Damn. I liked those hands.
“I don’t want a cat,” he said.
“Sure you don’t.” My tone conveyed just how much I believedthat.
Unzipping my bag all the way, I took Bonk out and lifted him up onto theEndeavor. He started sniffing around immediately. I hoped he wasn’t about to pee. I still needed to set up that box.
I turned back to Shade. “You can pat mine if you’d like.”
His eyes took on a sudden glint, and a blush exploded across my face, burning up my pale cheeks.
I waited for Shade to follow up with something, anything, hoping he would, even if it was a lewd joke. He just turned back to my cat instead. He’d apparently lost all interest in flirting with me.
Internally dealing with my disappointment, I produced the metal tray and sand from my bag. “Any idea what to do with these?” I asked.
Shade took both, setting the tray in the ship’s open door near Bonk—who immediately looked interested. He tore open the top corner of the bag and dumped a thick layer of sand into the bottom of the tray before nudging the whole thing toward Bonk.
Bonk climbed in, squatted, and peed.
“Well, that was easy,” I said, impressed.
Shade folded the top of the bag over to close it and then put it down next to Bonk’s tray. “Susan gave you the good stuff. You don’t even have to clean it. It cleans itself.”
A nearly maintenance-free pet sounded good to me. I had my hands full enough as it was.
“How do you know Susan?” I asked.
“She want your books?” he asked in lieu of answering.
I nodded. “I’m bringing her the rest in two days.” I immediately wondered why I’d said that. Anything beyond the fact that there was going to be a transaction wasn’t information Shade Ganavan needed to know.
He stared. I stared back.
Great Sky Mother, we have to stop doing that.
Shade finally reached a hand out to Bonk. After a few careful sniffs, Bonk leaned in, looking ready for a scratch. Shade obliged, muscles he’d probably overused today standing out firmly under the thin layer of his cotton shirt. The dark material stuck to his upper body in places, revealing contours and revving up my apparently uncontrollable imagination. I couldn’t recall ever having had such a strong urge to reach out and touch.
“I’ll see about getting you that new door, then,” he said, letting his big, grease-stained hand drop.
I nodded again, but that didn’t seem like enough. “Thank you, Shade. Really. I’m glad I found you. I mean…your shop.”
I nearly bit my tongue.I’m glad I found you?Whosaidsomething like that?
Clearly, two years in a maximum-security prison and then reclusive living with the same four people in a confined space severely eroded a person’s social skills. I appeared to have none left.
I stood there, my chin up despite my embarrassment, which seemed to be a permanent state around Shade Ganavan. Who the hell could still fluster a woman who’d been used as a science experiment, abandoned, imprisoned, hunted, and chased through a freaking black hole, for fuck’s sake? It must have been Shade’s superpower.Great.
He didn’t respond to my thanks, and the awkward silence grew so heavy that I could have sworn gravity doubled right then and there on Albion 5.
“Here’s your hat.” I took it off and handed it to him, trying not to wonder how crushed my hair was and in which directions my bangs were sticking out.
He took it from me only to flop it back down on my head. “See you soon, Tess Bailey. When I’ve got the rest of your stuff.”
Shade turned, and I watched him walk toward the elevator tubes, Bonk already bumping my shoulder and jaw with his little head, hitting whatever he could reach from his new perch on board theEndeavor.
The transparent tube Shade had entered whooshed down, taking him out of sight, and I felt on edge and unsatisfied, as though he’d just left in the middle of something I hadn’t finished yet.
Maybe there was nothing left to say. I’d get his money. He’d get my door and the other panels. Transaction complete.
