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Arbor was fully aware that his woman was capable of taking care of herself, but she shouldn’t have to deal with the situation to begin with. He loved her and would take it on his own shoulders if he could.
Thinking about all of that while sitting in the chair across the desk from her, he watched as Kitten moved around the office, fixing their horrible filing system and reorganizing the place. She kept bending over to look through file drawers, which meant Arbor’s work pants were getting too fucking tight.
The third time she did it was too much for his poor lion heart to handle. He stood and came up behind her. When she straightened on her heels, he wrapped his arms around her waist, nosed her wavy locks out of the way, and gave his mating mark a wet kiss.
She had just turned her head and leaned into him when a flash of light came from by the door. Arbor lifted his head and looked that way. He found Mo standing there in the doorway with his phone in his hand. He was tapping away at the screen and warning bells rang in Arbor’s head, along with his lion hissing.
“What in the fuck are you doing? Taking pictures of us?”
Mo gave a nervous laugh, which wasn’t a surprise. The man seemed to be a nervous wreck on most days. “You just… the two of you looked… cute. I’ll send you the photo. Look.” He tapped some more on the screen, and Arbor’s phone vibrated in the pocket of his work pants. “There. I sent it.”
Arbor pulled the phone from his pocket and opened the message. Mo was right. They looked good together. Arbor was wrapped around her and loving on her neck, and Kitten had her eyes closed with a content expression on her face.
“That’s a good picture,” Kitten said softly as she looked at the photo on his phone.
“Yes, it is.” He saved the picture before scowling at Mo. “Delete it.”
“Sure. No problem, Ewan. Not a problem at all. You got it.” He tapped on his phone as he stammered. “There. It’s gone.”
“What did you need?” Arbor knew his tone was harsh, but those warning bells were still ringing, and he didn’t fucking like it.
“Oh!” Mo pulled a piece of paper from his back pocket that had been folded in half vertically. He took a few steps and held it out for Kitten, but Arbor reached out and snatched it from him. “It’s my vacation request form. I talked to Bruce. He gave the okay for Monday, but he said he’d talk to you about it when he got back from his trip.”
“Thank you, Mo.” Kitten snatched the form from Arbor’s hand and frowned up at him as she continued, “I’ll get that inputted into the system as soon as I talk to Bruce.”
“Thanks, Megan. Have a good weekend.” Then Mo hightailed it out of the building.
Kitten smacked Arbor’s stomach with the back of her hand. “What in the hell was that about?”
“I just got a bad vibe,” he told her.
“Well, you didn’t have to be a dick. The man is just awkward.”
Arbor still felt like something weird had happened in that interaction, and his lion agreed, but he wasn’t going to argue the point with her. He would just keep his eyes and ears open for any threat.
“Ready to go? I’m done for the day,” Kitten said as she grabbed her purse and keys from the drawer of her desk.
Arbor gave her a kiss and followed her to the door. “Yeah. Let’s grab dinner and go watch a movie.”
When Kitten fell asleep, Arbor carefully slid his arm out from under her and replaced it with a pillow. Leaving her sleeping on the couch, he stepped out onto the deck and closed the door behind him. Once he was positive that she remained asleep, he dialed Whiskey on his phone.
“Hello?”
“Hey. I might be reading too much into it, but I figure better to be safe than sorry.”
“What?” Whiskey’s tone had hardened with that word, and Arbor knew he was bracing for whatever shit show was about to hit them. He quickly ran through what happened at the office and the gut feeling he had about it.
“Keep your eyes and ears open. I’ll relay the info to IQ and see what he can find.”
“Could be nothing.”
“Or it could be something. Either way, we have your back. Both of you.”
Arbor let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Whiskey.”
“Stop fucking thanking me every time I do something family is supposed to fucking do.”
Arbor grinned. Whiskey was always telling him to stop thanking him for shit. “Okay. Sure.”
