“I’m serious about that,” he said. “You really did.”
“Well.” There was a pause. “You’ve cheered me up also, how about that.”
“Answer my call and I’ll see if I can keep the trend going.”
“It’s a deal.”
And a date, he thought.
With a couple of words to her friend and a casual wave over her shoulder, she was gone, weaving in and out of the little tables, passing by the bar, disappearing through the front door.
G.B. carefully folded up the napkin and put it in the front pocket of his shirt. Then he smiled at her friend. “She’s pretty special.”
The dark-haired woman nodded. “Yeah, she is. And this is really good timing for her.”
He stared at the exit she’d used. After a moment, he murmured, “Me, too.”
Chapter Seven
“—godforsaken, miserable piece of shit!”
As Jim faced off at the stove from hell, he thought about giving the cast-iron nightmare a swift kick in the oven door—but with the way things were going, he’d either break that little glass window or his foot.
Which would be the perfect f**king nightcap to an absolutely magical f**king evening.
All he wanted was a couple of eggs—scrambled, over easy, fried, he didn’t give a good goddamn. He couldn’t remember the last time or thing he’d eaten, and when Ad had made a food run to Hannaford earlier in the day, the guy had had the brains to pick up some Eggland’s Best.
It wasn’t like he was after truffles or twelve kinds of fancy, culinary crap.
Eggs. Just eggs.
Except like everything else, he couldn’t make it frickin’ happen: The only thing the burners on the cooktop seemed to do was burp gas; the pan he found looked like it had been forged by hand in the Middle Ages; and he wasn’t sure, but he thought that the refrigerator was doing the death rattle of something about to meet its maker.
Which in this case was … General Electric, going by the logo on its off-kilter door.
Giving up, he sat down at the table and lit a cigarette, figuring the nicotine might perk his immortal ass up. At the very least, holding the Marlboro would give his right hand something to do other than make a fist and test the structural integrity of the walls.
“What a dump,” he muttered as he looked around at the ancient appliances, the pitted countertops, the cracked floor, the stained ceiling.
Last time he ever took a rental without seeing it first.
But, really, resolutions about his real estate accommodations were pretty far down his list of priorities.
You are endangering the outcome of the entire war.
Exhaling, he watched the smoke rise through the cold air and curl up around the ancient light fixture hanging above him. The chandelier dangled at the end of a corroded black chain and had five arms, although only three of the bulbs were working. Probably a good thing. Bright illumination would only make the kitchen look worse—like hitting a ninety-year-old with headlights.
“Devina, where are you,” he gritted before taking another drag. “Where the f**k are you…”
He tapped his ash into an ashtray.
Waiting … waiting…
He wasted more time glancing around, like maybe something had changed in the point-three seconds since his last observation.
In his previous life, before he’d been electrocuted on a job site and recruited for this dumb-ass, thankless job, he’d have loved to have tackled a place like this. It was the carpenter in him. Room by room, he would have gone through and replaced floors and replastered walls and sealed and repainted ceilings. Stripped moldings back down to the original wood and revarnished. Swapped out 1940s appliances and fixtures for things that had been made in the current century, but looked old and weren’t fire hazards. Made the cabinets and cupboards himself.
For a moment, his blood pressure dropped as he entertained the fantasy, the smell of pine being cut on a circular saw filling his nose, the sound of nails being hammered home ringing in his ears, the rhythmic scratching of sandpaper tightening his arm muscles.
So much more satisfying than anything else he could do with his life: What was great about home renovation was that the improvement was immediate and lasting—and absolutely measurable, no backsliding, no double standards. You had a toilet that ran all night? Take it out, get a new one, do an install. Heating didn’t work? Run some fresh ductwork and get yourself the right unit. Upstairs drafty? R-19 insulation, baby.
It is utterly reckless to give away—
I’m not giving dick away, Nigel! For f**k’s sake, I’ve got to get her out of there.
One girl cannot be more important than the victory.
She didn’t deserve what she got.
You simpering fool! The exigencies of fate are not always just—surely you are not so naive as to believe otherwise. And your role is not to balance the scales. You are here to win.
Fuck you, Nigel. You don’t need to remind me what my job is—and I’m done talking about this. Those flags are my possessions. You told me so yourself. What I do with them is my business, not yours.
Yup, that had been a fun conversation. Productive, too—they’d both been even more worked up and angry at the end of it.
“So you gave up on the eggs?” Adrian said from behind him.
Jim shut his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about Nigel.”
“I thought I was asking about breakfast protein?”
“And I’m not interested in your opinion.”
“Well, you already heard it—because I agree with Nigel.”
Jim took a long drag. “Do us both a favor and back out of this room—”
The bomb went off in the front of the house, the thunderous noise rattling the shelves in the cupboards and rocking that light fixture.
Jim was out of his chair before the noise faded, shooting through the dining room, pounding into the foyer…
The fact that the door was still intact was a shocker, but there were cracks in the leaded glass windows on either side of it. As he yanked open the heavy oak panels, he had a crystal knife in hand—that shit had not been made by a human, and that meant he’d do better with something that had a little more kick to it—
Jim stopped dead.
Lying on the weathered floorboards of the front porch, a female form was tucked in on itself, a dirty shift covering pale skin, thin legs pulled in to the belly as if to protect against a beating.
Long blond hair fanned out, the strands catching the light that flowed from the open doorway.