tourists where they stood. But I was a native, and all the searing, blacktop-melting blaze drew from me was a weary sigh.
My boot heels sank into the gravel as I stood, and I glanced at Marc, where he still sat snoring against the passenger-side window. I should wake him up, I thought. But then, he should have offered to split the drive with me.
I was too tired to go to war with my conscience, and more than a little irritated with Marc. So, I cranked down the driver’s-side window to keep him from baking and closed the door gently, smiling to myself as Marc shifted in his seat, then resumed snoring, still out cold in spite of the heat.
My boots clomped as I trudged up onto the porch, and when I opened the front door, cool air rushed out to meet me. I sagged in the doorway for a moment, one hand on each side of the frame, letting the artificial breeze dry my sweat and chase away the heat that had been slowly draining my vitality.
In my room near the end of the long central hallway, I stripped completely, tossing my dirty clothes into a pile by the door. I considered putting them in the hamper, but since I had no plans to ever wear them again, going through that much effort seemed pointless.
I glanced around the room, happy to find everything just as I’d left it. My books—hundreds of them—were crammed two rows deep into my only bookshelf, the extras stacked horizontally wherever they would fit. My bed was unmade, because I hadn’t made it, and because I’d refused to let my mother into my room to clean since my first week home, when I’d realized she was using housework as an excuse to spy on me. That could not continue. Besides, I was damn well old enough to clean my own room. Or to not clean it in peace. So I’d told her to stay the hell out. She’d frowned at my language, but complied.
At my dresser, I paused to take off my watch and caught sight of my own reflection. I looked like shit. Dirty, sweaty, tangled, and…still wearing the diamond stud earrings I’d put on in concession to my original plans for the night before. It was a miracle I hadn’t lost them both—along with half my earlobe—to Dan Painter’s temper and desperate, flailing fists. Or his teeth.
As much as I hated to admit it, even to myself, I’d been completely unprepared for my run-in with Painter. After we dropped off the stray, Marc had laughed at my bewildered expression as he’d pulled item after item from a trunk emergency kit, the likes of which I’d never seen because I’d never had reason to use one. The kit included two shovels, a roll of 3 mm black plastic, duct tape, black jeans and a black T-shirt, a pair of old sneakers, and an ax.
I didn’t ask what the ax was for, because I doubted its uses involved fallen tree branches and cozy campfires. Regardless, Marc was nothing if not prepared. He was like an overgrown Boy Scout. A Boy Scout with gorgeous gold-flecked brown eyes and glossy black curls crowning a physique solid enough to stop a fucking freight train. A Boy Scout who could bring a girl screaming with a single lingering glance…
Okay, he really had little in common with the Boy Scouts, other than the whole overpreparedness thing. And his damned emergency kit hadn’t kept me from letting him bake in his own car, now, had it?
Thoroughly satisfied with my revenge, I dug out a change of underwear and a nightshirt and tossed them onto my bed, then plodded into my private bathroom and straight into the shower. Ten minutes later, I stepped out into the suddenly frigid bathroom, soaked but smelling of lavender-scented soap, rather than sweat and dirt. To a cat’s sensitive nose, smelling good is very, very important, especially in human form, where body odor, unlike personal scent, isn’t socially acceptable.
I was reaching for my robe when the first few grunts of Pink’s “U + Ur Hand” rang out from my cell phone. I pulled my robe from its hook and shoved my arms through the sleeves on my way out of the bathroom. In the middle of my bedroom floor I glanced around for my phone, my focus sliding over my dresser, bed, nightstand, and wall shelf before finally landing on my desk. There. Only lower.
My gaze dropped to the clothing I’d kicked off to the right of my door. Squatting in front of the pile, I searched my jeans pockets frantically, wondering who the hell would be calling me at 10:00 a.m. on a Thursday. Unfortunately, I no longer had much contact with the world outside of the Lazy S, and my fellow enforcers wouldn’t bother knocking on my door before barging in, much less calling first.
Maybe it was Abby. She’d spent most of the summer on the ranch, recovering from her ordeal at Miguel’s hands with a fellow survivor—me. And she’d called me at least a dozen times in the three weeks she’d been home, with little to say except that she was fine. She seemed content to hear that I was fine, too, and to listen to me prattle on about my endless, exhaustive training.
But Abby should be back in school by now, so who…
Sammi. A smile formed on my face in spite of my fatigue as I thought of my college roommate, and how long it had been since I’d spoken to her.
My fingers closed around the phone and I flipped it open without bothering to look at the caller ID. “Hello?” I said, fully expecting to hear Sammi’s perky, full-speed chatter from the other end of the line.
“Miss me?” The man’s voice was sharp with hostility, obvious even in just those two words.
The unexpected voice—and the angry question—surprised me so much that I fell on my tailbone, smacking the back of my skull against the edge of my desktop. Confused, and still rubbing the new bump on my head, I held the phone at arm’s length to read the number on the screen. I didn’t recognize it.
“Should I miss you?” I asked finally, pressing the phone against my ear.
“I guess that’s a matter of opinion, Faythe. My idea of what you should do obviously has little in common with your own.”
Irritation flared in my chest like heartburn. “Who the hell is this?” I demanded, half convinced that my judgmental caller had the wrong number, even though he knew my name.
Deep Throat clucked his tongue in my ear, and I gritted my teeth against the intimate sound and feel of his disapproval. “How soon they forget,” he whispered, and the enmity in his tone chilled me.
Bewildered, and now truly pissed off, I glanced at the phone again, hoping to identify the number on second glance. I couldn’t, yet the caller obviously knew me. In fact, he spoke as if I should have been expecting his call. As if we were picking up an old, unfinished conversation…
And suddenly I knew. Andrew.
Shock knocked the breath from my lungs. The phone slipped from my hand and landed in my lap, then cartwheeled to the floor with a carpet-muffled thud. Miraculously, it remained open.
I’d never heard my human ex speak a word in anger before, and the rage in his voice rendered it completely unrecognizable.
For a moment, I simply stared at the phone, too astounded to move. I hadn’t spoken to Andrew in three months, since before I’d quit school and agreed to work for my father. Hearing from him now was odd and uncomfortable, especially considering how mad he obviously was.
But then, that last part was at least partially my fault.
After surviving a beating from Miguel, taking a life in defense of my own, and becoming the country’s first and only female enforcer, I was no longer the same girl Andrew once knew. The entire college experience—including the exotic-because-he’s-normal human boyfriend—seemed really tame, and much less relevant to my new life. Which was actually my precollege life on steroids.
I’d
