“What’s my punishment? I’m terribly sorry,” he said.
I stared at him for a moment. He squirmed a little, and I finally relented. “No more Real Housewives for two weeks.” For some reason, he loved the show, and two weeks without it would probably hit him harder than if I yelled at him. “And no dessert for dinner tonight.”
“I wasn’t going to make one,” Faron said.
“Well, that works out just fine,” I said. “Seriously, though, Fancypants, if you want to play catnip mousie with the cats, please do it in the living room where everything’s nailed down. And throw it on the floor for them, please?”
“I promise,” he said. “I think I’ll take a nap.”
“Why don’t you do that?” I asked. As the dragonette flew up toward his favorite perch—the top level of the cat tree, past where Silver or Gem usually slept—I turned back to Faron.
“Hey, I’m not sure if you want to know this, but…when I was at the supermarket, I saw Kyle.” I waited for his reaction.
Faron sat there, his gaze fixated on the floor. After a moment, he said, “What did he have to say, if anything?”
I cleared my throat. “He hemmed and hawed…I told him you were okay, and he seemed relieved. He misses you. I can tell.” Part of me wanted to urge him to go say hello to Kyle, but I knew he couldn’t—and wouldn’t.
After a moment, Faron nodded. “Thank you for telling me.”
“So, how did job hunting go?” I started putting away the groceries.
Faron crossed over to the counter to hand me food from the bags. “Better than I expected. Chaz Harley has a temporary position open, and he offered it to me.”
“You mean Chaz, the tree-guy?”
Chaz Harley was a fixture in Starlight Hollow. He’d been the main arborist in the area for decades. The old guy had to be seventy, if he was a day. His tree-climbing days were gone, but he still ran the biggest tree-trimming service on the peninsula. He could tell just by looking whether a tree was healthy. I swore he had some sort of nature spirit in his blood, but nobody knew whether he was human or something else.
“Yeah, that’s the one. His lead tree-trimmer fell out of his harness last week when he was trying to trim the top of the Lion’s Mane oak tree, and he’s got a broken leg and a broken rib. I’ll fill in until he’s ready to come back to his job. Pay’s good, too. Thirty-five an hour.”
“Sounds good. Just be careful. You don’t need any more time in the hospital,” I said, finishing up the last bag. Faron folded them as I carried our coffees to the table and set them down. “Can you grab the shortbread?”
I loved shortbread, and May kept us well-stocked with it. She was an incredible baker who could have turned pro, but she maintained she enjoyed baking too much to turn it into a job.
Faron opened the cookie jar and arranged the cookies on the plate, and brought it over to the table with him. “I start tomorrow, so that should help with finances around here.”
Faron had his separate trust from his father, but the king’s ransom belonged with the king, and he no longer had access to the money that belonged to the throne. He’d been contributing to the household, but the fact that this was the way things were now seemed to settle in. And the wolf shifter never acted as if he was entitled to anything.
“Thanks,” I said, feeling awkward. The three of us had been navigating our relationship, trying to find our rhythm. While we slept in separate bedrooms—Faron in the guest room, and Bran and I in our room—the fact was, we were slowly settling into our unexpected threesome. The fact that, before Faron found out he had to get married, we’d been inching toward this very relationship…it didn’t make it any easier.
“Can I go outside?” Fancypants asked as he flew into the room.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll leave the door ajar in case you need to come in and I’m not in the kitchen.” I let him out, leaving the kitchen door ajar. Fancypants could manage the screen door, but he wasn’t good at turning doorknobs. “Have fun and don’t stay out too long,” I said as he zoomed around the yard.
“He has the zoomies?” Faron asked with a grin.
“Yeah, apparently so. You’d think he was the one who got into the catnip.” I returned to the table, where Faron drew me onto his lap. I straddled him, basking in the heat that radiated off his body. Shifters were warm, so warm, and where Bran’s touch was cool and magical—like sparkling ice, Faron’s touch was fiery and steamy.
Faron slid one arm around my waist, and I leaned down and kissed his forehead, my breasts pressed against his chest.
“So,” he said, his voice a soft growl. “You’re sure Bran’s okay with this?”
I nodded. Bran and I’d had a long, in-depth talk before Faron moved in. It hadn’t been without a few heated moments, but by the end, we had hammered out the details. “He is. He convinced me that he’s telling the truth. I wouldn’t be sitting on your lap unless it was all right with him.” I leaned down to give him a kiss, and my lips played against his, setting off sparks.
He nibbled on my lower lip, running his other hand over my back.
“I can’t believe we’re back here,” I whispered. “I promised myself I’d stop thinking about you. Bran helped me do that, but now…now both of you are always on my mind,” I added. “Tell me, what would you do if they offered you the throne again?”
Faron paused, then said, “Honest answer?”
