Late the next afternoon, I stood behind the counter at the Pork Pit, the barbecue restaurant I ran in downtown Ashland. I handed a thick wad of change and a white bag stuffed to the brim with food across the counter, along with a similarly filled box. The man took them both from me, smiled, then left the restaurant and headed back out into the December cold.
I let out a loud, long sigh and looked over my shoulder at Sophia Deveraux, who was whipping up yet another pot of baked beans-the thirteenth batch that she'd made already today, and it wasn't even time to close down the restaurant for the night.
"How many party orders was that today? Nine? Ten?"
We hadn't gotten much walk-in traffic at the Pit, not like we usually did, since people were busy shopping and getting ready for Christmas, which was only four days away now. But our takeout orders had quadrupled, along with all the ones for holiday barbecue platters that we offered for large groups and gatherings. Sophia and I had been busy all day long, getting everything ready for pickups from the restaurant, and we still had an hour to go before closing.
The storefront was empty now, except for two couples sitting at different booths. Since they'd already been served and given their checks, I was just waiting for them to pay up and leave. Normally, I would have let them linger as long as they liked, but tonight I was in the mood to hurry them along, if need be. I'd already sent the waitstaff home for the evening. They'd helped Sophia and I put together the party orders, but once that was done, there was no real reason for them to stick around with only a few customers to serve.
Sophia shrugged in answer to my question, her sharp gaze never leaving the bubbling beans in front of her. The dwarf wasn't big on conversation. She gave the pot of beans another stir, the muscles in her arm bulging with the small motion. At five foot one, Sophia was tall for a dwarf, with a thick, muscled figure that was incredibly strong-even stronger than most giants. But most people wouldn't have noticed that about her. At least, not right away.
They'd be too busy staring at the rest of her.
Sophia Deveraux had a very distinctive style about her-Goth. We're not talking a little black lipstick here. More like the heart of darkness itself. Just about everything that Sophia wore was black, from her heavy boots to her jeans to the plain leather collar that ringed her neck. Her hair and eyes were black too, providing a striking contrast to the absolute paleness of her face-and her crimson lip gloss.
It always amazed me how different Sophia was from her older sister, Jo-Jo. At one hundred and thirteen, Sophia always reminded me of a moody teenager with her Goth wear, while Jo-Jo had already comfortably settled into her middle age with her ladylike pink dresses and ever-present string of white pearls.
Today, though, Sophia had decided to show off her holiday cheer, at least what there was of it, by wearing a pointed Santa hat while she cooked. Black, of course, with a tiny grinning skull dangling off the end of it, instead of the more traditional white fluffy ball. Merry Christmas.
I didn't have time to ponder Sophia's holiday proclivities, though, because the phone rang for what seemed like the hundredth time today. I loved all the extra business, but it had been a long day, and I was almost ready to stick one of my silverstone knives through the plastic receiver just to get it to shut up. Instead, I made myself answer it.
"Pork Pit," I said on the fifth ring.
"Tell me," Owen Grayson's low, sexy baritone rumbled through the receiver. "Do you know where I can get a good plate of barbecue?"
I leaned against the counter that ran along the back wall of the restaurant. "Sorry. I don't have a clue."
He let out a low laugh that warmed me, and I found myself smiling at nothing in particular. There was no one that I'd rather have heard from right now than him. For some reason, Owen soothed me, especially after the terrible dream that I'd had last night. I really was getting soft in my retirement, just like Roslyn Phillips had said. But right now I didn't care.
"You know, you left without saying good-bye yesterday morning," Owen said.
"I do have a restaurant to run you know," I drawled, trying to make light of the fact that I'd skipped out without waking him up.
"Was that the only reason?"
I hesitated. Owen and I hadn't been together all that long but he could already pick up on things that I wished he wouldn't-like my newfound skittishness when it came to our relationship. Or whatever we were calling it. Owen made me feel a lot of things that I didn't know if I was ready for, especially since I was in the middle of trying to take down Mab and had LaFleur and Natasha to worry about in the meantime. Emotions, feelings, letting down my guard. Those were all weaknesses that I just couldn't afford to indulge in right now. Maybe not ever.
"Yeah," I said about five seconds too late. "That was the only reason."
"No worries," Owen said in an easy voice, pretending that he hadn't even noticed my long pause. "It kept me from having to hide your Christmas present from you."
He couldn't have shocked me more than if he'd just gotten LaFleur to pump me full of her electrical elemental magic. For a moment, I just stood there, mouth open, blinking. Then reality set back in.
"Present? You got me a Christmas present?"
He let out another low laugh. "In a manner of speaking. That is the Christmas tradition."
"Oh."
I'd gotten a few small things for Finn and the Deveraux sisters, but it had never occurred to me that Owen might expect something too, given the newness of our relationship. I grabbed a nearby pen and scribbled a note down on the top sheet of my order pad. Buy Owen Xmas present. Too bad I had no idea what that present would be or what he would even like. Shopping had never been high on my list of priorities.
"Actually, that's why I'm calling," Owen said. "I wanted to talk to you about Christmas. I thought it might be nice if you came over."
"Oh." It seemed that was the only thing I could say. "But Christmas is family time. I thought that you'd want to spend that with just Eva. I don't want to intrude."
"You're not intruding, Gin," Owen said in a firm voice. "You are never an intrusion."
I fell silent. I didn't know about that. Having an assassin around was kind of like having an elephant in the room. It was so big that you just couldn't look away from it, even when you did your best to pretend it wasn't even there.
Owen must have taken my silence for acceptance because he continued. "I was thinking that you could ask Finn and the Deveraux sisters to join us. Maybe Roslyn and Xavier too, if they'd like. Eva plans to invite Violet and Warren Fox over. We could make it into a real holiday party."