Page 29 of Remington’s Mate

“Fernandez.” She leaned forward to get a look at the label on Fernandez’s feed. “Is that the side entrance?”

“Yeah. They don’t think much of you—they don’t have anyone on the kitchen exit. Or the basement. Or the loading dock. Geez. There’s like, six ways out of here without them seeing you. These guys are the Wal-Mart of security.”

“Lucky for them, we want them to see me leave, so they think this is just what it looks like. Dirty steamy sex.”

“If we want them to think that, you can’t leave yet. You’ve only been up here forty-five minutes. That’s practically a wham bam thank-you ma’am.”

Not in Jaeda’s world. “Trust me,” she said. “It’s really not.”

“You’ve been dating humans, haven’t you.” He shook his head. “That is so sad.”

He opened his mouth as if to keep talking, and Jaeda raised her hand. “Do not offer to show me what a shifter can do. I will make you regret it.”

“You say that now.” He smirked at her. “But once you’ve had a shifter, you can never go back. Especially a McCall brother.”

That’s what she was afraid of. And she was planning on living in the human world. She couldn’t afford to get ruined by somebody with shifter heat and charisma—not to mention stamina.

There’s more to relationships than sex. Although owls don’t sniff each other’s butts, so technically I wouldn’t be violating my goals…

No.

“So how long do you think I should stay?” she asked. “To make this realistic from a human standpoint, since that’s what you’re pretending to be.”

“I can’t lower my standards just because I’m pretending to be human,” Remy said. “Hours.”

Definitely no. “I’m not staying here with you for hours.”

“Come on, it’ll be fun. We can play strip poker. Or watch porn. This hotel has a disturbing amount of porn available on pay-per-view.”

Jaeda sighed. “Do you ever think about anything but sex?”

Remy looked thoughtful. “Yes. Sometimes I think about chocolate chip cookies. Or steaks. Or whiskey.” He went to the counter and poured himself another drink. “Want another one?”

Oh, what the hell. Jaeda grabbed her glass and took it over to him. “So, sex, food, and alcohol. Why am I not surprised?”

He took the glass and refilled it with whiskey and Coke. “And sometimes I contemplate Monet’s use of light on water in his paintings. Or ponder whether Professor Snape was good or evil. Or try desperately to decide whether Kirk or Picard was the best Enterprise captain.”

“You’re kidding,” Jaeda said.

“Those are serious subjects.”

“Not the last one. There’s no contest. It’s Picard.”

“But Kirk gets way more nookie.”

“Picard has a British accent.”

“But Kirk is soooooo dramatic.” Remy did a William Shatner full-body pain seizure—without spilling his drink. Impressive. “And Picard listens to fucking opera.”

“Exactly. He has taste and class.”

Remy shook his head. “We might need another bottle of whiskey. This is going to be a long night.”

The Kirk vs. Picard debate continued through dinner. Jaeda had demanded food to go with the second bottle of whiskey; without it, heaven only knew what disastrous drunken decisions she might make.

Since Remy was the one who insisted she stay, Jaeda ordered steak and made him promise to pay for it himself instead of charging it as an expense to the client with the husband in a coma.

“What kind of a dick do you take me for?” Remy said. “They can’t even afford the medical bills. We’re planning to track down Sutcliffe’s offshore bank accounts so we can clean them out and give most of the money to the Martins. They have kids, for fuck’s sake.”