Once again, my mouth gaped open in surprise. He was hurting, he was grieving, and he was still considerate enough to think about a promise that he’d made to me, a girl he barely knew. More emotion surged through me, even softer, warmer, and more intense than what I’d felt when we’d kissed. Because that sort of thoughtfulness was rare, something to be admired and treasured.
There were so many reasons I should say no to him. So many reasons I should have shown him the door the second he’d arrived. So many reasons I shouldn’t have kissed him. But none of them seemed to matter right now—nothing did but the hope shining in Sebastian’s eyes.
“A date would be great,” I said in a soft voice.
He sighed in relief, as if there had been some doubt about my answer. “Great. Pick you up here Monday night at seven? Just like we planned before?”
I nodded, too unsure of myself to say anything.
He reached out and squeezed my hand. “It’s a date, then. But right now, I should be getting home. Charlotte’s probably wondering what’s happened to me.”
“Of course.”
He tightened his grip on my hand. “But there’s one more thing I need to do before I go.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“This.”
Sebastian grinned and drew me into his arms for another kiss.
I didn’t get home until late that night, and I couldn’t keep the small, silly grin off my face or quiet my soft, nonsensical hums of happiness as I parked my car in the driveway, got out, and headed for the porch. After we’d kissed again, Sebastian had left the restaurant, promising to pick me up Monday evening for our date. I couldn’t wait to see him again.
All I had to do in the meantime was sell Fletcher on the idea.
Seeing the house rising up out of the dark and knowing the battle that waited for me inside finally dampened my good mood. The front door was stuck again because of the humidity, annoying me even more, and I had to put my shoulder into it to shove it open. The resulting screech made me wince. Maybe Fletcher should replace the door with that black granite one he wanted. It would be worth it not to blast my own eardrums every time I tried to get inside.
I locked the door behind me, dropped my keys into a crystal bowl on a table inside the foyer, and toed off my boots. Then I headed to the back of the house, where a couple of lights burned. Looked like Fletcher had waited up for me. I sighed. More often than not, he wouldn’t go to bed until I was home, despite the fact that I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself—and killing anyone who was stupid enough to try to rob me when I was working late at the restaurant.
Sure enough, I found Fletcher sitting on the sofa in the den, with his blue work clothes still on and his white-socked feet stretched out on the battered coffee table in front of him. He was reading a book, although the TV was also on, tuned to some old western that he’d turned the volume down low on.
I plopped down onto one of the recliners. Fletcher kept right on reading his book. For the better part of a minute, the only sound was the steady creak-creak-creak of my chair, punctuated by an occasional crack-crack-crack of gunfire from the cowboys on TV. But for once, I didn’t mind waiting for him to speak. It gave me time to shore up my own arguments.
“You’re late,” Fletcher finally said, and turned another page in his book. “I thought you’d be here an hour ago.”
I drew in a breath, ready to spin my story. “Sebastian came into the restaurant right as I was closing up.”
That was enough to make him look up from his book. “What did he want?”
“To say that he was sorry that he didn’t keep our date last night.”
I told Fletcher everything that Sebastian had said, from his talk of his father’s funeral to trying to make sure that Charlotte was okay to his need to escape from all of the mourners who had gathered at the Vaughn mansion. The only thing I edited out was the fact that Sebastian and I had kissed. The old man definitely did not need to know about that. He’d claim that I was getting too emotionally involved with Sebastian. Maybe I was, but I could handle it.
I could handle anything as the Spider.
“He asked me out again,” I finished up. “For Monday night.”
Now came the tricky part. “I thought that I would go out with him, just to see if I can find out what he knows about the police investigation into his father’s murder and to make sure there’s nothing that can lead back to us. But I wanted to talk to you about it first.”
A half-truth, at best. I would carefully nose around and see what information I could get out of Sebastian about the investigation, just to make sure that Fletcher and I were in the clear. But sometime between leaving the Pork Pit and walking into the den, I’d decided that I was seeing Sebastian again, with or without Fletcher’s approval. I wanted to make sure that Sebastian was okay. I wanted to see him smile and laugh. But most of all, I wanted him to look at me again the way he had right before he’d kissed me tonight, like he was as desperately consumed by this bright flare of attraction between us as I was.
Still, I kept my face schooled into a calm, bland mask, as though it didn’t matter to me whether I went out with Sebastian. Even though it very much did.
Instead of looking at me, Fletcher dropped his green gaze to his book. Thinking. I curled my hands into loose fists, pressing my fingers against the spider rune scars in my palms, to keep from fidgeting. The marks might be the symbol for patience, but having them branded into my hands didn’t automatically give me that particular skill. Not even close.
Being patient was something that I still struggled with, whether it was as Gin Blanco, waiting on a customer to finally make up his mind about his order in the Pork Pit, or as the Spider, holding my position until my target was in exactly the right spot. It was probably the thing that Fletcher and I argued about the most. He said that patience was one of the most important skills for an assassin to have, and he was always telling me to slow down, wait, and let events unfold in my favor, to be absolutely sure of what I was doing before I went all in and committed myself wholeheartedly.
Well, I was sure now, so I dug my nails into the silverstone in my skin and held my tongue, waiting for him to say his piece.
After about three minutes, Fletcher finally nodded. “That might be a smart idea,” he said. “You going out with Sebastian and seeing what he knows.”
I blinked. That wasn’t what I’d expected him to say—not at all. I’d thought that he would warn me to keep my distance from Sebastian. Maybe Fletcher finally realized that I could keep my emotions in check. Maybe he was finally fully trusting me to see a job through to the end, despite the unexpected complications that had come up. Maybe the old man finally understood that I was all grown up and capable of making my own decisions. That I was my own person now and not just the lost little girl he’d trained in his own image.