Chapter 16 The Bird Surprises The Artist
The Bird Surprises The Artist
TAURUS
The four of us spent the night in the master after the wife’s performance.
I do mean perform if you’re wondering, because she not only danced like they trained her at the Bolshoi, but she filled the room with flowers and glitter and dancing beams of light. It was like a fairy dropped into our training room and did a little two-step for us.
Sometimes, she even amazes the fashionable trousers off of me.
There have been some good times and some less good times since the four of us started working towards this family thing. Little pinches here and there on all sides, but we’ve been able to work most of them out with minimal bloodshed.
Hell, no one’s needed a healing for a whole five days. It’s progress, I tell you.
What I noticed, though, is that one of us seems to be the anchor.
There’s one of us who takes every day as it comes and accepts every single wave with as much grace as possible.
He doesn’t ask for a sodding thing in return except to be with the people he loves.
Sampson might not be the flashiest of our quartet, but he’s the calm in the storm—sometimes even literally.
He has his own doubts and issues; don’t mistake my words.
But he drops everything and goes where he’s needed every time without question, even when it’s cutting into time he’s supposed to have to himself with me or the wife.
It makes me feel things I’m not familiar with.
I’ve been trying to figure out what I want to do.
When I awoke among the tangle of limbs and purrs this morning, I realized what my answer was.
I want to do something for him. When he was tipsy the other night, he had this smile that was so sodding happy that it shone.
I want to give him a reason to do that when he’s not halfway down the bottle.
I went to work, and I thought about it all day.
It preyed on my mind every second that I was idle.
I just about tore the arms off the mark because he interrupted my train of thought, and I lost my idea.
It came back to me as I was finishing up the massive amount of paperwork that every single mission requires, which I loathe.
The wife doesn’t have to do any paperwork. She says that ‘Mickey’ says she’s exempt.
If I didn’t know the bugger was gay, I’d think he was making a play for my wife. He’s not, though; he’s fallen under the same spell the rest of us gits have. He’s doing the bloody paperwork for her when he gets home and then filing it.
Regardless, I finished up after a string of colorful, yet accurate adjectives about the lack of intel and messy planning by an operations monkey who is not as talented as my primary.
Once I was free, I made some phone calls.
Figured if I throw enough cash around, I might get this done by the morning and he’ll be none the wiser until I unveil it.
Feeling bloody spectacular, I head home to see what my wife has in store tonight.
I love it when she tells me about her work. It makes me hungry.
After the wife left for Syria this morning, I popped back in to check on the progress. I figured if they weren’t done as promised, at least I’d have breakfast to look forward to. The bottom floor is silent, and I frown.
Not a good sign, that.
I walk to the farthest room at the end of our hallway.
I planned for it to be a sunroom, but it works for this application.
The ceiling is half glass, so there’s plenty of natural light.
It has a patio that overlooks the bluffs to the ocean—he can work outside if he chooses.
I hadn’t furnished it yet, so it was easy to order the fixtures and supplies to make it functional.
The only thing I’m waiting on is the small workspace with the oven and the heated equipment to be added off to the side. I can tell him about that, but it’ll take a little longer to get set up. Apparently, there’s lots of bloody shit to install to make it professional level and safe.
I can’t have my mate get blown up in a kiln fire, now can I?
I wasn’t worried about the surprise being spoiled by workers and delivery folks coming in and out yesterday.
The wife set up the security, and my contractors have the codes, plus I’ve been adding to the place since the cat and I moved in.
None of the family even pays attention to the stream of folks coming in through the service entrance anymore.
But there’s no one here, and I open the door, prepared to be furious.
Instead, I blink in awe.
The gits have outdone themselves this time—I might even have to give that jackass Benton a bloody bonus.
The room is filled with light, and it dances off the glass.
There are five separate stations with easels and supply cabinets for everything from painting to pastels.
I look at the big comfy couch and chairs for sitting and sketching and then at the kitchen area with a work sink for cleaning up.
Tucked in the corner, there’s an area for spinning at the potter’s wheel with its own cabinets.
On the wall perpendicular to the door, there are corkboards lined up and underneath, sliding drawer cabinets for storage.
Shelves line the back walls, some with easels and some bare for displaying finished pieces.
They set every sodding thing up to make an artist feel at home with everything they need to create. It’s bloody fucking perfect, and I’ll have to buy Benton another sodding motorcycle. I don’t know who he got to consult on the design and supplies, but they knew what they were doing.
Grinning, I give a tug to the connection I have with my primary, asking her if she minds having a night with her wife tonight.
I don’t want to spoil the surprise, so I don’t tell her, but like usual, she knows anyway.
The pictures she sends back are of the eye-rolling variety, but she agrees.
She takes that moment to remind me I’m over half an hour late for a de-brief and that sod who runs us is storming about asking why I can’t be as good an agent as my wife.
He’s trying to get a rise out of me with that one. I’m not saying the wife isn’t a natural who took to the job like she was sliding on a pair of shoes, but I know for a fact that he’s not sending her on Beta-level missions yet.
Hell, is he? Christ, I’ll kill him.
I’ll wring his bloody bookworm neck. With a growl of impatience, I disapparate to his office, ready to attend my de-brief and rip Mikhail a new one.
Syria. I should have sodding known!
When I get home, I head to the master bedroom, wanting to change before I go find the stoat. I’ve got this complete surprise worked out in my head, and I want it to be perfect.
I’m a bloody mess right now.
Stepping into the closet, I throw my silk in the ‘not salvageable’ basket.
I had a run-in with a few ne’er-do-wells, and while they’re little more than a stain in the dirt, one of them had the nerve to ruin one of my best shirts.
I didn’t dress for a desert mission when I left this morning, and I only ended up there after having a row that shook the walls with the idiot in charge of the agents.
The sod confirmed my wife was on a beta-level extraction and ex-fill mission in the middle of a war-zone run by a megalomaniac that gasses his own people.
We didn’t resolve a bloody thing to my satisfaction, but he ended the meeting telling me to go be a cave dweller somewhere else. His parting shot was that if I didn’t believe my wife had the skills or ability to do the job I asked him to give her, I should say so.
To add salt to the wound, he added snark about how angry she’d be if she knew I was meddling in her assignments. I followed his advice and went to be a caveman—his words, not mine—in Syria. I tracked her down, staying in the shadows to watch as she worked.
That’s where the walking corpses who destroyed my shirts found me and made the final error of their unimportant lives by trying to mug me.
If you’re wondering, the wife got her target and left without so much as a scratch despite half the city garrison chasing her out the door of the prison.
I watched her decimate a compact unit, grab the raggedy journalists, and pop out before they could even get reinforcements.
I’ve never seen her fight like that before. She looked like one of us—the clones—moving with minimum effort and maximum effect. My minx brandished a familiar-looking blade, and I’ll bet I know where that came from. Hopefully, she did whatever hoodoo necessary to keep it from injuring her again.
I finish changing, smiling to myself. I didn’t realize how far she’d come in that short time. I’d be sending her on beta missions, too. She did all of it without her magick, except for travel. It was impressive.
Like most things she does, it was impressive. Now that I’ve finished my grumbling about the ruination of my favorite shirt and the humiliation of having to admit that Mikhail might know how to do his job, I’m ready for something much less irritating.
I close my eyes and pop into the guest house where my primary and the stoat have taken up residence. I don’t see anyone in the living room, so I poke around the house. I find him when I reach the bedroom.
He’s napping, his long hair spilling over the scars that tragically mar his back as he wraps around a pillow.
I do not understand how he survived the months after he sent the idiots packing.
I don’t think I’ve met anyone who loves to be curled up with someone more than he does.
I walk up to the bed, smiling a bit as I reach over to stroke his hair.
It’s nice to watch him for a few minutes.
He shifts and mutters something in his sleep, and a purr vibrates under my hand.