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I did so, and he sat next to me, and poured us both wine. He lifted his glass. “To a truce,” he said.
I looked at my glass, then at him. “Is this a trap?”
“You have a suspicious mind,” he remarked.
“My God, yes,” I agreed. “Let’s drink to something else, if you want to toast. No truces unless we thrash out every last detail, one at a time.”
“You should have been a lawyer.”
“Actually, I might have been wicked good at that, in another lifetime,” I agreed. “But we’re not at war. We’re just having a very lopsided disagreement.”
He passed the zucchini fritters my way. “Lopsided how?”
I dipped one into the sauce, tasted it, and almost whimpered with delight. Now he was outmaneuvering me with food, the sneaky, seductive bastard. “You have all the goddamn power, Masters,” I informed him, when I was done chewing.
“You have plenty of your own, Kat,” he said softly. “You’re pulsing with it.”
I harrumphed. “Then what am I doing in your gilded cage, buddy?”
He tilted his head to the side, silently declining to answer. “I talked to some of your friends today,” he said, in a casual tone.
That gave me a rush of panic. “What? Who? Where?”
“Joanna and Ambrose, to start with. By the way, Joanna needs a call from you. She’s afraid I’m a serial killer, though she concedes I don’t dress like a serial killer, nor do I drive a serial killer’s car. Still, you should let her know I haven’t cut you up into chunks. Put her mind at ease.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said. “I will. Who else?”
“Danica, at the martial arts school,” he said. “And Charlotte.”
I blew out a shaky breath. “Oh. Did you learn anything from poking into my life?”
“I learned they all think you’re Wonder Woman. And they’re right.”
“Oh, get out of here,” I snapped. “Are you trying to butter me up?”
His eyes gleamed. “Would it work?”
“Hell, no,” I told him. “Not after a long, dull day in my gilded cage.”
“Here, have some mushrooms.” He served me one, expertly shifting the focus of my attention away at the crucial moment. The guy was good at navigating a difficult conversation, I’d give him that.
I let the bliss of the baked mushrooms’ cheesy wonderfulness wash over me, and then had at him once again. “Tell me something, Masters. Where on earth did you run into Joanna and Ambrose both?”
He let out an audible breath, looking like he was bracing himself. “At your house.”
I put down my wineglass, and my fork. “My house,” I said. “You’re saying you went into my house. Without the benefit of a key. Or my permission.”
“Yes,” he said, his eyes meeting mine. “I did. I probably would never have told you about it, given the choice, but Joanna and Ambrose busted me. I had to come clean. But I know it was wrong, and I do apologize.”
“I’m not ready to accept your apology until you tell me what the fuck you were doing there,” I said, dabbing at my mouth with a napkin. I was all done eating his food, no matter how delicious, until I knew what the hell he was up to.
“I have a confession to make,” he said.
I crossed my arms over my chest, and waited stonily. “Let’s hear it.”
“I told you about Shane, the SmokeScreen algorithm, the Ready Line massacre. What happened with my sister and her husband. You saw what happened to us yesterday. The people I’m fighting are diabolical, highly skilled, highly motivated, with a bottomless budget and no scruples. And they never give up.”
“And this pertains to me how?”
