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“Because she told me she hoped they would call today, and I know there is no way in hell you’d come to see me unless it was really important to your parents!” Victoria spits back, no longer soft in tone or posture.

Damn, damn, damn, I love that fire in her.

My cock gives a warning twitch. Wants her. I want her.

Victoria stomps to the back of the RV and pours two glasses of something amber and alcoholic, slamming both down on the tiny fold-down table.

“I’m not some stalker, you paranoid patchwork quilt,” she snaps and swallows the entire glass. “You want one, or are you afraid it’s poisoned?”

I stomp inside and snatch the glass. I sniff it. Then I drink it down in one gulp. “Poison doesn’t work on me, unless it’s something like straight acid. You can let Pazcuso know.”

“No. He could kill me first—although it would be a waste, because I think anyone with two brain cells would know that acid that can burn through a body would hurt you. You have a body.”

And so does she. When Victoria turns to get the bottle again, I catch a glimpse of white cotton on her cheeks.

I know the hungry pink slit underneath that. Know that whiskey is the starter, and she ought to be the main course.

“Is the baby okay?”

“Huh? Oh. I don’t know. But... But I just want to make it clear that even though Rhea talks to you and you can do some stuff from this little RV office, you’re not welcome around my family. I don’t care what Manny and Rhea say. You stay the hell away from Manny and Rhea. The baby, too, when it comes.”

Victoria tosses back another glass of whiskey. She gasps for a second and licks her lips, eyes burning through me. “I would never hurt a baby,” she hisses. “You are out of your borrowed brain if you think that.”

I want to make an equally cutting retort, but I can’t.

She wouldn’t.

“I wouldn’t hurt Manny and Rhea, either. They’re like the parents I never had. The parents every kid should have. I have never,” her breathing comes out in shaking rasps that I think herald the onset of sobs, “ever hurt an innocent person. That’s why I’m not hurting you. That’s why I’m staying here, in this cold little tin box on tires, working for twelve hours at a stretch to learn all I can in case Rhea leaves like, now, and sleeping in someone’s borrowed bed, wearing clothes from the secondhand shop and grocery store plain Jane panties from the little rack where they sell tube socks and pantyhose.”

She’s never hurt an innocent.

Like me.

“I know you wouldn’t,” I whisper.

Victoria looks at me, startled. “You know that?”

I nod. “Uh-huh.”

“Oh. Well. Thank you. That means a lot. More than you know, coming from you.” She shivers and tips the bottle again.

“Hey. You need to stop that. Three whiskeys on an empty stomach when you’re already cold will mess you up,” I warn.

“Maybe I’ll freeze to death, and you won’t have to worry about me.” She shrugs and pours anyway.

I grab her wrist.

“Don’t.” One word. One challenge.

Victoria drinks right out of the bottle, snagging it with the other hand since I’ve captured the hand holding the glass. “Why spoil my fun? I mean, sure, I deserve it, and I guess I can just wait until you’re gone if you don’t want to watch a pathetic ex-escort, ex-assassin drink herself to sleep.”

“I don’t want you to do that at all,” I say in a hypocritical snarl. Like I don’t do the same thing.

“As much as I know I owe you for saving my life and for betraying your trust, I don’t think I can obey that particular order, Captain Cadaver,” she gives me a tipsy, crooked grin that threatens to ignore my zipper. “I don’t have people like you do, Lazarus. I don’t have someone to let my thoughts out with. I have something to keep them quiet.”

I take the bottle and drain it. It won’t even make a dent on the elephant-hide liver stuck in my insides.

“You owe me a bottle,” she hisses.