"Six-thirty. I've got to be on site by seven, but I didn't want to leave without..." He trailed off, looking uncertain. "Without making sure last night was real."
"It was real." I took a sip of coffee, buying myself some time. "All of it."
He sat on the edge of the bed, close but not touching. "Any regrets?"
I thought about that. About waking up in his bed for the second morning in a row. About learning he'd been to jail for fighting, and for the betting machine behind the fighting, and discovering it hadn't changed what I saw when I looked at him. About telling him I could fall in love with him and getting four words back that weren't the ones I'd offered.
"No," I said, sure of my answer. "No regrets. Scared, yes, but no regrets."
He watched me say it, and I watched him hear it, and for a spell neither of us moved. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice that sounded uncomfortably like common sense was asking what exactly I thought I was doing.
Two nights. That was all this was. Forty-eight hours and a dinner with his landlady, and I was sitting in a ceramic-cat-infested apartment telling a man with a criminal record I had no regrets.
The same voice reminded me that half the women in Coogan's Break had probably sat somewhere similar. That charm like his didn't build without practice. That there was a reason people talked. I'd heard the talk, although strangely, no complaints.
I'd filed it under not my business for six months and kept my distance. The question was whether the man I'd watched for six months was the same man everyone was talking about.
The one who showed up early and stayed late, who checked on his landlady before he checked his phone, and who'd looked at me every time like he was trying to solve a problem that mattered.
And now I had one more piece of data that the gossip never included. The town's smoothest operator, a man with six months of practiced lines aimed in my direction, had been handed an open door last night and hadn't been able to walk through it.
A player would have said it back. Saying it back costs a player nothing.
I didn't know yet what it meant that he couldn't. But it was the most honest thing I'd learned about Daemon Booth since I'd met him, and I was still turning it over when he spoke again.
"I meant what I said last night." His thumb moved across my knuckles. "I'm not going anywhere."
"I know." I set my mug down on the bedside table, careful to center it on the crocheted coaster. "Same arrangement as last night, then. No labels. We say things when we know them."
"Deal."
"And what I know right now is that I need to get to work. I've got a meeting with the staff at eight, and I need to shower and change first."
"Right. The meeting." He squeezed my hand. "About the Elevate situation?"
"Yeah. I need to tell my team what's happening and figure out a plan." I hesitated. "Will I see you later?"
"You want to?"
"Daemon." I gave him a look. "I told you last night. I'm done pretending."
He grinned, a full smile that transformed his face. "Dinner? I'll cook. Nothing fancy, but I can manage something that doesn't come from a box."
"I'd like that." I leaned in and kissed him, meaning it to be quick, but it deepened into something more. When we broke apart, we were both breathing hard.
"You keep kissing me like that and we'll both be late for work," he said, his voice rough.
"Then stop being so kissable."
He laughed and stood, pulling me up with him. "Come on. Let me show you how the shower works. It can be temperamental."
Thirty minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot behind my commercial kitchen, my mind already shifting into work mode. I had an hour before my staff arrived, enough time to change into one of the clean jumpsuits I kept there and organize my thoughts.
With that done, I set out the pastries I'd grabbed from the Skye High Pies bakery on the prep table and started some coffee. Then it was time to face what I'd been avoiding since yesterday.
I pulled up my email and scrolled through messages from clients. Three had reached out in the past twenty-four hours, all with variations of the same message. Elevate Events had approached them with very competitive pricing, and they wanted to know if I could match it.
No, I couldn't. Not without operating at a loss.
