15. I can’t win this one, can I? #3
“Maybe a little, but I’m sure she’ll be fine. That said, we better leave them gifts and bribes until she forgives us for meddling behind her back.”
“Us?” I asked. “I think you mean you. I was too busy meddling behind your back to meddle behind hers.”
“I’m sure she’ll only make me suffer a little.”
I laughed so hard I cried. “Sure, Sam. Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.”
On his quest to be the perfect husband, Quinn decided we needed burgers with fries, and he scoured Maine to find a takeout place suitable for my special needs.
The sad truth revealed itself upon our arrival at the fast food joint he’d selected.
My reformed fish-hating spouse had found a place with lobster rolls and burgers so he could indulge while pretending to cater to me. I raised a brow at the menu posted by the door. “If you think I’m getting a burger when sea bugs on bread are readily available, you’re insane. Oh! Clam chowder.”
“I wanted you to have the option for a burger if you wanted it, although I see my choice of making sure they also served sea bugs was sound. So, what would my beautiful like for lunch today?”
I checked the offerings again, and I gasped when I noticed the pet menu. “They have a menu just for pets!”
“We can dine in because it’s a pet friendly establishment. That was also a factor.”
I squealed and bounced in place, and Blizzard bounced with me, barking his excitement. Avalanche, as was her wicked way, pounced the husky’s tail. “I was already resigned to eating in the rental until we made it to the hotel tonight.”
“I thought this would give us a good chance to come up with a strategy.”
“How are we going to come up with a strategy without knowing what we’ll find?”
“I’m going to make some educated guesses.” Smiling, my husband took Sunny’s leash, and the instant he ordered her to heel and headed for the restaurant’s front doors, Blizzard and Avalanche followed, doing their best to heel with Quinn.
Laughing, I hurried to catch up so the poor animals wouldn’t try to strangle themselves heeling as ordered. To keep the pets happy, I shoved their leashes into my husband’s hands. “We need to teach them to heel with the leash holder rather than the person giving the order.”
“I find this oversight hilarious and endearing.”
While my husband juggled three leashes and the animals, I strolled to the counter, which instructed us to stand in one place to order or wait to be seated. As I expected trouble, I got out our permits for our pets.
The hostess, a young woman with her pale hair captured in a ponytail, gasped when she saw Avalanche. “Oh, what a cute kitty! What breed is that?”
“She’s an ocelot kitten.” I held out the paperwork the CDC had given me. “I hope she won’t be a bother?”
“Oh, absolutely not. Pets are welcome as long as they’re legal. We keep the animals on this side of the restaurant, and we use some practitioner magic to keep allergens out of the other half of the restaurant. Will you need the pet menu?”
“We absolutely will need the pet menu. This is their first time in a restaurant.”
The hostess smiled. “For two humans and three pets?”
“Yes, please.”
“This way.” The waitress led us to a booth, handed us the menus, and headed off, returning with three pet beds, which she put down on the floor at our feet. The puppies and kitten needed no other invitation and made themselves at home. “Would you like anything to drink?”
“Coffee, black,” my husband requested, and he stared into my eyes as he did so.
“Spiced minty grass of some sort.” Damn it. “Tea. I meant tea!”
“We have spiced grass, but it isn’t minty,” the hostess replied with a smile. “We have mint syrup if you’d like your spiced grass to be minty, however.”
“Hit me up with a pot of the regular spiced grass, and because I’m really curious, a cup of spiced grass with mint syrup,” I replied, meeting my husband’s challenging gaze with a raised brow.
“I don’t know what I just lost in that exchange, but take me for all your worth, because you won that without question,” my husband stated as soon as the woman left. “Also, for the record, she thinks you’re hot.”
“Wait. She thinks I’m hot? Not you?”
“Yep.”
I blinked, leaning over to catch a glimpse of the woman as she went to make our drinks. “You’re not upset, are you? Does this bother your sexy incubus self? She’s a woman. Didn’t you say rejection hurts your pride?”
“I am more delighted because she sees you like I see you, and that is very gratifying. My sexy incubus self is rather pleased with this. Really, I’m very pleased, and you will be rewarded for being so beautiful tonight. I have zero regrets about this situation.”
“She gets a huge tip when we leave. And whatever I think is huge probably isn’t, so we need to double whatever number I try to put in as a huge tip.” I giggled and ducked my head. “This might be a first.”
“It is part of my extensive campaign to raise your self-esteem.”
“You’re very good for my self-esteem. I seem to have graduated from my initial knee-jerk disbelief to concern my sexy incubus might become unpleasantly jealous rather than delighted.” I leaned towards him and whispered, “If I wasn’t already the prey of a sexy incubus, I’d say she’s really pretty.”
“That is because she is really pretty,” my husband replied with a soft laugh, and he checked on our pets. “Is Avalanche doing okay with her meats? I know you’re giving some to her every day, but you don’t usually give her a lot. She’s still pretty heavily drinking milk?”
“She would very much appreciate some fresh meat from the pet menu, but she should still get her milk, and her meat needs to be in small pieces, so we should look at the kitten menu for her.” I checked the pet menu, my brows raising at the wide assortment of meats and brands they kept for pets.
“This is a pet paradise, Sam! They even have moose. Oh, they have edible bones, Sam. We need to get those for the puppies.” I thrust the menu at him.
“Are any of those bone types what you give them?”
He checked. “Yeah, these are good. I’ll order a few extra for the road so they can keep busy while we’re driving around and in the hotel room tonight.
We’ll get a box for them to go. It should keep them happy.
Oh, I want you to do rabies treatments on them in a few days, just in case, and we’ll do a round ourselves.
No idea if we’ll be exposed handling this, so I’d rather just pretend we will be. ”
I wrinkled my nose. “I will be sad if I flip off that damned marker again.”
“And if you do, my grandfather will flip it back on, so don’t worry about it. He’ll want to check on you weekly anyway to make sure the babies are okay.”
“It’s going to be a constant stream of worriers, visiting and visiting and visiting. Make it clear if they visit, they babysit!”
“I can do that.”
The waitress returned with our drinks, and we ordered for our pets first, which amused the woman. Once certain our furry friends were cared for, I ordered a salad to appease my husband’s vegetable-eating ways to go with my sea bug roll.
It amused me when he ordered the same thing.
“I have learned when it comes to sea bugs, I should follow your lead.”
“What is this strategy you want to talk about?”
“I’ve been thinking,” he began.
“Thinking, now that’s a seriously frightening statement right there. That’s almost as bad as when I’ve claimed to be thinking. Do you know what happens when I think?”
“A slightly mitigated version of what happens when you don’t think.”
I would feel that burn for at least an hour. “Oh, wow. Do that again.”
He laughed. “I swear, Bailey. You’re the only woman I know who enjoys it when I fling zingers at you.”
“That one was just beautiful. I need more of that, or I start thinking life is too perfect. But then those zingers make it actually perfect. I can’t help it. I’m a glutton for punishment, and it burns better when you’re the one handling the punishment.”
Still laughing, he sipped his coffee. “It’s not as good as yours, but I’ve learned there is no coffee as good as yours. However, this was made by someone who knows how to operate a coffee machine.”
I held out my hands. “Sip!” He handed me his mug, and I took a tentative sip.
As promised, someone with some skill with a coffee maker had made the brew.
After a moment of thought and a second sip, I returned his drink.
“You may go to the car and retrieve our Thermos, and you may pay the nice waitress to fill it for us. And you’ll call your grandfather and find out if coffee is off the list of things I can have, because that is good enough I will drink it with minimal complaint it’s not as good as mine. ”
“The highest of accolades,” he teased.
“It’s true! Less tease, more strategy. Although you can still tease while we strategize. I don’t think I can handle a day without feeling the burn.”
“We’re going to play the flame game.”
“The what game?”
“The flame game. Essentially, the goal is to burn Morrison in all regards. We must completely destroy his reputation at the same time we, if an opportunity happens to present itself, eliminate him as a risk. Ideally, we will figure out what his end game is so we can burn that to the ground, too. What we need to know is why Morrison and Audrey wanted to convert so many people into gorgons.”