Chapter 8
EIGHT
EAMON
I hated modern technology with a passion that burned hotter than the fires of hell—which was a metaphorical expression since hell didn’t actually exist. Hell simply meant that in your next life, you’d end up at a call center for a health insurance company, at Macy’s in New York City during the holiday rush, or selling ice cream on the North Pole or something equally frustrating.
Anytime I had issues with my phone—which was basically every time I touched the bloody thing—Julian was the one I crawled to for help.
He loved experimenting with new gadgets like a kid in a candy store, always showing up with the latest nonsense.
He’d been trying to get me to put on these virtual reality glasses, whatever the fuck those were supposed to do, but that was a hard no from me.
I had enough trouble with actual reality, thank you very much.
I could see the appeal of television as an invention—moving pictures in a box, brilliant concept—and sure, computers were handy for looking things up.
It had taken me a while to get the hang of this Google thing though.
Apparently, you didn’t need to use whole sentences or include please and thank you when asking questions, which was plain rude if you asked me.
Where I came from, you showed proper respect when asking for information.
But I had to admit it was handy for research. It was how I’d learned as much as I could about the NYPD when I got this assignment, though clearly still not enough to avoid making a complete tit of myself in front of Charles.
When I first met him—and by “met” I mean watching him through the portal for a few days before the case officially started—I’d pegged him as super cute, super sweet, and super bubbly. I had not counted on him being this smart, which probably said a thousand times more about me than it did him.
I’d seen a cute guy with a perfect arse who I would’ve absolutely approached for a quick fuck if I’d met him in a club or bar or wherever. Just another pretty face and gorgeous body to add to my extensive collection of meaningless encounters. But he was so much more than that.
I’d gone from wanting to fuck that gorgeous arse of his—and Christ, it really was spectacular—to respecting the hell out of him. Not that I didn’t still want to bury myself inside him until he screamed my name, mind you, but that was beside the point now.
Alas, thanks to Gabriel and his tight-arse rules about “professional boundaries” and “appropriate conduct,” Charles was completely off-limits.
I had zero desire to spend the next century getting the absolute shittiest assignments my boss could find.
No thank you. I’d rather keep my sanity intact, which meant keeping my hands off Charles, no matter how much every fiber of my being screamed otherwise.
And now that I knew Gabriel could see what I did on my iPad…
That was something they’d conveniently forgotten to mention when they handed us our shiny new devices with all the fanfare of Christmas morning.
No, it had been all about how bloody great it was that we had our own special angel app and how much easier it would be to communicate with headquarters.
“Revolutionary technology,” they’d called it. “Streamlined efficiency.”
What a load of bollocks.
All this time, they’d been able to see everything I did on there.
Every single website, every video, every late-night browsing session when I was bored out of my skull.
I shuddered at the thought of how many times I’d jacked off while watching porn, completely oblivious that I had an audience.
Apparently, I’d been running my own personal OnlyFans—which was one newer invention I was familiar with and that I very much appreciated—for the entire celestial bureaucracy, except I was doing it for free like some kind of amateur exhibitionist.
Christ, no wonder Gabriel always looked at me with that smug expression.
The bastard probably had a whole highlight reel of my most embarrassing moments.
Gabriel and I were definitely gonna have a conversation about privacy invasion and proper disclosure when I was done with this assignment, that was for bloody sure. And it wasn’t going to be a polite one.
But that wasn’t anytime soon. For now, I was on Charles’s case, which was only beginning.
I’d been informed that Hartwell, the cop Carlo had threatened, had been taken to a safe location after a detailed, anonymous tip to the NYPD.
The real NYPD. Carlo would find out about that news today or tomorrow… and then shit would get real.
Charles was asleep now, I hoped, having gone back upstairs after giving me a massive eyeroll about my admittedly dumb porn show joke. But I’d been so…unsettled after he’d been so sweet and helpful that I hadn’t known what else to say.
I hoped he’d get a good night’s sleep because things were about to get so much worse. Much, much worse.
I heard the old floorboards upstairs creak around six-thirty, followed by the sound of running water and Charles moving around his bedroom. Twenty minutes later, he padded into the kitchen in fluffy socks, looking absolutely edible in a way that should’ve been illegal this early in the day.
He smelled like vanilla and something clean and masculine—his soap, probably—the scent drifting toward me as he moved past. His hair was still damp from his shower, darkened to a honey-gold color that made me want to run my fingers through it and see if it was as soft as it looked.
Little droplets clung to the ends, occasionally dripping onto the collar of his simple white T-shirt, which clung just enough to hint at the lean muscle underneath.
He was wearing worn jeans that hugged his arse perfectly, and I had to grip my coffee mug tighter to keep from reaching out and touching him.
There was something ridiculously domestic about the whole scene—him shuffling sleepily into his kitchen, still warming up to the day, completely comfortable in his own space. It made my chest do something weird and tight that I didn’t want to examine too closely.
He came to a full stop when he noticed me. “You’re up already? Or you didn’t sleep at all?”
I shrugged. “I napped. I don’t need a lot of sleep.”
Which was true. One of the biggest perks of my angelic state was that I could make do with three hours of sleep and still feel like I’d clocked a full eight hours.
“Lucky you.”
“I’ve arranged for your car to be picked up from Poughkeepsie this morning and delivered here.” I’d called in a favor to Blade, a fellow guardian. We’d done several assignments—and several men—together and got along very well.
“Don’t you need my keys?”
“Already got them. You left them on the little table in the hallway.”
“Right. I did. Thank you.”
“No problem.”
Blade would also pretend to deliver my clothes that had been in the trunk of my BMW the whole time. Kinda hard to explain that one to Charles.
He reached for a covered bowl on the counter. “Good morning, Wolfgang.”
Who the fuck was he talking to?
“How are you feeling today? You hungry?”
Did he have a pet that I had somehow missed? But no, that couldn’t be, not in a bowl.
I watched as he carefully measured flour, then water, and added it to the bowl. It clicked. “You’re talking to your sourdough starter?”
“People talk to plants, don’t they? Wolfgang’s been with me for three years now, so I treat him like a friend.”
I pressed my lips together. “You named it Wolfgang?”
“It’s a German sourdough, so I figured it would be fitting.”
A man who talked to his sourdough starter? That was totally adorable. “It is.”
He covered the bowl again, then washed his hands and reached for the coffee maker, which looked so damn complicated I hadn’t even attempted to make coffee. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please.” I gestured at the machine. “What else does that thing do except make coffee?”
He grinned. “Nothing, but it makes really, really good coffee.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Seems like a bit of overkill.”
His smile faded, and he turned his back to me as he started fiddling with the machine. “That’s because it was from my café. My coffee shop.”
“You own a coffee shop?”
“Owned. It went under.”
His voice was tight, pained, like he was trying to hold back something that wanted to break free—grief, maybe, or anger, or both.
There was a raw vulnerability in those few words that made something twist uncomfortably in my chest. For some reason that I didn’t want to examine too closely, I absolutely hated hearing that sound from him.
“Lots of new businesses fail, especially restaurants,” I offered.
He turned the machine on, and a loud hissing noise filled the kitchen. Too loud to talk, and so I waited and watched as he carefully measured coffee and prepared two mugs. When the machine was finally done and a blissful silence returned, his back was toward me, stiff and tense.
“Yes, but most businesses don’t go under because of embezzlement.”
I frowned. “An employee stole from you?”
He slowly turned around. “Not an employee. The co-owner. My fiancé. My partner, who was also my business partner.”
Pure shock filled me. “Your fiancé stole from you?”
“Over the course of two years, he embezzled roughly fifty thousand dollars, and I had no idea until it all came crashing down.”
Holy shit. What an absolute monster thing to do to the man he was going to marry. “You must’ve been devastated.”
Charles didn’t look at me as he grabbed a pan, then rummaged in the fridge. “I’m gonna make an omelet. You want one too?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
I found a spot at the breakfast table, watching him.
“I was the creative behind our coffee shop. He was the business guy who handled all our supplies, contracts, and finances. I made the food and worked on the floor ten hours a day, six days a week. He spent an hour or so in the back office, then hung around for another two and left for his other job.”
“He had another job?”