friends exchanged pregnant glances, torn between amusement at their Charlie’s Angels routine and the fact that there was one…last…hiding place.
In her stockinged feet, breath shallow from the risk, Arden crossed to the third doorway. Probably the pantry or the larder.
Val held up one finger, to create a count. Then two.
At three, Arden pulled the door open. From behind the shelter it made, she saw Val feint back and shout, “Freeze!”
Dido began to bark wildly—
And a second gun poked past the door as a too-familiar voice, both pleasant and deadly, said, “It’s August. This place isn’t air-conditioned. I couldn’t freeze if I wanted to.”
Smith? Arden leaned past the door to peek at the man she’d immediately recognized, both from his voice and from his truly inappropriate sense of humor. His eyes didn’t look that mischievous just now, but his jaw was set even more stubbornly than usual—and his aim on her best friend didn’t waver.
Val aimed right back.
Over a year with no word, and now Smith had shown up twice in less than twenty-four hours? As ever, Arden took refuge in hard-won composure.
“Hey, Smith,” she drawled coolly at the gunman, deliberately imitating his cocky greeting of the night before. “How’ve you been?”
Chapter 3
Well.
This wasn’t how Smith would’ve preferred to kick off his next meeting with Arden. Not that he’d actually meant her to see him again. Despite following her here. But…still.
He kept her Latina friend in his sights—mainly because she still had him in hers—but said, “Arden Leigh, as I live and breathe. Seems like forever, huh?” What with them replaying last night and all. Since he didn’t want to take his gaze off the lady looking to shoot him, he didn’t put a hand to Arden’s pretty cheek. Instead, he made do with an air smooch. “Kiss, kiss.”
“And here I thought you didn’t like guns.” How could she put such thick disapproval into such a sweetly phrased statement? She was right, of course. He didn’t. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t hit what he aimed at, or that—after seeing a Comitatus flunky holding her at knifepoint the previous night, and after listening to Mitch’s partial recording of the Comitatus agenda—he wouldn’t carry one until he knew she was safe.
Which she wasn’t, here.
The old lady in the hallway said, “Blades are more honorable than guns, don’t you think?”
That surprised the hell out of him, so much that he glanced away from the muzzle of the Latina’s Saturday Night Special to the older woman’s pale gaze, which seemed to look not just at him but through him. More honorable. Those were almost the exact words the Comitatus leaders used when giving a teenaged boy his ceremonial knife upon entry into the society. Blades were personal. Blades were honorable. Guns might be more practical, but if ever someone of Comitatus blood outright betrayed his brethren, he would be shown the honor of dying by blade.
How could she know?
Only when she smiled down at the dog, wizened and wise, did Smith grasp his rookie mistake. The old woman hadn’t known—not about his own involvement with the Comitatus, anyway—until he’d reacted.
Blades. “Honor’s a luxury some of us can’t afford,” he said carefully.
“Obviously.” Arden glanced pointedly between the two guns. “Will you two please put those nasty things away?”
“Her first,” said Smith at the same time Arden’s friend said, “Him first.”
“At the count of three.” Arden made it a velvet-gloved order. “One.”
The tall, dark woman narrowed her eyes in challenge.
“Two.”
Smith wished he was staring at Arden instead of a gunwoman. The blue-jeaned Amazon was handsome, in her way. But Arden was pure beauty, and not just because she wore such a pretty sundress, her black hair in a curly ponytail.
Or because her toenails were painted the exact same color as her fingernails and her lips.
Or…
“Three,” finished Arden—but the weapons didn’t move. She put her hands on her hips, as if she meant business. “Oh, for mercy’s sake!”
Smith almost hoped to see her lose her temper—he’d loved catching sight of the real Arden behind the composure since long before they’d started dating.
He wasn’t ready for her to step right into the line of fire.
Where the slip of a finger could kill her!
“Hey!” Immediately he turned his weapon to the ceiling and thumbed on the safety. His voice cracked. “Arden!”
“Are you insane?” demanded the other woman, doing the same thing.
“Did I teach you nothing about personal safety?” demanded Smith, struggling to catch his breath. “Never, never—”
“NEVER!” insisted her friend.
“I,” noted Arden icily to Smith, dismissing the deadly weapons with a roll of her eyes, “am not the one breaking into houses—”
“The door was unlocked, no breaking required.”
“—and pointing guns at people. Shame on you!”
The strange thing was, instead of laughing at her, he did feel a touch shamed…which made him petulant. “I was just making sure you weren’t into something over your head.” Justified, he jabbed a finger in her direction. “Which apparently you are. Secret societies and all that…that crazy talk….”
The old lady was staring through him again and smirking. Somehow she knew he knew better. He didn’t like her seeming omniscience one bit.
Rejecting Comitatus leadership, as he and his friends had done, meant exile. Breaking one’s vow of secrecy, on top of the whole dishonor thing, could be one of those nasty, dying-by-blade offenses, depending on the circumstances.
Yet another reason Smith carried a gun today.
All the old lady said was, “Is nobody going to introduce us?”
“How ill-mannered of me.” Only Arden could fit so much sarcasm into such proper words or so bright a smile. “Miz Greta, Val, please let me introduce the wholly untrustworthy Smith Donnell. Smith and I have known each other’s families since childhood. Once, during a period of temporary insanity on my part, we dated. Smith, these are Miss Greta Kaiser and Ms. Valeria Diaz. Greta teaches piano at my teen recreation center, and Valeria could kill you for fun where you stand.”
“Gladly,” clarified Val.
“How do you do?” Smith tried his most charming smile. He even bowed a little before
