“Tragically?”
“Most definitely.”
I leaned forward on a whim and whispered with extreme caution, “Then why do all those men behind you stare at you in fear?”
He blinked. “Because I’ll be the one to kill them.”
My jaw went slack. I couldn’t stop blinking, my face only inches away from his.
This peculiar man was dead serious.
I blinked again, and hissed, “You’re not doing it tonight, are you?” The thought of a bomb going off inside the bar—for his “work”—didn’t sound like a good guy to me.
He waved a bored hand in the air. “Fuck no. Only when they wish for it, and I deem it the correct course of action.”
My blue eyes flicked to the men staring behind him.
As one, they all heaved a reassured sigh, chests lowering in relief. Then they went back to talking as if they had been able to hear our hushed conversation with perfect ease. Some were even laughing and punching each other in the shoulders in some type of celebration.
But Cassander suddenly stiffened, his head tipping up as he sniffed the air.
His silver eyes narrowed into dangerous slits…and I quickly jerked back, straightening and backing away from him. His teeth showed briefly in a silent snarl, still staring at me, and then he growled in quiet fury. “What the fuck is she doing here?”
My head snapped around the bar. “Huh?”
No one seemed out of place.
Then the door to the bar opened. In strolled Poppy Carvene. And she was wearing a pair of black pajamas, her gorgeous red hair tousled like she hadn’t run a brush through it in a couple of days and dark circles were under her eyes making her appear ghostly with her pale skin.
She stopped dead in her tracks halfway to the bar, everyone giving her a wide berth, too, when she noticed who was sitting across from me, his rigid back to her. Her Cupid’s bow mouth parted, and she muttered under her breath, “Goddammit.”
