“We’ll do our best.”
She escorts us out without another word, and the door closes behind us with a quiet click. There’s something off about all of this. I’m not convinced she has nothing to do with it, though I can’t say why. It sits below the surface. An itch at the back of my mind that I can’t scratch.
Spencer stops on the bottom step, and I turn back to him curiously.
“What is it? Did you forget your wallet?”
Spencer doesn’t answer, worrying his lip with his fingers. He glances behind himself to where the curtain moves. She’s watching us. “Something’s not right.”
“The tea wasn’t poisoned, Spence, you just don’t like it. Besides, you made them, remember?” I take hold of his hand and tug him down the last step and then toward our car. “What are you thinking?”
“Can you circle the block around to the next street over? Behind their houses.”
“Alright.” There’ll never be a time where I don’t trust Spencer implicitly. If he wants something, I’ll move heaven and earth to give it to him. Driving around the corner isn’t exactly a hardship. Even if I don’t know why he wants me to do it.
Once we get around to the next street, he tells me to pull over in front of a house that butts up against the back of Veronica’s house. “No car in the drive. Think anyone’s home?”
“We can check,” I say, hopping out.
After a quick knock on the door and a tap of the doorbell that sets a dog off inside, we confirm that no one’s home. “Are we breaking and entering? Who lives here?”
Spencer shakes his head and goes around the corner of the house, forcing me to follow him.
Without a word of warning, he hikes himself easily over the six-foot fence and drops into Veronica’s backyard. I just go right over it after him, landing heavily on the grass. Luckily it hasn’t been raining in the last day—this time of the year it’s touch and go—and it’s not overly slippery.
He puts a hand on my thigh, looking down at my leg with a concerned frown. “Alright?”
“It’s fully healed, Spence; you have to stop looking at it like it’s about to collapse under me.”
Instead of answering, he gives me a quick kiss, swiping his tongue over my bottom lip.
“What are we doing here, Spence?”
Spencer drops to a knee at the back door, pulling tools from a pocket and going to work on the lock. Apparently, we’re breaking in. Alright.
“We checked over the place just the other day,” I point out. We didn’t miss anything. And neither did Riley, Hunter, or Quinn. The five of us went over every inch of the house, and even ifone or two of us missed something, the other three would have picked it up.
“I know.”
I don’t bother pushing further. He’s barely listening to me while he focuses, and he’ll tell me when he’s ready. We’re not here for no reason; Spenceralwayshas a reason for everything he does even if it doesn’t make sense to the rest of the world. Or to me, even.
Stepping up behind him, I cradle his back against my legs and thread my fingers through his hair. The soft strands glide pleasantly over my skin. He washed it today, and I can smell the faint musky, floral scent. I want to bend over and press my nose to it and breathe it in deep. If we were anywhere else, I would have.
“That’s distracting,” Spencer murmurs.
“Is it? Sounds like you need to work on your concentration.”
His deep chuckle goes straight to my gut, and my fingers clench in his hair. The chuckle turns into a sigh, and he leans his head back against my thigh, his cheek grazing my dick. Fucking hell.
The door swings open a second later, and Spencer stands, giving me a momentary reprieve from the feel of him.
He doesn’t look at or touch anything, just strides through each room with a purpose I can’t even begin to understand.
“What are you looking for?” I ask. “I can’t help unless I know what the hell is going on.”
Spencer stops in the middle of the living room and turns back to me. “Notice anything?”
“No, Spence, I don’t. We’ve done this already.” Frustration seeps into my voice. What are wedoinghere? If there was something to find, we’d have found it the morning we were here.
