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Yeah, right.
Cade took a bite of duck and chewed, but kept staring at me. I didn’t want the heaviness of his gaze to disarm me, but he was making me feel self-conscious, which in turn was making me eat more out of sheer rebellion.
I hardly tasted my Kung Pao chicken.
Once I was down to the beef and broccoli, and fried rice, I combined the two on one plate and pushed them around with my fork.
“You’re not here to burn the restaurant down, are you?” I gave him a serious look, and this time he smiled for real.
“No, I’m already done with what I came to do.”
“Oh?”
The smile vanished. “I was at North Valley Hospital on an official invite.”
I waved my hand between us, dismissing any further comments. Neither he nor I wanted to talk about the kind of bad tidings he could bring to a hospital.
Cade’s job and Prescott’s often went hand in hand as well.
What a fine trio we made.
I stole a piece of duck off his plate and popped it in my mouth. The salty, fatty skin practically dissolved on my tongue, and I made a happy mmm sound in appreciation.
The previous tension had vanished, and he shoved his plate towards me. “Finish it if you want.”
“No, I just wanted to see if it tasted as good as it looked.”
Cade gave me a look that suggested he was going to say something, and I realized a beat too late how my comment might be reimagined as a double entendre. This was why they should have taught us about flirting in the temple. I managed not to blush and met his gaze defiantly, as if I’d intended the second meaning all along.
“It does,” he said.
“But you can keep it.” I nudged the plate back at him.
This was new. Cade and I typically had a professional, cordial relationship of mutual respect and occasional admiration. Honestly, until tonight I had assumed Cade had no interest in women. Or men. I thought he existed on a plane of asexual indifference, married to his job and devoted only to Ardra.
The heat of his gaze and the way it knotted me up inside was making me question everything I knew about our association.
Did he like me?
Perish the thought.
I’d long harbored a bit of a schoolgirl crush on Cade Melpomene, but because of his typically distant behavior I had never believed he might return any of my affection. So I stuffed those feelings deep inside me and was mostly able to ignore them. Except when he looked at me like he was right now.
I picked at my beef, broccoli, and rice concoction and dismissed any notions of Cade as an object of romantic relevance. Thinking about him too much would get me all wound up and turn me into a blithering idiot. Just imagine dating a bad-luck priest. Go ahead, think about it. Talk about a doomed relationship.
And that was if we ignored the fact none of us were allowed to have romantic relationships, especially not with each other.
“I could use your help with something,” he said finally.
Setting my fork down, I pulled myself up higher in my seat, suddenly interested. Work was a safe topic, something I could participate in without feeling weird. Good, yes, tell me all about work.
“Okay.”
“Don’t agree until you know what it is.”
“Okay…”
“There’s a hotel about an hour from here. Ardra’s been receiving a lot of requests for…retribution against its owner.”
