"Cards? A pocket chess set?"
"Do you expect that most people carry around pocket chess sets?"
"We'll have to make our own fun, then," Gio said.
This set off her fantasies all over again. Max got up abruptly and gathered their plates.
"I'm sorry," Gio said. She looked down at him, surprised. "I was trying to be playful, but it's been a while since I had someone to practice my sense of humor on. Evidently I need more practice."
"Oh," Max said blankly. She hadn't even realized that her sudden departure would make it look as if she was upset. "No, I—"
I just needed to stop picturing you bending me over a fence post and railing me senseless... was probably not going to help.
"—I'm not that used to being around people, either," she said, half surprised to hear the truth coming out of her mouth. "I work with clients, it's true, but I don't usually just—hang outwith them. I have a bad case of resting bitch face and I tend to forget how it comes across. I guess what I'm saying is, you didn't upset me and you have nothing to apologize for."
The smile that broke across his tired face was like the sun coming up, and he rose with easy, leonine grace. "Dear lady, the mistake is all mine. Allow me to make up for my error by doing the dishes."
Max suppressed a smile and held out the small stack of plates and cups. "You may indeed. Water is one thing we're a bit limited on. There's another jug in the car, but we should ration it. Wiping the plates with a damp cloth and rinsing them will be fine."
While Gio cleaned, dried, and put away the dishes, Max tidied the rest of their campsite from longstanding professional habit rather than natural neatness. Her cramped, messy apartment back in LA would never be a model for Good Housekeeping, but there was nothing worse than getting into a fight and tripping over a poorly stowed air mattress.
"Care to take a walk?" she asked Gio when they had finished.
"If he shows up ..."
"Then we'll deal with it then. Nothing's going to ruin our readiness like sitting around for hours tensely staring at the horizon. We'll be jumping at shadows inside of a day." She handed Gio the tranq pistol. "Anyway, the visibility out there is great. He might be doing us a favor if he shows up while we're hiking, because he certainly can't sneak up on us."
She slung the rifle over her shoulder and clipped a roll of steel cable and a toolkit to her belt. Then they set out into the warm, dry morning air.
Max knew the trails in the area fairly well, but as a jaguar. It was interesting to see the desert through her human eyes, from a higher vantage point than she was used to. She could see for a long way. They walked on a game trail through patches of dry grass interspersed with creosote bushes. Sometimes Max led; at other times, when conditions allowed for it, they walked side by side.
She should have given Gio some guidance for his wardrobe, she thought. His neat gray jacket, crisply pressed trousers, and impractical shoes were very out of place next to her canvas cargo pants and low boots. They had to stop occasionally so he could pick thorns out of his socks. Shoes like his were a snakebite waiting to happen.
Still, their recon confirmed for her that this was an excellent place for an ambush. She had thought so as soon as she began considering the problem. She didn't exactly relax—like the jaguar inside her, she never could relax in the field—but her tension eased somewhat.
"See how clear our sightlines are," she told Gio, sweeping the horizon with her gaze. "The cabin is the only cover for miles, and we have the high ground. Even if they can come and go instantly, we'll see them as soon as they get here."
"You're very good at this." Gio flicked a thorn into the brush and straightened up. "How did you get into work like this?"
Max froze up. Of course her past was going to come up. It was bound to. They were spending days together, and there wasn't a lot else to talk about besides each other.
But that part of it, at least, wasn't too fraught or personal.
"I'm just good at it," she said. "I started out as a private detective, but I quickly realized that there were plenty of other people doing basic PI work, and most of it is routine work I didn't enjoy anyway. But there aren't very many shifter investigators out there. In fact, I'm the only one I've met so far. So I started trying to work mainly with shifter clients, which is obviously challenging since I can't advertise myself that way. I get most of my clients through word of mouth, and a lot of them are international, like you. In fact, at this point I'd say ninety percent of my business are exactly this sort of thing—well, notexactly, you have got to be the first person who hired me to bag a magician, but unusual shifter business from abroad is my specialty. I fly all over the world and deal with something different every time."
"I would have expected a penthouse office with three partners and a secretary, to be honest," Gio said. "I'd have thought you would make a lot of money at this."
"I don't want it," Max said promptly. "I usually ask for enough to cover my expenses and a bit to live on. That's all." She smiled. "Maybe someday I'll land a big job recovering a dragon's hoard, charge them a fortune, and retire somewhere quiet and nice with lots of forest to hunt in. But I'm not there yet. I'd get bored in a week."
"What kinds of things do you do?"
"M specialty is dealing with shifter secrets, especially when people are in danger of discovery. For example, a common thing I'm hired to do is recover or destroy blackmail photos. Sometimes there are clients who want me to look into the parts of a shifter's background that a regular detective wouldn't know about, such as finding out what kind of shifter they are, or whether they've ever had a mate ..."
She trailed off, as the casual mention ofmatemade her jaguar perk up inside her. Luminous gold eyes blinked lazily in the back of her mind.
Mate?
Max was nearly bowled over. That was her jaguar's voice, all right. She hadn't heard that inner voice since the last day of her old life.
