“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Of course you would,” she says, rolling her eyes, but more playfully this time. Then, she holds up await a secondfinger. “Did you not even do the sleepy pose?”
“Shavasana,” I supply.
“I saw you didn’t close your eyes.”
“You were checking me out,” I say, deflecting.
“Is there room in the shop for you and your ego?”
I look around the café. “We both seem to fit comfortably. Now tell me more about how you were keeping an eye on me during sleepy pose?”
“Banks,” she chides, and it’s clear she’s trying to understand me rather than trip me up. “You really don’t like napping?”
Ah, hell. She opened up to me. The least I can do is give her some of the same. I relent. “I…don’t like relaxing.”
She flinches, like that does not compute. “That’s like not liking sunshine. Or music. Or a night out with friends.”
“I like all of the above.”
“But not relaxing?”
No, because what if that leads to napping at other times? Like on the job? No way. I won’t leave my charges unprotected while I’m on shift, so I won’t risk napping. Shavasana is something I don’t do. “I don’t sleep on planes. Or buses. Or park benches. Or yoga studios. I like…control,” I admit, then pick up a paper menu on the table listing the coffee drinks.
“But in the Marines—you were in the Marines, right?”
“Yes.” I furrow my brow, folding it into a triangle. “How did you know? Did Lila tell you?”
She laughs, shaking her head. “Just something Haven said, but even if she hadn’t, I’d have guessed. Just like you guessed I’d try to ditch you on two wheels.”
Damn. She’s good. “Impressive.”
“So when you were in the Marines, you probably had to sleep anywhere?”
After I fold the bottom right of the paper to the top, I stop andlift a finger. “Icansleep anywhere. Now that I don’t have to—I choose not to.”
“Huh.”
I brace myself for a barb as I flip the paper over. That’s what we do, after all, this woman and me. We fire sarcasm-dipped arrows at each other. But Ripley is surprisingly quiet, thoughtful even, as she nods. “I can see that—for someone who likes control, that pose would be hard.”
“Yes. Exactly,” I say.
“Is that why you do origami too? Control?”
I stop before I finish the animal I’m making. “This isn’t for control,” I say, but I’m not about to tell her folding paper into animals is a habit I picked up long ago. Way back when my father’s secrets were unraveling, when the life we lived growing up imploded, when I needed something to keep me busy so I didn’t punch the asshole every time I saw him. It calmed me down, and then it became a daily practice.
“What’s it for?”
I pause. “Relaxation,” I admit as I finish the creation. Then I hand her a small paper fox.
A smile shifts her pretty mouth. “It’s cute.”
“Keep it,” I grumble.
She tilts her head, assessing my offer, then says, “Thank you.” She sets it down next to her mug, turns the mug, releases a breath. “I don’t like having my picture taken. By random people. Not that I do. Not that it happens to me now,” she says, emphasis on thenow, like a correction. Which means there was athen.
Questions pound my mind. Who took her picturethen? Who made her feel uncomfortablethen? And where can I find them and hurt them?
