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“You can’t,” she said, with supreme confidence – and, Robb had to admit, he couldn’t.
“Did you still want that cake?” he asked.
Tahnee gave him a look so withering that he didn’t even bother waiting for a verbal answer.
“Well, the cake shops are all down here,” he went on. “Let me know what you’re after.”
He hadn’t needed to say anything – Tahnee was already pressed up against one of the windows, gazing with naked lust at the floor-to-ceiling cake display.
“Yeah, I’m gonna be a while deciding,” she said, her eyes never leaving the colorful spectacle before her. “You… just do whatever you feel like doing.”
What Robb wanted to do was to look at the cakes with Tahnee, maybe go inside one of the shops and sit at one of the little tables and have a coffee with her and watch the world go by.
What he ended up doing was checking in with Euan – everything still okay on that front – and giving him an update, while keeping watch for any suspicious activity as Tahnee moved from shop to shop.
One day it won’t be like this, he thought gloomily, knowing that he was trying to convince himself of something that simply wasn’t true. As long as he worked as a higher-up in the Agency, he was always going to be alert on some level, even once this particular threat had been dealt with.
And what was there for him, except the Agency? He’d never known anything else. And it wasn’t like his particular area of expertise was in hot demand. There weren’t exactly a lot of jobs out there that called for knowledge about how to combat evil shifters… and he knew that that was where he wanted to be.
No. He wasn’t going to leave the Agency. Helping shifters was his calling. And so, he was stuck.
“Oh man, that plum cake looks so good,” Tahnee sighed, staring at a sheet of golden sponge cake that was practically drowning in glistening, deep purple plums, set off with a dusting of pure white icing sugar. “I could cram that entire thing into my mouth right now.”
A small dog chose that moment to stand next to Tahnee and put its front paws up on the window as well, leading to a burst of delighted laughter and friendly chatter on Tahnee’s part, and Robb took the opportunity to slip into the shop unnoticed.
“I’ll take all the plum cake,” he said without preamble, and the worker behind the counter looked at him, startled. “And I mean all of it.”
“All of it, sir?”
“That’s right,” he said, glancing out the window. He had to move fast, if he wanted to get it before Tahnee noticed.
“Should I at least cut it into slices?” the server asked, still seeming a little bewildered.
“No, no, that’s fine,” said Robb impatiently, watching as the worker weighed the giant slab of cake and stuffed it into a box.
“Hey!” Tahnee burst into the store as he tapped his card. “I see what you’re doing there, mister!”
Robb turned, the enormous box in his hands. “What are you going to do about it?”
She paused for a moment, before grabbing the box. “I’m going to eat all of this. On the beach.”
Robb suppressed a sigh. At least the rain had mostly gone away at this point… and it was clear that by hook or by crook, she was going to get him down to that beach. He couldn’t deny her.
It was okay. They still had half an hour before his self-imposed deadline.
“Fine,” he said, thinking suddenly about the Modern Policing Methods in Shifter Law Enforcement Annual Conference that was going on this second, and struggling to believe that his life had taken this turn. “Let’s go to the beach.”
Chapter 7
“You couldn’t have got them to slice this at all?”
Robb bit back a sigh. The cake was, in fact, massive. He’d been so caught up in making sure that he bought it before Tahnee noticed that he hadn’t thought too hard about it – and, in any case, he’d assumed that they’d be eating it back at the safehouse, or at least taking it back into the city for later.
But Tahnee wanted to eat cake on the beach, and so, they were eating cake on the beach. The cold, wet, soggy beach.
Though at least they were standing, rather than sitting on the wet sand.
“Never mind,” Tahnee went on, sliding the giant sheet cake out of the box. “I like it this way, actually.”
