The Dragon Marshal's Treasure (U.S. Marshal Shifters 1)

Tiffani put down her chopsticks. “Deputy Theo?”

“Just Theo. Really.”

Whenever Tiffani smiled, you could see the slight gap between her front teeth. Jillian’s dad had always wanted her to have Invisaline braces—obviously no trophy wife of his could have visible dental work—to “fix” it. Now she never would.

Good for her, Jillian thought, to have outlasted him on that particular point, when she knew her dad had a way of wearing people down, burying them under an avalanche of bullshit and charisma until they weakened. It was a professional sales tactic, but he’d never shied away from bringing it home with him. Why shouldn’t he use it on his family too? Why shouldn’t he get everything he wanted, instead of just eighty percent of it?

But she and Tiffani had come out the other side of the Gordon Marcus hard sell, still with their ethics and their gap teeth.

“Theo,” Tiffani repeated. “I wanted to thank you for staying here. For caring about what happens to us even after I didn’t take your advice. Outside of Jilly, you and Gretchen have been nicer to me about all this than anyone else. I had friends I’d had since Girl Scouts who suddenly won’t return my phone calls. But you—you have every reason to doubt us and keep away from us, and instead...” She shrugged. “And it’s not even just to win over Jilly, because you were sweet before you even saw her.”

“Thanks, Tiff,” Jillian said. “That’s tactful.”

“On that note!” Tiffani said brightly. “I’m going to bed. I’ll leave it to the two of you to figure out... sleeping arrangements.”

Once she was standing up, she kissed the top of Jillian’s head, even though she was such a pixie that she still didn’t have to lean down very far.

“Good night, sweetheart. Good night, Theo.”

“Good night, ma’am,” Theo said.

Sleeping arrangements, Jillian thought. She crossed her legs under the table. The slight pressure kindled something in her. No, who was she kidding. Putting Theo and bed together in the same thought had done that.

Theo was drumming his finger on the table. Jillian didn’t know what she had expected, but she hadn’t imagined this kind of restlessness.

“Her bedroom is on the second floor at the very end of the hall,” Theo said, his finger coming to rest on a spot of woodgrain. She realized that he was looking at some imagined floor plan. “Not the master suite anymore, understandably enough. And you’re—you didn’t say, actually. In your old bedroom?” He moved his finger to a different spot.

Jillian lifted his hand up an inch above the table. His skin still had that banked-coal feeling, just a little hotter than she was used to.

“No. Too much like being a teenaged ghost. I’m up in the attic.”

He had, she remembered, liked the attic, though all he’d said about it was, “It’s like an eyrie.” She’d had to have him explain that that was an eagle’s nest or, he added awkwardly, a high-ranking dragon’s den.

She was tickled by the idea that he was a closeted D&D fan trying to open up to her about his life bit by bit.

Jillian took his left hand, too, and moved it up beside his right, both palms hovering flat above the table.

She said, “And you. You should come up with me.”

He swallowed. “You have no idea how badly I want to.”

“I know how much I want you to.”

Theo closed his hands around hers and brought them slowly back down, though he still didn’t let go. He said, “I have a complicated background. I want to be honest with you, but it’s the kind of thing that’s hard to explain all at once.” He looked around. “And in a kitchen.”

Jillian knew all about complications. Maybe she could never leave them behind, but she was through worrying about them. Her life wasn’t simple either. She wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that his couldn’t be any more tangled-up than hers, but short of him having a Bluebeard’s closet full of dead girlfriends, she didn’t need to know about it before she said she liked him. Wanted him.

She was halfway to being in love with him. That she wasn’t ready to admit to.

“Then I have a proposition for you,” Jillian said. “What if instead of talking about all of that in the kitchen, we don’t talk about any of it in the bedroom?”

“I’m supposed to protect you.”

“You can leave your gun on the nightstand.”

He looked at her for what felt like an eternity. Then he said, “Proposition accepted.”

They made their way to the attic at what felt like a land-speed record.