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“What are you doing?” I counter instead. “Walking in the street?”
“Just left the office, heading home. Why are you calling me?”
“Because I miss you,” I answer truthfully. Easily. “Because you’re cute, and I thought I’d remind you it’s not too soon to annul that sham marriage of yours and hop on over to my bed. I got the biggest cock in the family. And you can’t say I’m lying unless you see them all and compare. Me first.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
I throw my head back and laugh, but the complete and utter silence that comes through from her end of the line has me pausing and pulling the phone from my ear, only to find our call dead.
“What the fuck?” Chuckling, I hit redial and bring the phone to my ear again. But she sends me to voicemail this time, an instant denial.
Fuck you later, have a nice day.
“Shit.” Humored, I scroll to Archer’s name and hit dial, since the don’s son is slightly less scary than the woman he married.
“Yeah?” He answers on the first ring, like he was expecting my call. Or perhaps like he was already holding his phone, preparing to call someone else. “What’s up, Lix?”
“You with Mayet?”
“Nope.” The sounds of traffic follow him, too. Cars honking. Engines puttering. “Why? Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. I was talking to her a second ago: alive and well. We seem to have been cut off, though. Bad cell reception. Where are you?”
“On the way home. It’s infusion night, and she’s extra tired. I clocked off on the dot so I can follow her ass up to our apartment and make damn sure she gets her meds. What’s up?”
“Does she know you talk to us about her medical needs?” I lift my wine and perch my left ankle on my right knee. My smile, small but satisfying. “Doctor Mayet is a chronically private woman, Detective. So is she aware that we know alllll about her hemophilia, and check in on her every second day at the absolute least on your instruction? That our efforts are made easier by having Cato there, another set of eyes?”
“Nope. And if you enjoy having a tongue, you won’t say anything. Why are you calling?”
“Need medical advice.” I glance across at the beautiful, but slightlygreen, Christabelle Cannon. “I had Mayet on the phone for a sec, but she hung up on me before I could ask.”
“I thought you said you caught bad cell reception and the call cut out.”
“What is this, an interrogation? How long till you’re home? I need to speak to her.”
“Is it deathly important, or can it wait till tomorrow?”
“Uh…” I think on it for a beat, when I’m typically the guy who’ll claim the former no matter what. My reputation says I’m impulsive. Needy. “I’m not sure,” I admit. “But I’d hate to wait and find out we shouldn’t have. How long?”
“Two minutes.” His breath comes a little faster, his steps speeding the closer he gets to home.
Kinda reminds me of how I charged up the stairs a few minutes ago. That eagerness to see someone, for better or for worse.
“How are things with Cato?” We have two minutes to fill, and I’d rather not spend them trying to sync my breath to his. “Is he sending you insane?”
“Mildly,” he grunts out. “But he adores my wife and wants to be here more than he wants to be in an apartment on his own, so… whatever. He pisses Minka off more.”
“He in danger of her snapping?”
He charges through a door, the air changing as he moves from outside to in. “Nah. She’s the most controlled person on the planet. She doesn’t give away too much emotion for free, Lix. Which means she verbally spars with him when they cross paths, but she won’t ever boot him. Family is important to her, even when she’s not sure what to do with them.”
His bootsclomp-clomp-clompup concrete stairs; an ironic contrast, considering the home he left. The apartment he ended up in is the size of my bedroom alone. His apartment building as a whole, the size of just one wing of our family home.
He left us, this life… he left everything behind for a fourth-floor walk-up and a single bedroom barely bigger than my bed.
“What’s your medical emergency, Lix? And why don’t you call adifferent doctor? A regular doctor, not a medical examiner whose experience is with the dead.”
“Because I prefer family and discretion. How much longer?”
