“Shit.” Hew scrubbed a rough hand over his face and told himself to lie back down. Go back to sleep.
Sabrina was a grown-ass woman capable of making her own choices.
Himself was a traitorous bastard, though. Because himself whispered, Ya could always check to see where she is.
All of them had trackers on their vehicles in case of theft or in case emergency services needed their exact location. It was a safety measure, not a spying measure. And yet…
He tossed back the covers. After pulling on his jeans, he assured Peanut, “It’s not ’cause I’m jealous. I just need to make sure she’s okay.”
The cat slow-blinked and then lifted a leg behind his head to bathe his fuzzy butt. Hew couldn’t help but feel that it was the feline version of calling bullshit.
The rain had picked up during the night. It spat angrily against the windows of the old brick building, and the low hiss was why Hew didn’t hear Graham until they nearly plowed into each other at the bottom of the stairs that led from the second floor to the third.
Graham held a half-eaten turkey leg in one hand. The other jumped to his chest in startlement.
“Lord a’mighty.” His north Georgia drawl echoed through the quiet of the building. “Ya don’t sneak up on a guy who carries a gun. I mighta dropped the hammer on you, Birch.”
Hew smirked. “Ya packin’ heat in your Fruit of the Looms, Coleburn?”
Graham had a habit of walking around shirtless even in the middle of the day. In the cold light just before dawn? Hew counted himself lucky the chowderhead had thought to put on boxer briefs before raiding the fridge.
“Jet lag’s got my circadian rhythm more twisted up than a snake in a shoebox,” Graham admitted with a scowl of annoyance. “You?”
“Maybe,” Hew answered evasively. “Woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. Heard from Sabrina?”
“Why would I?”
“She’s not back, and it’s not like her to stay out all night.”
Graham’s unconcerned shrug irritated Hew. The man’s words were even more annoying. “Maybe she decided to go to her boyfriend’s house.”
“She doesn’t have a boyfriend.”
“No?” Graham tilted his head. “Boss and Becky said she?—”
“She’s been on a few dates with the guy. That doesn’t make him her boyfriend.” Why was Hew’s vision turning black around the edges?
“Right.” Graham held up his turkey-leg-free hand in surrender. “Sorry. Her lover, then.”
The black around the edges of Hew’s vision started crackling with lightning.
Graham chuckled. “You should see yourself. Your eyes are bugged out of your head so far, ya look like a horny toad tryin’ to shit a chicken bone.”
Hew wiped his expression clean. “I’ve got no idea what you’re talkin’ about.”
He heard his own accent turn the word idea into idear. New Englanders had a haphazard way of dropping the R sound off some words and adding it to others.
Graham rolled his eyes. “From the moment Sabrina Greenlee walked through that front door, you’ve been calf-eyed over her.”
“You want to try that again in English? Instead of whatever possum-wranglin’ dialect that was?”
Graham shook his head sorrowfully. “What’s that one singer say? Forgive my northern attitude? Y’all spend so long buried in snowbanks up there, even your jokes come out frostbit.”
“Is it the jet lag that’s turned you into a Chatty Cathy?”
“Nice try changin’ the subject.” Graham smiled knowingly.
“I don’t know what the subject is anymore. Noah Kahan? Chicken bones? Calf’s eyes?”
