Chapter 5
Chapter Five
CHAMPION
“Kitten’s here,” Jezebel drawled from the doorway of my office, arms crossed as she studied me where I was sprawled on the couch. It was a good couch, leather so you could wipe off any blood or vomit, and long so my legs didn’t dangle off the end.
“What day is it?” I asked, pushing myself upright. The bullet wounds would smart for a few days.
She made a tsking sound and shook her head. “The first day of the rest of your life. You’ve been lying there for eight hours.”
“How do I look?” I could claim to have a flu. I wasn’t about to make my wife worry about me. My wife. It still boggled the mind. I stretched tentatively. I’d definitely been stabbed in the shoulder not too long ago, but if I didn’t try to use my arm for a few days, it wouldn’t be noticeable.
“Like honey. You perked up real nice. You get shot trying to dance with the King of Macao?”
“No, Flowers.”
“Ah. The one you can’t deliver.”
“That’s the one.” I pulled off my shirt. “Would you mind changing my bandage before she comes in?”
She walked over and ripped off the old bandage without hesitation.
She probed the wound with experienced fingers that made me hiss from the sharp pain.
“You’re not going to tell her that you’ve been stabbed?
How will you ever be able to keep your shirt on?
She told us that she married you for your body, so you’ve got to deliver.
You should hire a better whatever-you-call the hack job that bandaged you the first time. ”
“Second time. He’s called a medic.” I made a face as she cleaned out the wound.
I’d brought the kit with me to the couch before I’d passed out.
I’d had the idea that I’d take care of it, but my body had other ideas.
This was better. Jezebel was fast, efficient, and knew exactly how to deal with stab or bullet wounds.
“Medic? You can’t hire a real doctor? You don’t want a real doctor because they might have ethics.”
“He’s not bad, I was just in a hurry.”
“Ah. You are the worst patient.” She slapped down my hand where I’d been about to help out with the bandaging to make it go faster. “She brought her aunt. Wants to introduce the two of you. Do you want me to tell you what I know about her?”
I frowned at my best trick rider. My only trick rider. “You know her aunt? That’s probably all I need to know.”
She gave me a sunny smile that wasn’t remotely light and sweet.
Her teeth looked sharp, like a shark. A card shark.
“She’s one of the best drug dealers in the world.
By best, I mean ethical as well as capable.
Everyone wants to hire her whether she’s perfectly legal and registered or not.
And it’s a not in her case. Decidedly not.
Still, if you’ve got the skills, why get the license? ”
“You’d think that she’d just buy one.”
“For someone with her talents, she’s decidedly less than affluent. She’s always spending her money on research. What do you think that research is?”
I smiled at her, so sudden and sharp that her eyes widened. “I’m looking forward to meeting her.” If she had research on Sunshine’s disease, that would be ideal. Most of the serum’s developers weren’t legally sanctioned. That must be where she’d come from.
Jezebel shook her head as she finished smoothing on the bandage. “Be gentle with her. She’s an honest criminal. Doesn’t know what she’s getting involved with.”
I pulled on my shirt. “She’s my wife’s family. I’ll be excruciatingly gentle.”
She shivered melodramatically as she straightened, taking the kit with her. “That’s what I’m afraid of. I’ll tell Tom to wrap up the tour and come here.”
“Or I’ll go meet them wherever they’re at. Where are they?” I smiled again, practicing my warm southern hospitality smile.
She curled her lip. “She’s not going to fall for it.”
“If I want her to, she will,” I replied evenly, putting on extra warmth and adding a wink.
She made a face like she’d drunk sour milk and then headed out while I followed her. “They’re in the garage. Your Sunshine brought her pretty little yellow bird. Trixie heard it knocking and is giving it some special attention.”
“Do you like her?” I asked for some reason, because whether Jezebel liked my wife or not was absolutely irrelevant.
“I do. I think that’s her talent, making the worst people like her. To be honest, it’s not the safest talent to have.”
“Not that you’re ever honest.”
She laughed, soft, deadly. “Naturally. We’ve always understood each other. It’s terrifying to watch you fall so easily to a kitten. Makes me wonder if there’s some sad puppy dog in my future.”
“That is terrifying. Puppies are notorious for having teeth.”
“So are kittens.”
I sighed heavily. Kitten was dying. If that wasn’t a whole set of teeth clamped on my heart I didn’t know what was.
Time was ticking, and I hadn’t gotten anything more than a vial of blood for my efforts.
How could I spend time away from her when she had so little of it?
But how could I accept that she wasn’t going to be around for more than a few months?
No. It was absolutely out of the question.
I would save her, if it was the last thing I did with my miserable life.
Kitten’s aunt looked like an East Coast debutante. Her accent was New York, her gaze direct, discerning, and concerned when she looked at me. She saw a threat, and rightly so.
I smiled warmly and pulled her in for a hug.
“It’s so nice to meet Kitten’s family. You don’t know how glad I am to see you.
” I squeezed her real gentle then pulled back to take Kitten in my arms. She melted against me and for a second I just closed my eyes and soaked her in.
She felt like sunshine, warm, peaceful, sweet and sinfully silky.
I needed to run my hands all over her until she was purring and…
“Newlyweds,” Trixie said with a laugh.
I reluctantly loosened my hold on Kitten and half-turned to look at Trix, my driver, an excellent mechanic with an extremely strong code of ethics. “Did you get a chance to look at her sweet ride? What do you think?”
Kitten leaned against my side, tucked under my arm while she looped her arms around my waist. She felt so impossibly good.
I’d been waiting my whole life to find someone who could light up my world like that.
No, I’d spent my whole life avoiding someone that I’d need so much.
Addiction wasn’t pretty, and I was this close to being hopelessly addicted to my sweet wife.
And I wasn’t much closer to finding her cure.
I’d leave in two days for Macau. Until then, I’d enjoy every second with my sweet Sunshine.
“I think that it’s a piece of history married to art. Do you want to leave her here for a few days and I can give her a high quality tune-up?” Trix asked, turning intent eyes on Sunshine.
“Oh. I guess…If you wouldn’t mind, but I don’t want to take your valuable—”
Trix waved off her protestation and started towards the car, like she’d been given permission to break her diet.
“She’s such a gorgeous thing, all curves and bells.
I haven’t touched a car like that in ages.
” She sounded like she was already half in love.
If only Trix could find a person who made her light up as much as a well-made machine did.
Sunshine’s aunt pulled out her phone, frowned at it and gestured at Kitten, something about having to take the call before she edged away from us and started speaking in a low voice.
“I hope you don’t mind us busting in here like this,” Kitten said, looking up at me like I was her whole world. She was so adorable. So sweet. So much more than my everything.
“Of course not.” I murmured, sliding her around so she was facing me while everyone else did whatever I didn’t care about. What mattered was in my arms, where I wanted to keep her.
She wrinkled her cute nose. “It’s just that I met my birth father this afternoon, and he wants to have dinner with my Aunt, but she wants to go alone.
I think that we should go with them. I mean, doesn’t that make sense?
Of course it does. What doesn’t make sense is my birth father going to dinner with my aunt so they can come up with a good story together. He said he knew you, met you twice.”
My blood had gone cold the second she said, ‘birth father.’ It took me a second to shake it off. “Who’s that?”
“Flowers. I assume that’s his last name, but I don’t know for sure. Flowers is such a bold name for a boy. Or a girl. Do you want a lot of kids?”
I blinked at her. “Kids?”
“After our six months or shorter, you can find a nice woman that you like even more than you like me and have kids with her. Sorry. I’ve been thinking about kids and things since I heard I had a birth father.
If I do. I don’t know. The whole thing is really freaking me out, and you didn’t come home last night, and my aunt Willie punched him in the face.
I think she broke his nose. What was she thinking?
She wasn’t. Very clearly. He might sue her, and I wouldn’t blame him.
” She sighed heavily and gazed up at me. “Are you okay? You aren’t breathing.”
I cleared my throat, and took a deep inhale that hurt my ribs.
“I’m just surprised is all. But that’s exciting.
I mean, more family is always better. Unless it’s worse.
Sorry about last night. I fell asleep over paperwork.
” I rubbed her arms and pulled her closer so I could inhale the scent of her.
Flowers had come here? What was his game?
Would he try to take her away from me? He clearly wanted to influence her aunt or he wouldn’t want a private dinner with her.
If he was here, was there any way to get him to help me save Kitten?
I couldn’t ever trust him, but it was in everyone’s best interest to keep my wife alive.
There was no knowing what I’d do if I lost her.
Even the thought ripped apart my reason, my control, and threw me off the ledge into deepest rage.
Her brows furrowed in confusion. “Paperwork? You chose to do paperwork instead of spending the last few beautiful moments with your dying wife? Next time, I’m going to come to your office and sleep with you.
” She wiggled her brows and whispered, “But we won’t be sleeping because I’ll steal all your pillows. ”
I smiled at her and some of my stress and fear for her settled. “I’m sorry I missed holding you last night. I have a small trip I have to take in two days. Would you like to come with me?” Why was I asking her? Because she’d notice I was gone and I didn’t want her to come looking for me here.
She blinked at me then scowled. “A trip? Why?”
I smoothed a hand over her hair, loving the feel of her. “A sponsor. I need to go and do a demo in person. I lined it up months ago, before I met you.” My words sounded so sincere that I almost believed them myself.
She smiled sunnily. “If you have to go, you have to go. In the meantime, do you mind if we crash my aunt’s dinner with my supposed birth father?”
I pressed a kiss to her hair, snuggling her against me. “That sounds perfectly delightful. And if Flowers made reservations, then I don’t have to. Is there anything else you’d like to do for the next two days?”
“Yes. I’d like to sit in front of a fire snuggling and carving. Could we go camping? Just the two of us?”
I blinked at her. Flowers was in town. Just the two of us wouldn’t give her enough defense. But how could I say no? I opened my mouth to do just that and found myself saying, “I’d like that.”
“We’re going camping?” Kitten’s aunt said, breaking into our beautiful moment. Her calculated look in my direction made me cranky.
“Camping?” Jezebel said, joining us with a terrifying smile. “I’ll be sure to bring my harmonica. That’ll be a good opener for the season. Show the world that we aren’t afraid.”
“Oh, but…” Kitten said looking around like she was drowning before she fixed her gaze on me. “I guess it would be nice to go camping as a group.”
“It isn’t the worst idea to work it into the show, but if you want to go with just the two of us…”
She gave me her brightest, sunniest smile. “I want to be part of your team. If you don’t mind.”
I cuddled her close. “Whatever you want, Kitten.” As long as I got to hold her as much as possible before I descended to the underworld in search of her cure.