The Silver Fox (Red's Tavern 3)

“You actually use those things?” I asked.

“The drawers? Of course,” he said.

“I never use them when I’m in hotels,” I said. “I leave everything in my duffel bag.”

“This isn’t a hotel. It’s an inn,” he said, smiling at me. “Maybe you should give something new a try.”

“Pretty sure I’m trying enough new things for a lifetime today.”

I watched Perry as he carefully put the rest of his clothes into the drawer. It was strange. In any other situation, I would have been intimidated by someone like Perry if I saw him on the street. His gaze was hard, and he looked powerful, like someone who had been through a lot. The silver hair did a lot to make him look wise and weathered.

But the moment he actually started talking, his sweetness was unmistakable.

I’d always said that you could judge a book by its cover, but Perry was proving me wrong in a big way. A man who looked like he could be a ruthless king was actually a man who would do anything to make the people around him happy.

“I can unload yours for you, if you don’t want to be on your feet,” he said.

I cut him a glance. “It’s just a messed up ankle, it’s not like I can’t stand on my own two feet,” I said.

“I know, I know,” he said. “Just thought you might want help with something like that.”

“Thank you, Perry,” I said. “But yes, I can handle it.”

“How did you get yourself in that thing, anyway?” he asked.

“Pretty easy to strap on an ankle boot,” I said.

“No. I mean, how did you injure yourself?”

I pulled in a big gulp of air, lying back on the bed and staring up at the ceiling. “I was rescuing hundreds of people from a burning wreck, and I fell from the second story of the building, all while holding and protecting a baby and a tiny kitten.”

He stared at me. “That sounds…”

“Like bullshit?”

“I wasn’t going to say it.”

“It’s because it is bullshit,” I said, running a hand over my face. “That’s one of the worst things about this damn injury. I wish I’d gotten it from something heroic or valiant. But I didn’t.”

“Did you just trip over something the wrong way?”

“Was early in the evening at the station,” I said. “I took a call responding to an older woman who had smelled a gas leak in her apartment. It turned out to be her downstairs neighbor boiling two dozen eggs.”

Perry smiled, his eyes crinkling up around the edges. “And you messed up your ankle running far, far away from the awful smell?”

“I took a stair the wrong way as I was leaving,” I said with a sigh. “That’s… it. An hour later I was in the hospital being told my peroneal tendon was torn, on the side of my ankle.”

“Just a mishap on the stairs,” Perry said. “I thought for sure you’d gotten hurt skydiving or motorcycling or jumping out of a burning house.”

I shook my head. “Nope. Just wasn’t paying attention. They tell you not to text and drive, but they never tell you not to look at your phone while on staircases.”

“You were texting?”

I looked to the side. “I was responding to a message from a woman on a dating app,” I said.

Perry started laughing, quietly at first and then a little more loudly.

“You’re laughing at me,” I said.

“It’s funny,” he said.

“I know. It’s funny because it’s so fucking stupid.”

“No,” he said. “Just funny because it sounds like something I would do. I tripped over an extension cord once in culinary school, because the guy I liked was licking whipped cream off of his finger on the other side of the room.”

I smiled. “Unsanitary.”

“I was hopeless back then. I tripped over the cord and knocked my arm against the sharp corner of a stainless steel table.”

He walked over to me and turned so I could see the back of his upper arm had a gnarly scar on it, right across his tricep.

“Whoa,” I said, running my fingers along the raised skin.

“Hurt like hell,” he said. “I couldn’t even pick up a pot of soup for a while. Not being able to do your job is awful.”

“God, I miss my job. But being hurt also just sucks in general,” I said. “Not to be good at all the things I’m usually good at.”

“Red said you were always the one who was good at everything.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Red said that about me?”

Perry nodded. “He said you were the high achiever, growing up.”

“Christ. What other rumors has my brother been spreading about me?”

“Why? You’ve got secrets?”

I let out a long breath. “No secrets,” I said. “Sometimes I think that’s my problem.”

He cocked his head to one side. “Why would that be a problem?”

“Well, I tell women the truth when they ask me how many people I’ve slept with before, or how many people I’ve slept with that month, and… they don’t like the answer, usually.”