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“Did you recognize any of the others?”
“No, they weren’t ours. ” That was what he really wanted to know.
After another long silence where we neither spoke nor acknowledged each other’s presence, Lucas got to his feet and moved to the door. Before he left, he turned and stared at me until the weight of it forced me to meet his rapt gaze.
“What?”
“I need you to understand how important it is to me that you find her,” he said.
“I get it. You don’t need to remind me eight million times. She’s my friend. I care about her too. ”
His hand tightened on the doorknob, making the metal creak. “Finding Kellen is the only priority in your life right now. Is that clear?”
That got me out of my seat like a fire was lit under my ass. “You don’t get to make those decisions. You never got to. ”
Lucas opened the door, and when I was sure he was about to leave without trying for the last word, he turned around again. “You can pretend all you want with the vampire, but you and I both know who matters most to you. If my sister isn’t back within a week, Secret, I’ll have Desmond transferred to our office in Los Angeles. Permanently. ”
The door closed behind him with a final click.
As if I’d needed another reason to hate him.
Chapter Ten
Inside my bedroom, Holden had been busy.
Upon seeing what he’d done, I wished I’d kicked him out before Lucas and I went head-to-head. The worst-case scenario I’d imagined was coming in and finding him naked on my comforter, waiting with a leering grin. This was worse.
He was fully clothed and cleaning.
“What are you doing?”
Holden held up a rumpled silk top and shook it at me accusingly. “This is Cynthia Rowley. What’s wrong with you?”
To me it was a purple shirt. I understood brand names, even respected their appeal. I’d wondered at women who paid two hundred dollars for a shirt until I owned my first one. Better made, better tailored, just all around better. Having a no-limit credit card didn’t hurt, either. I’d started taking for granted that I owned the finer things in life.
They were just things.
Whether my shirt was from Cynthia Rowley or Forever 21 ultimately wasn’t making my life any better or worse, so the shirt was on the floor with everything else I owned.
When I didn’t reply, Holden shook his head with a disgusted sneer and continued hanging things in the closet. In an order I couldn’t make sense of. I hadn’t even seen him grab some of the clothes from the living room. Damned speedy vampire.
“I sort of assumed when someone did this, they’d hang them in color order,” I observed.
“Too obvious, and really doesn’t help much. ” He pointed to the left side of the closet. “Normally, this would go day to evening. For you I had to tweak it since, well…no day. ” Holden smiled at me. I stuck my tongue out in return. “So we went casual to formal. Basically the same idea anyway. ”
Sure enough, on the left side were all my nice T-shirts, cropped jackets and jeans, and progressing towards the right came my skirts, dresses and fancy Tribunal duds.
“Well damn,” I said. “Looks good. ”
“Of course it looks good. ”
I loved seeing these glimpses into the anal-retentive fashion history of Holden Chancery. His job at GQ had ended two decades earlier, and I’d thought his interest in clothing was only a lark, a passing phase as opposed to a life-long dedication. But he obviously cared about this stuff a great deal.
It was a fantastic distraction from Lucas’s looming ultimatum too.
As if reading my mind, Holden said, “Your wolf has free will. ”
“Free will to send others away on a whim—”
