We’d arrived home around six. Home. The vineyard was beginning to feel that way, and although the travel bug hadn’t left me completely, I no longer had the urge to jump onto an airplane at the slightest hiccup. Nolan had headed into town to pick up dinner from Sanguine, presumably as a sort of apology for taking me for a picnic on a firing range, and Juno was sleeping in the hallway outside my bedroom, protecting me from any stray intruders.
Life was good, right?
Wrong.
I’d just stepped out of the shower when I heard a low growl followed by a soft thump and then a yelp. Juno. When I ran into the hallway with a towel wrapped around me, the dog was pressed to the floor on her belly, watching with amber eyes as a pink-suited ass disappeared into the bedroom at the far end of the hallway.
“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”
No answer. I ran down the hallway, past Juno, into the bedroom Nolan had been sleeping in until he decided to share with me. Marielle was poking around the cushions on the window seat.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked again.
“Oh, I left a book of fabric swatches somewhere.”
“I meant, why did you kick Juno?”
“I didn’t kick her. She was in the way, and I tripped.”
Yeah, sure. I’d heard enough people get kicked—not in person, but through my earpiece while Jez and Dusk and Tulsa and Dice interrogated suspects—to be familiar with the sound. It had been a thump and a yelp, not a curse and several hurried steps as Marielle tried to right herself.
“Really? You didn’t spot a seventy-pound dog lying in the hallway? Do you need your eyes tested as well as your morals?”
“What do you care? You don’t even like the dog.”
“I like her better than I like you.”
“That’s because you have no social skills whatsoever.”
Maybe not, but I did have a gun.
“At least I’m not dumb enough to insult my client’s girlfriend and still expect to keep working here.”
“Girlfriend?” She snorted. “You’re nothing but a passing infatuation.”
“Get out.”
“You can’t tell me what to do. This is Nolan’s home, not yours.”
“You want me to call him?”
She folded her arms. “Go right ahead. He knows my worth, plus we have a contract.”
Nolan didn’t exactly know my worth because I hadn’t told him, but when I last checked, Marielle had less than forty thousand bucks between her two bank accounts, whereas Astela was valued at eighty billion and I had other investments too. That had to count for something, didn’t it?
“Nolan and I share a history, and I have a lawyer.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“I mean, yeah?”
“Nolan’s going to hear about this.”
“Well, clearly. I’m going to tell him as soon as he gets home.”
Marielle took two steps toward me, but Juno got between us, growling. The bitch tried kicking her again, but this time, Juno jumped out of the way.
“That dog is vicious!”
