“Chickie, your daddy wants you,” Aruna cooed. “Where’s Daddy?”
We both heard the dog galloping up the stairs.
“Goddamn, Chick, don’t—oh God, he broke my back!”
“Serves you right, asshat!” Aruna yelled.
I couldn’t stop laughing.
ONCE WE got up and dressed, Ian went down first, and then I followed, falling into Aruna’s arms when I reached her.
“Oh, baby,” she crooned, stroking my hair, petting me. “I’m not sorry the man’s dead, but I know that it had to be messy for you, not just one thing, so for that, you have my sympathy.”
I hugged her tight, and she squeezed me back.
“Let’s get some food in you, all right?”
Nodding, I sat down on a barstool, one of three that went on one side of our new kitchen island. The entire Greystone had improved quite a bit since Ian moved in.
I was eating, not really paying attention as Ian and Aruna talked, but when Aruna hauled off and smacked him, I was surprised.
“Why’re you hitting him?”
“Because he told Min about his promotion before me,” she snapped, scowling at him. “I’m right here, for heaven’s sake!”
I turned to look at Ian. “You talked to Min yesterday?”
“I talk to Min every week. You know that.”
I did, and it never ceased to amaze me because it was the weirdest thing. Of all my girlfriends, he’d bonded with Min. He really liked Aruna, but it was more sisterly, like he couldn’t say anything bad to her. He tolerated Catherine, and I got that. She could be a bit high-handed, conceited, and snooty, but I adored her. Janet, Ian wasn’t sure about. He liked her well enough, but she was definitely more my friend than anything else.
Min, however, he gelled with. She was low-key, blunt, prickly, did not suffer fools, and she had an affinity for all the same video games Ian did, from Call of Duty to Horizon to Borderlands. They played online with others, and it was uber-nerdy. They took it very seriously, and I’d been banned from playing or talking to either of them when they were on a “mission.” They even had headsets. Ian bought them at Christmas, and Min cried over FaceTime when she opened her present. Her new boyfriend, Jensen Drake, who owned a very well-respected custom car shop there in Burbank, had given her a ring—the ring—and she’d seriously been more excited about the headset. I apologized to Jensen, who just grinned and said that was why he loved her.
They made an interesting pair, the thousand-dollar-an-hour criminal attorney and the tatted-up car guy. They met at a fundraiser, and Min took one look and moved toward him, he said, like a shark in the water. He was entranced. She was beautiful and scary, and he told me he never knew what hit him. He wanted to marry her on their second date; she was worried he was too clingy. She finally agreed to move in with him because his house in Topanga Canyon was apparently just lovely. She could breathe there. That was a very good thing.
Jensen had impressed Ian, as he’d been a Navy SEAL who got out when he realized he wanted more for his life, and that included art and a family. With Min agreeing to marry him—even if the Harry Winston ring on her finger played second fiddle to a gaming headset—he had everything he wanted. Ian told me he knew the feeling.
“So you told Min all about your promotion?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I smiled.
“What? She gets me.”
I knew that. “Did she have any advice? I mean, she always does, right?”
“She did.”
“What was it?”
“To be my best self.”
I squinted at him. “The fuck does that mean?”
“I have no clue, but she was really pleased about my promotion—and yours—so that’s—”
“You got a promotion too?” Aruna yelled.
“God,” I groaned.
She swatted me, hard, and I rubbed my bicep as I told her all about Custodial, and then Ian explained what he was doing as well.
“Ohmygod, that’s perfect for you guys,” she sighed, beaming. “You were a ward of the state too; you’ll know exactly how to talk to those kids to make them feel cared for. My goodness, but your boss is a smart man. Moving Ian into a position where he can use his natural bossiness to cut through the red tape—”
“Hey!”
“—and you being a caretaker of kids since you suck at being a grown-up sometimes, especially in terms of your personal safety.”
“I… what?” I griped.
“That chief deputy, what a clever, clever man.”
I really couldn’t disagree.
Chapter 11
MY PHONE woke me early the following morning, much too early for a Saturday, and when I moved, still tangled with Ian, he tightened his grip on me, as was his instinct.
“Phone,” I muttered, and he reached over me to grab it and hand it over at the same time his went off.
“Oh, what the hell,” he grumbled, rolling toward his nightstand to grab it as Chickie laid his head on the end of the bed to look at us. A voice blasted at me as soon as I answered it.