Most importantly, he’d brought all my shelves and plants.
“Holy shit,” Rowan said when he stepped into the room. “Looks like a jungle in here.”
“I need to organize everything.” Hope was right about all the natural light coming through the windows. Even in an area of gray days, the house was brighter than my other had ever been. “The living room window is amazing. Most of the plants will thrive there.”
Rowan was dressed in a pair of dark gray slacks, shiny black shoes, a dark blue pullover sweater that brought out the green flecks in his eyes. His hair was artfully mussed and he’d shaved this morning. My fingers itched to trace the line of his jaw.
“Evie?” His tone held a wealth of amusement.
I picked up a snake plant and carried it to the window. “Hmm?”
“You’re still in your pajamas.”
I took two of the pothos and arranged them on the small shelf Dad brought from the house. “Maybe too much light.” I clicked my tongue.
“Evie?”
“Hmm?”
“Did you forget what we have to do today?”
I set down the pothos and turned to him with a frown. Realization dawned a second later. “Shit. Shit!” I clapped my hand over my mouth. Today was the emergency meeting with the Lords. “What should I wear?”
“Whatever you want to.”
Yanking on his hand, I dragged him to my bedroom and started flinging clothes aside. “You look nice. I need to look like you, but authoritative so they take me seriously.”
Rowan tugged on my hand, pulling me away from my frantic clothing shuffle. When I tried to release him, he pulled me close and trapped me in the circle of his arms. “Hey.” He tilted my chin up with his index finger. “No matter what you wear, they’ll all take you seriously because you’ll be the biggest predator in the room.”
I snorted. “Sure.” I tried to pull away again, but Rowan wouldn’t let me go.
“Evie.”
I huffed and stilled. “We’re going to be late.”
His lips twitched. “They will wait. The meeting is about us, after all.”
“Yes, but I don’t want them making any major decisions without us.”
“Do you always worry this much?”
My eyes narrowed. Rowan made it difficult to be cranky. “Yes.”
He grinned. “You made me the largest territory owner in the U.S., and they can’t take the land back, can they?”
I lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “They can try, but now that I’m keeping a closer eye on things, they won’t be successful.”
“Then we have nothing to worry about.”
“The Lords don’t seem like the kind of crowd who’ll let something like this stand.”
He lowered his voice and bent to touch his forehead to mine. “Then we’ll teach them why it’s a good idea to learn a new skill.” The words are low and deadly, his self-confidence over this dangerous gambit making something tug deep inside me.
Rowan had a deep sense of self-possession I found profoundly sexy. Caelan was always in your face, prone to violent outbursts of rage. The man had destroyed my shop over the automaton I’d made when he forced me to work for him. Standing here now, I could never picture Rowan doing something like that. A certainty clanged in my head like a gong.
Rowan would never hurt me.
“I can almost hear the gears in your brain turning,” he murmured.
