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Cat forced a smile, but her mouth was tight. “And she’ll be staying with us while she’s in town? How cozy.”
He couldn’t have Annette spotted if she stayed at a hotel, and besides, denying hospitality to the senior-most member of his line was a severe insult. Even Ian wouldn’t do such a thing.
Bones parked at the section designated for Annette’s airline carrier. Then, he grasped Cat’s hand. “Don’t let my history with her trouble you. You’re the only woman for me, Kitten. Believe it.”
She squeezed back, her smile looking less like a mask. Then, a familiar graze of power had Bones opening his door.
“She’s here.”
Cat stayed in the car as Annette approached. She was dressed in an elegant indigo suit, with her strawberry-blond hair in a deliberately messy knot. When Annette saw him, her smile crinkled the delicate lines by her eyes. She’d been in her late thirties when he changed her, but with the harsher conditions of the seventeen hundreds, she looked a decade older. Still, her beauty hadn’t dimmed. It only ripened. Cat obviously agreed. Her mouth thinned into a tight line when she saw her.
Annette smiled at Cat, though, and then she tilted her face up expectantly when she reached him. “Crispin, can I have a kiss after my long flight?”
Bones pecked her cheek. Annette did the same to him, respecting their new boundaries with the chaste gesture. But the moment Annette’s lips brushed his cheek, Cat was out of the car, smiling in a way that reminded Bones of blood-coated knives.
He stepped between them and put his arm around her. Cat’s shoulders were stiff, but she managed a smile as he said, “Cat, this is Annette. Annette, meet Cat.”
Annette shook Cat’s hand. “Delighted to finally meet you, darling. Isohoped Crispin would be able to locate you. Poor dear was positively wretched worrying that something ill had befallen you.”
Cat’s smile froze on her face, but she said, “As you can see, he found me safe and sound,” in a normal tone of voice.
Bones’s tension eased. Annette couldn’t know how her remark had hurt since Cat berated herself repeatedly leaving him.
“Of course,” Annette said in a soothing voice. “And well done, him! Now, I think my bags should be available to retrieve. Crispin, they won’t let you leave your vehicle unattended, so why don’t you wait here whilst Cat and I fetch my things?”
He hesitated. Cat’s smile was still in place, but her scent was faintly acrid, as if she were trying not to be jealous and failing. He didn’t fancy leaving them alone together this soon, but leaving Cat behind with the car while he and Annette went off would hardly soothe her.
“We’ll be right back,” Cat said, settling the matter.
Bones waited and hoped he hadn’t made a mistake. With luck, Annette would diffuse any lingering tension. Annette could charm the scales off a snake when she had a mind to.
Ten minutes later, Annette approached.
Cat was further behind, and covered in several pieces of Louis Vuitton luggage. “Blimey, Annette!” Bones said as he ran over to Cat. “You should’ve told me how many bags you had!”
Annette glanced back as if just realizing that she only held two pieces of luggage while Cat carried at least six. “Oh, do forgive me, Cat! I forgot to split the bags. I’m afraid I’ve grown accustomed to having an underling travel with me.”
“Don’t mention it,” Cat said in a grating tone.
Bones took all but the two bags that Cat had wound around her arms. “Sorry about that, luv.”
“I think she packed bricks,” Cat muttered, but she smiled at him, so things must not have gone too poorly between them.
Bones loaded the luggage into the new BMW he’d rented. Good thing he’d gotten the SUV instead of the sedan, too. Annette had packed her whole bloody closet, it seemed.
“When are the rest of our people arriving?” Annette asked once they were off.
“Today and tomorrow,” Bones replied. “By Friday, everything should be in place.”
Annette nodded, and then Bones caught her inquisitive head-tilt in the rear-view mirror. “I say, how did Belinda find herself caught in your kitty’s little snare?”
Bones was surprised by the change in subject, not to mention the topic. He’d mentioned Belinda’s capture in passing to Annette when she gave him her flight details, but he hadn’t expected her to question him in detail about it, let alone during her first meeting with Cat.
“I haven’t seen Belinda since your birthday six years ago,” Annette went on in that musing way. “Or was it five years ago?”
Bones stiffened. Belinda had been part of Annette’s “present” to him that year, and he’d rather Cat not know that detail.
“She got captured after she started running with a group that liked to bring home live meals,” he said in a tone meant to end the subject.
