My usual nightmares are bad enough. I don’t need to add dreams of losing Aussie, Ryder, and Logan to the mix. Which are the nightmares that resulted the three days I tried using sleeping pills.
No, thank you. I’ll take sleep-deprivation psychosisover that any day of the week, and three times on Sunday.
For now, I finish my shower and pull on a T-shirt and sweatpants. When I head downstairs, I hear someone moving around in the kitchen. I find Case already pulling out pans to get things ready.
I set my phone and coffee mug on the counter before walk up behind her and hug her. She pauses, letting me do it, letting me bury my face in herhair for a moment before I kiss the top of her head.
“Feeling a little better today, hon?” she asks.
“Yeah. Thank you.”
She pats my hands and I release her, because I know she wants to get the cooking started.
“Declan will be here soon,” she tells me. “I told him to let himself in.”
He also has keys and the alarm codes for both our houses, because there have been times he’s had to run outhere to get things for us we’ve needed if we got stuck at an event or in the office.
I realize Case’s laptop is already open on the kitchen table, meaning she was probably up and ready to leave when she received my earlier text. Today she’s wearing leggings and a long cardigan over a long-sleeved UTK T-shirt, her hair pulled away from her face with a headband, and no makeup.
One of the few timesshe’ll allow herself out of the houseau naturel.
I refill my coffee. “I feel badly we’re pulling him in on a Sunday.”
“He didn’t have plans,” she says where she’s already starting to mix pancake batter. “I warned him yesterday it would probably be a working Sunday.”
“Sorry.”
She glances over her shoulder. “You don’t need to apologize, George.Thisis the gig.”
“I told you I wanted a dayoff, and yet I drag you both in for what amounts to a workday.”
She snorts. “Like youhonestlythought I’d think youwouldn’twant to work today? How long have we known each other?”
I sit at the table. “Too long.”
“Too long,” she agrees. “I knew you’d want to go over yesterday, now that you can digest it better with just the three of us.”
“Please don’t let me burn him out,” I tell her. “Iknow he could be making a fuckton more money working at the firm.”
Working as a civil servant doesn’t pay much in this state. And he’s a good attorney.
“He doesn’t mind, seriously. He enjoys what we’re doing. He doesn’t have a high overhead, anyway. Lives in a little apartment over in East Bank, close to the river. Not far from work. Heck, some days he walks to work.”
Now I really feel guilty.Our development is several miles away, southwest of downtown in an upscale area. “He’s coming all that way over here today?”
“He doesn’t mind, George. He’s a workaholic. One of the reasons I tapped him for the job. He didn’t have plans for today. I won’t burn the boy out, I promise.”
Not the first time she’s referred to him as that—the boy—when it’s just the three of us, but…it fits Declan.Not in a derogatory way, either. For starters, heisyounger than both of us. Secondly…
It reminds me of how I used to call Ellen my “girl.”
He arrives only five minutes later. Casey must have assumed I’d want them here and had him head out even before she heard from me. He walks in carrying a travel mug of coffee and his laptop. He’s wearing jeans and a plain black T-shirt under a denim jacket,and also looks like he’s been awake for a while.
“Good morning sir. Ma’am.”
“Good morning, boy,” she teases him, and I catch his little smile in reply. That’s why I don’t chastise her for it—because Declan obviously likes the nickname. And she never uses it in the office. She wouldn’t be calling him that if he didn’t like it, and I’m not privy to whatever private conversation happened betweenthem for her to clarify that.
In other words, it’s not my business, but I don’t call him that.
