16. Rena
Rena
Chance and I watched each other as we raced to undress, and before I’d gotten my underwear down my legs, he was rushing past me and diving wildly into the tub, splashing water everywhere.
“You’re insane,” I gasped, gaping at the amount of water he’d displaced.
“I won,” he corrected, spreading his arms over the back of the tub.
“You splashed out half the bathwater.”
“It’s a little too warm,” he said thoughtfully. When I turned to glare at him, he was leering comically at my bare ass.
Instead of messing with the tap, I stepped over the ledge of the tub instead.
“That works,” he mused, gripping my hips to steady me. “Much cooler now.”
“Oh, so it was the heat and not the bathwater,” I said, lowering so I straddled his hips.
“Honest mistake.”
I groaned as the water lapped up to my waist, the heat soothing my sore muscles.
“This is easily the best bath I’ve ever taken,” Chance announced, brushing my hair off my shoulders.
“It’s all right,” I agreed halfheartedly, laughing as he glared. “Fine, top ten.”
“What would make it number one?” he asked curiously, his hands beginning to roam.
I pretended like I was thinking it over. “Jets? Candles? A window?”
“We’ll call a contractor tomorrow,” he said immediately. “Danny’s room is on the other side of this wall, but he’ll just have to deal.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, let’s put a window into Danny and Rosemary’s room,” I said, leaning forward to kiss his nose. “So they can watch us bathe.”
“Some sacrifices are worth it,” he replied with mock solemnity.
“Maybe it’s his bathroom,” I considered, tapping my finger on my chin. “And we could visit while he’s taking a shit.”
“You have the best ideas,” he said, smiling like the Cheshire Cat as he refused to give up the bit.
“Why don’t we just bring some candles in next time?” I asked, smoothing bubbles over his chest. “That’ll bump it up a little on the bath favorites.”
“Some people have no vision,” he grumbled, snapping his teeth toward my finger when I tried to put bubbles on his beard.
“Are you glad to be home?” We’d been gone a week, but it felt like an eternity.
“Yeah.” He rested his head against the high back of the tub. “Montana was brutal.”
“But kind of hopeful too,” I said. My part in the rescue had been a very small piece in a much larger operation, but I’d still cried as each of the Vampires and their mates said goodbye and left to move on with their lives. “And your friends said they’d visit.”
“They did,” he agreed. “But hopefully not for a while. I’d like to have you to myself for a bit.”
“You live with”—I counted on my fingers—“nine other people. I’m not sure how much privacy you’re expecting.”
“I can guarantee that each of those people is very much on board with staying away from each other,” he replied with a smile.
“Except for dinner,” I said with a laugh. “At seven.”
“Okay, fair,” he conceded. “We’ll have to go down to dinner with my family. The only one who gets to skip those is Charlie, for obvious reasons.”
“He didn’t say a word on the flight home,” I remembered with a wince. “I don’t think I saw him all week until we went to the runway.”
“Yeah, I know,” Chance said thoughtfully. “I think he’s trying to come to terms with the fact that the man he blamed for Zeke’s death is gone now. There’s no longer anyone to punish.”
“That’s it?” I asked. “It’s all over?”
“Not all, no,” he admitted. “But mostly. For Charlie, it’s over.
I’ll still need to go over all of my research again, probably a few times, just to make sure that I didn’t miss anything.
Danny and Ambrose will keep their ears to the ground, making sure nothing else pops up anywhere else.
” He rolled his neck from side to side, making it crack.
“And we still have to handle the money man.”
“The money man?”
“The one who financed it all.”
“Who was it?”
Chance’s gaze drifted over my face. “It’s probably better if you don’t know. Is that all right?”
I thought about it for a moment, but the answer was easy. I didn’t want to know. I would always help if someone was in trouble—that had been ingrained in me by my mother—but I never wanted to be a part of any covert, high-stakes, whatever-the-fuck-that-had-been operation again. “Fine with me.”
Chance smiled. “Now that I have you here, naked, I’m not sure where to begin.”
“We haven’t had very much time to ourselves,” I replied with a sigh. “Maybe we could talk for a while?”
“Talking, naked, in a bubble bath? My favorite pastime.”
I laughed, making the water ripple around us.
“First, we should probably turn off the water.”
“Shit,” I yelped, twisting to reach the tap.
“See, now I can actually hear you,” he joked when the bathroom became silent. “What would you like to talk about?”
“Anything,” I replied, letting my body float a little so I could turn over. He widened his legs and tugged me into the V of them. “This bathtub is massive.”
“That’s not the bathtub, snookums,” he teased, thrusting his hips against my ass.
“We definitely should take more baths,” I said with a sigh, leaning my head against his shoulder. “I’m not hurting you, am I?”
“All healed up,” he assured me.
“So what do we do now?” I asked, letting my feet float. “We’re both healed, everyone is safe, there’s no crisis left to be managed.”
“Thank the Gods,” Chance mumbled, kissing my head. “What do you want to do?”
“I have to get back to work,” I replied with a groan. “I know, I know, not glamorous, but true.”
“Okay, what else?”
“No complaints?” I asked in surprise. I’d expected some pushback. “Beau wanted Reese to quit her job.”
“Beau understood that Reese’s job was going to put a strain on her physically,” Chance corrected. “Spending that much time apart was too painful. We don’t have that problem. You can work anywhere, right?”
“Theoretically,” I agreed. “But I’d need my computer and the time to do it without distractions.”
“To be clear, you don’t have to work,” he said, smoothing his hands down his arms. “We’ll never run out of funds. But I was under the impression that you liked your work. You put a lot of time and effort into building that business.”
“I did.”
“So…work.”
“Okay.”
“I promise not to be too distracting.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I’ll work while you’re working.”
“Doing what? I thought you had more money than you knew what to do with?”
Chance paused, then too casually said, “A little of this and a little of that.”
“Spill it,” I ordered.
“I approach businesses and convince them to let me invest their money,” he replied.
“What kind of businesses?”
“Mm?” He drew little curlicues on my arms. “Charities, that sort of thing.”
“I thought you didn’t mess with any recent shit.”
“I don’t,” he replied. “Not with our money, anyway. Only other people’s money.”
“So you manage people’s money?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that. I invest their money in stocks I know will spike, and then when I’ve at least tripled it, I give the money back.”
“How do you know which stocks will spike?”
Chance chuckled. “I’ve been doing it a while. I know what to look for.”
“And you only do it for charities?”
“Small charities, mostly. Some women’s shelters—they always need money. Once I did it on a much smaller scale for this single mother I met on the subway in New York.” His fingers slid between mine. “She took far more convincing than the people I usually work with.”
“I bet.” I couldn’t imagine my mother giving any of our hard-earned income to some stranger so he could “invest” it. “Did you charm her?”
“No, just got her to trust me.”
“Why charities?” I asked.
“Because they’re forever in need of money. I donate, but this way I have something to do.”
I laughed. “Oh, you poor, bored Vampire with too much money to spend. I’m glad you’ve found a hobby.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He poked me gently in the side. “I had another job too, you know, before we lost Zeke.”
“I’m just teasing,” I said, tilting my head to look at him, glad that he was no longer working with Vampire Command. Once he’d found me, there was no chance of him going back. But I didn’t think he would’ve anyway, not after how they’d handled the lab rescue.
“Investing is something I can do well,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve also created software for some start-ups, occasionally tested software security, and I once designed a computer game.”
“Which one?”
“I’ll never tell,” he whispered in my ear. “I gave it to a kid at a local university. He sold it and paid for medical school.”
I shook my head. “Of course you did.”
“I’ll stay out of your hair while you’re working,” he promised. “What else do you want to do? Travel? Live at your house or build a new one? We could build one on the property like Beau and Reese if you wanted. There’s plenty of space.”
“I love my house,” I said, trying to picture him there. “But it’s old?—”
“Nothing wrong with a little history,” he cut in.
I grinned. “It’s going to need a lot of work.”
“We can afford it.”
“And it’s tiny,” I finished in exasperation. “I always planned on getting something bigger when I could afford it.”
“What do you think about building here?”
“We could do that.”
Everything was changing, and nothing would ever be the same again, but it didn’t cause panic to build in my chest like it always had before. For the first time in my life, I felt excited about it. Maybe it was because I controlled the change, not someone else.
“One benefit of living so close is that we’d have built-in childcare,” he said, leaning down to kiss my neck. “My mother has been waiting for grandbabies for a very long time.”
“And we’d be near Reese and Beau.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“You sure complain a lot about a brother you choose to spend loads of time with.”
“That’s why I can complain.”
“And we’re going to have babies,” I said, turning again so I could straddle him.
“Once the bond is completed,” he said, smoothing back my hair. “Vampires and their mates have ten years to procreate. There’s a birth control pill I can take whenever we want to keep that from happening.”
“You?”