to one of the bar chairs next to the counter and hoisted herself up.

“Joy, are you wearing panties?”

“I’ll tell you after you feed me.”

“That so isn’t fair,” I groaned.

“Food. I was promised food.” Joy plucked a strawberry off the platter of fruit and took a slow bite. I groaned again. I forced myself to turn around and get plates down out of the cupboard. Along with the plates, I gathered silverware and glasses, then turned back to Joy who was now eating a piece of melon.

I quickly had our places set and pancakes, bacon, and potatoes dished out. I went back to the fridge to get out juice. “Do you want hot sauce or ketchup to go on your potatoes?”

“Hot sauce, please. Heck, Graham, you should know I like it hot.”

Shaking my head with a grin, I put out the hot sauce, syrup, butter, and juice. Then we both tucked into our food. Like normal, Joy had little to say when she was eating. I liked how she took her food seriously. I grinned around a bite of potatoes. Was there anything I didn’t like about this woman?

When Joy pushed her plate back, I figured I could ask the question that had been bothering me half the night and all morning.

“Spit it out.”

“Huh?”

“There’s something on your mind, Graham. So just say what you want to say.”

I was more than a little shocked. The only person I could think of who could guess that I was out of sorts was Wes Silver, and I figured that as a leader of both a motorcycle club and a Navy SEAL team, that meant it was part of his job description.