Except if it’s Bear, it whispers. If he sees you like this, he’s going to murder you.
That puts a little falter in my step.
But even before I can open the door, I hear a key in the lock and it turns and opens on its own. Well, not exactly on its own.
Stacey smiles at me, and when she looks me up and down, that smile turns into something more. “Hey, Ty,” she says, brushing past me. “Saw the car in the driveway, figured the big guy was home. Thought I’d drop on by and find out how the trip went.”
My face burns with the force of a thousand suns. “Uh. Er. Flarg.” I’m pretty sure I look like a homosexual deer caught in the headlights after just having sex for the first time.
“What’s that?” she asks, heading for the kitchen.
“Please, come in,” I say.
“Thanks,” she says. “Oh, I’ve got a key.”
“I noticed.” I look longingly at the front door, giving serious reconsideration to running through it.
“Hey, can you help me?” she calls, and I can hear the sounds of her rooting around in the cabinets.
I would rather not, and I would actually rather have her not exist in my vicinity right at this moment at all, but that doesn’t seem like a polite thing to say. “Uh, sure.”
I follow her into the kitchen, and she’s taken coffee mugs down and is fiddling with the fancy espresso machine Dom has. She pushes a button and it makes a grinding noise. She frowns and hits it. “Technology hates me.”
“If it makes you feel any better,” I say, “I don’t know how to work it either. What’s the point of having one of those when you can just go to Starbucks?”
She reaches up over the sink and finds a box of tea. It strikes me then that she probably lived here at one point, or at least has been here many times, and knows the house well. I’m jealous, but I don’t know why.
“This will do,” she says. “I’m pretty sure Dominic would be slightly pissed if we burned down his house. Speaking of, where is he?”
“Sleeping,” I say. “We didn’t get to bed until really late last night.”
“Oh, really?” she asks, that smile returning.
I backpedal as quickly as possible. “What? No! What? We were driving! Got back late! Very early! That’s it!”
“Uh-huh.” She puts two mugs in the microwave and starts it. “So you guys just crashed, huh?”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s it. Just crashed. So tired. Long drive.” I fake yawn. It probably looks like I’m doing a bad impression of a T. rex. Or a good impression of an allosaurus. Subtle differences, those.
“I bet,” she says. “Long drives can do that to you.”
Goddamn stress sweat. “Sure can.”
“Tea?” she asks me as the microwave goes off.
“Thank you,” I say politely. And maniacally.
She takes sugar and honey down from a shelf without even having to search for it, and I’m somehow able to keep from growling at her. The smile plastered on my face probably wouldn’t look out of place in a mug shot lineup of known serial killers.
“Shall we sit?” she asks when she finishes the tea.
“Sounds wonderful.” Sounds awful and I’d rather get punched in the uvula!
“How was Tucson?” she asks.
“Hot.”
“And Kori’s all right?”