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Which was way too fucking sentimental for this early in the morning.
Opening the safe, I pulled out a velvet pouch and retrieved one of my favorites and one of the rarest in my collection. A $4 Stella. There’d only been ten minted at the time in 1880, and this one was from the first strike—it was frosted, a museum-quality piece. In truth, the Smithsonian owned one of the ten, and so did I.
I’d snagged it at auction back in 2013, and I’d been hoarding it ever since.
As I lifted it and treated it to the same gimlet look as the Krugerrand, I pursed my lips before I tucked it into a single velvet pouch that I kept in a desk drawer.
Holding that in my hand, I locked the safe back up, then headed out of my office.
Camille was still singing about paradise being a thousand miles away, and I shook my head as I wended my way to the kitchen where her voice came intermittently with the sound of the blender.
She didn’t just sound normal, she looked it.
I’d promised God that I’d actually listen to Doyle’s services rather than sleeping through them if he brought Camille back to me, but the last laugh was on me, because I knew she hadn’t needed that prayer.
She’d been fine.Wasfine now.
Even if I couldn’t reconcile it.
Last night, when I’d known she was sleeping hard, when my brain was tired of thinking, I’d gone to her bedroom to find the little box she’d hidden in her jewelry case. I’d found it during my first sweep of her room—I wasn’t about to invite a stranger into my home without checking everything out.
While the contents of the kit weren’t new to me, loaded down as it was with thin razor blades, each one scrupulously clean, tucked beside alcohol wipes, it was the small journal that interested me.
The first time I’d seen it, I’d known what it was. She’d doodled a title onto it: ‘Reasons to live.’ Not opening that was the only slice of privacy I’d given her, but last night, I’d cracked the seal on that journal. I knew it made me a bastard, but it was hard to reconcile a woman who could harm herself, who had to give herself justifications to live, who’d whored herself out because she didn’t recognize she had worth, with the creature who’d been alight with fire yesterday even when she should have been cowering and crying like her sisters had been.
Had it given me any insight into her?
Not really.
I’d betrayed her trust for nothing. I’d learned that she was filled with hope. That, no matter what she claimed, shewasa romantic. I guessed I’d also discerned an inherent insecurity that went bone deep, one that made me want to shore her up...
Hence the coin.
Once she poured herself a drink, her attention tipped down to the counter, where I saw she had the paper lying flat out in front of her. That was how she saw me watching her, at long last. Muttering, “Classic saying originated by John Donne,” under her breath, she’d lifted the pen to her mouth to gnaw on as she thought about her answer.
I knew I needed to work on her survival instincts if she didn’t sense a predator like me walking around. And instead of scowling at me with hatred for letting her down, like sheshouldhave, she dropped the pen and beamed a grin at me.
“Do you want a smoothie?”
Grimacing at the green gunk, I shook my head, letting my eyes drift over her tits and her tiny waist which were revealed in her cami, before I murmured, “You know I’m training Shay to fight?”
“Yeah.” She took a sip from the bright, lurid green shake. “I know.”
“I want you to come with.”
“You want to train me to fight too?”
“Victoria as well, if she’ll let me.” Hell, I’d hold a self-defense class for all the O’Donnelly women if they’d join in.
She frowned a second, then she beamed a grin at me, bouncing a little in a way that had her tits bouncing along for the ride. “I’d love to! When you talked about it with Shay, I thought it sounded fun.”
Fun. Yeah.
“You should have said.”
Camille shrugged. “I’m not good at asking for things.”
“No, I know that. I guess it’s time you learned, hmm?”
