Then, without another word, she dropped his arm and raised her eyebrows. He was surprised she didn’t actually bow.
Goddamn, he wanted to bend her over the nearest desk and fuck her until they both saw stars. Kenna under normal circumstances had him half out of his mind, but a Kenna who could take care of herself and bested him by doing so?Christ.
He didn’t even try to hide the rasp in his voice when he asked, “Where’d you learn how to do that?”
She shrugged and continued down the hall. “Took self-defense classes years ago. Loved it so much, I started teachin’ it down at St. Mary’s a few times a year. Taught it to Nat, too, before she went off globe-trottin’ by herself.”
No matter how much he knew of Kenna, it seemed like there was always something new to unearth. Some facet of her he’d missed out on in the time he’d been gone.
It didn’t surprise him in the least that she’d taken it upon herself to become well versed in self-defense and then to teach it to her sister. That was Kenna, through and through.
She flipped on the lights in the mayor’s office. The desk was much less cluttered than he’d have guessed it’d be, but one look at the smaller desk in the outer office—no doubt for the mayor’s assistant—revealed why. Piles upon piles of paperwork were just hanging out, as if waiting for someone else to do it.
“Looks like the assistant’s more backed up than your daddy.”
Kenna huffed out a humorless laugh. “Yeah, except the last assistant quit—again—and with all the commotion of everything, we haven’t hired anyone else. So, I’m playin’ mayorandmayor’s assistant, and I don’t exactly know how to do either one.”
As she sat down, a note fluttered off the desk and onto the ground in front of him. He snatched it up while Kenna busied herself behind the desk.
Mac,
Don’t worry about any of this! I’m gonna come in early tomorrow and take care of it. Go home and get some rest. I MEAN IT.
Avery
“Hey, Kenna?” he asked, holding up the note between two fingers.
“Hmm?” she answered distractedly.
“This note from Avery says you’re not supposed to work on any of this and just go home. She’s gonna take care of it tomorrow.”
She scoffed. “There’s way more here than she can take care of in an extra hour tomorrow. I’m not leavin’ until I tackle some of it.”
“I don’t know…she seems pretty adamant. She wrote ‘I mean it’ in all caps.”
A fond smile quirked up the side of her mouth, but she didn’t lift her eyes to his. “That’s just Avery.”
He wanted to ask her about her friendship with someone who must’ve been a transplant since he’d never met her. He wanted to ask her a thousand questions just to get the details of everything he’d missed out on, but she didn’t give him the opportunity to do so. Without another word, she sat behind the desk and started sorting through the piles, her head down and brow furrowed.
Blowing out a resigned sigh, he settled into one of the guest chairs as Kenna flitted from the desk to the filing cabinets to the copy machine to her daddy’s desk, and he sent a group text to Caleb and Lilah.
How’d CB do?
He only had to wait a minute before a message came through from his sister.
She was sweet as all get-out. We took her to see Atticus, though. Her scent left a little something to be desired.
He grinned, his thumbs poised to type a response when a text from Caleb popped up.
What your sister means is CB smelled like she found a field of manure and rolled around in every inch of it she could find. Then found a skunk and made pals. Then found its shit and rolled around in that. And then ate something dead, shit it out, and then rolled around in it.
This time, he laughed outright. That might have been more than Caleb had ever said at one time in his whole life.
“What’s so funny?” Kenna asked distractedly.
“Caleb’s really enjoyin’ CB’s scent.”
At the mention of the dog, Kenna glanced up, a soft smile on her lips. “She behaved herself?”
