Shen frowned. He got the feeling she wasn’t really talking to him as much as herself. “That’s great to know, but I’m asking about Stevie.”
“My sister is fine. It sounds like she’s having a great time.”
“So she won’t try to fly away?”
“Not physically, no. But my sister does live in her head. So if she shuts you out for a few hours, don’t take it personally. She’s just creating something. Probably something amazing.”
“Okay.” Shen nodded. “I just wanted to make sure.”
“It’s so cute how protective you are of your new girlfriend.”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“You two would make such cute babies!”
Shen disconnected the call and shook his head, wondering—again—what the fuck was happening with his life.
“It’s not my problem,” he told himself. “It’s not my problem. Her sister says she’s fine. So I’m going to . . .”
During his speech, Shen glanced outside and immediately noticed that Stevie was no longer on the railing. Worried she had tried to fly, he went out on the deck and looked out on the water. But the wind shifted and he caught her scent . . . above him.
He looked up and saw her perched on the roof.
“What are you doing up there?”
She shrugged, lips briefly twisting before she admitted, “I chased a bird.”
“Did you catch the bird?”
“Maybe.”
“Did you eat the bird?”
“No. I still need my birds cooked, thank you very much. Perhaps with a light lemon-pepper seasoning. Or a wine sauce.”
“Uh-huh. Was it a seagull?”
“Yeah.”
“When you caught it, did it attack you?”
“It was really mean.”
“Because you snatched it out of the sky.”
“Then it shouldn’t have flown over my head!”
Shen let out a sigh and went back into the house. He grabbed some of that high-end bamboo from Shaanxi, China, went to the couch, and continued watching the baseball game.
* * *
Stevie had nearly filled an entire blank music notebook with her latest work when Shen woke up. He’d fallen asleep in front of the TV, a stalk of half-eaten bamboo hanging out of his mouth, one leg slung over the back of the couch’s headrest.
He hadn’t snored the couple of hours he’d napped, which she was grateful for. And he’d left the baseball game on the TV, which for her was like a soothing white noise.
When he awoke, he sat up straight, the bamboo still in his mouth. He didn’t remove it, though. He just began eating it again and looked around the room. When he saw her, he seemed relieved. Did he think she’d snuck out on him? Why would she do that? This place was awesome. The water. The mostly friendly neighbors. Except Mrs. Bartman down the way who’d told Stevie to “Get the fuck out of my yard, whore!” A reaction that seemed a little extreme, but Stevie didn’t get mad. And the comment made the other nearby neighbors even friendlier because they all hated Mrs. Bartman.
“What time is it?”
“You’re wearing a watch,” she informed Shen.
“I am?”
“Since I’ve met you.”
“Oh, yeah! Look at that. And, hey,” he added, “it’s a Breitling!”
Stevie finally looked up from her work. “You own a Breitling and you didn’t know it? How is that possible?”
“My sister gets free shit all the time. If she doesn’t want it, she gives it to me or Zhen.”
“Lucky. All I ever get from Max is fistfights and from Charlie, concern.”
“She’s trying.”
She again looked away from her work. “She’s trying what?”
“To be better. About worrying over you.”
“How do you know?”
“I called her earlier because I thought you were delusional and you were going to try and fly.”
Stevie laughed. “That’s so ridiculous!”
“I didn’t know. I mean between you hanging out on the railing and the rumors you’re spreading about us dating . . . sorry. I mean telling everyone you’re my girlfriend.”
“I am your girlfriend.”
“You’re not!”
“Since when?”
“Since forever!”
“Look—” Stevie turned in the chair, her arm on the back—“I know you think you have some say in this . . . but you don’t. I’ve kind of made up my mind here.”
“Meaning what . . . exactly?”
“That I’ve decided we’re boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“Because I’m cute?”
“That’s a definite start. But come on. You have to admit we’re perfect together.”
“I don’t have to admit that, because it’s not true. At the very least, it’s unknown. And what is that noise?”
She pointed toward the sliding glass doors. “Cats.”
“Huh?” He got up and went to the doors to find that a large number of stray cats had congregated on the deck. “Why are there all these scraggly ass cats outside our house?”
Stevie laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Our house.”
He growled. “I meant,” he bit out slowly, “my sister’s house.”
“Sure you did.”
“Did you feed them?”
“No.”
“You’ve been feeding that stray cat outside the Queens house.”
“I might as well . . . she’s not going anywhere. She’s chosen us. As far as she’s concerned, it’s her house now. It doesn’t matter what Max does . . . we’re stuck with her. So we might as well feed her.”
Stevie began doodling a dollar sign on the top of her music papers, but when Shen didn’t say anything, she looked up. He was staring at her, his mouth open.
“What?” she asked.
“You. You’re that stray cat.”
“Pardon?”
“‘She’s not going anywhere. She’s chosen us. As far as she’s concerned, it’s her house now.’ I’m the house in this scenario. I’m your boyfriend now because you’ve decided I am.”
“As long as we’re clear.”
“We’re not clear!” he bellowed, but immediately pulled his anger back. “I understand that maybe you’re at a point in your life where you’re looking for someone to love. I’m just not that guy.”
“Why?”
“I’m lazy. I have no real ambition. I just want to make enough money to have a relaxing home and an unlimited supply of bamboo. That’s it. That’s all I want from life. But you . . . you need someone ambitious. Someone who wants more from life.”
“I’ve tried that. It never works out well. Oh! That reminds me.” She stood. “We need to go out.”
“We’re having a conversation here.”
“It’ll have to wait. I have a date with Dr. Matt Wells.”
“The hybrid murderer?”
“He’s not murdering people, per se. He’s experimenting on them, and when the experiments go bad and they die, he tosses their bodies out into the woods and sets them on fire.”
Shen, his arms stretched out, hands palms up, just kept staring at her . . . with his mouth open.
“It’s wrong,” she volunteered. “Is that what you need me to say? Because it is wrong and I know it’s wrong. It’s not something I’d ever do. But I don’t get emotional over it because he’s a scientist, so I understand his thinking. It’s wrong thinking, but I understand it.”
“You do know you’re a hybrid, don’t you? Which means you’re at risk.”
“Chances are he’s going after hybrids in the first place because of me. I’ve got to find out what’s going on and, if I can, stop it.”
Shen dropped his arms. “And what do you want me to do?”
“Pretend to be my security.”
“I am your security.”
She snorted. “I’d never actually hire you as my security.”
“Why th
e hell not?”
“Because you’re my boyfriend. Duh. You’d be too emotionally involved.”
“But I’m not your boyfriend.”
“Uh-huh,” she dismissed him, because they were running late. “I’ll go get changed.”
Stevie walked over to Shen, walked around him, and headed toward the stairs that led to the bedrooms.
Shen was silent for a few seconds until he asked, “Woman . . . did you just rub up against my back?”
“Well,” she chuckled, grabbing her pack, into which she’d shoved some going-out clothes, “I’m way too tall to wrap myself around your legs. And when I shift my tail can wrap around your entire body a few times . . . so I assumed unleashing that would just freak you out.”
Without another word, she headed up the stairs, leaving Shen standing there, with his mouth open and the most adorably confused expression on his handsome face.
chapter FOURTEEN
Shen readjusted his gun holster under his light business jacket.
He always had work clothes in his sister’s many homes. More than once he’d had to help her out, keeping the leeches and losers off her back when she was trying to work an event.
So he had on his black jeans, black shoes, black designer T-shirt, and a black linen jacket to hide his weaponry.
“Your sister is so cool,” Stevie said from upstairs. “She has all these designer shoes in different sizes.”
“Don’t wear those ridiculously high heels that she insists on wearing. I don’t want to have to carry you from the car to the restaurant.”
Shen heard Stevie bopping down the stairs, which surprised him. He’d mostly only seen her barefoot around the house, so he didn’t think she could walk in high heels. Much less bop down the stairs.
But when he turned around, he found that Stevie wasn’t wearing any of his sister’s giant-heeled designer shoes but sneakers. Converse, specifically. Sparkly Converse. Plus jeans, a T-shirt that read, “Shut your piehole,” and her hair in a messy ponytail.
“What are you wearing?” Shen had to ask, laughing.
Instead of being insulted, Stevie did a little spin on that bottom step. “You don’t like?”
“I like, but I thought you were meeting this guy for drinks at that fancy restaurant in Old Westbury? That’s a rich area.”
“Right. He’s trying to impress me. I don’t care that he’s trying to impress me. I want him to know I don’t care.”
“And you want me there . . . ?”
“You’re my security. I need you to make sure he doesn’t punch me in the mouth.” She grinned. “Duh.”
* * *
It was a five-star restaurant where she was meeting Wells. He’d said he happened to be out on the Island for an “important meeting” and had just enough time to get together for an after-meal drink.
Stevie was fine with that. She’d rather not sit through an entire dinner with him. And she’d rather meet him at a restaurant than a bar. Meetings in bars, in her mind, often gave guys the wrong idea. She didn’t want Wells to know what she was up to, but she also didn’t want him to think, even for a nanosecond, that he had a chance in whatever hell the world wanted to believe in that he could ever get back into her panties.
Shen opened the restaurant door and Stevie paused a moment to let go the little shudder she’d been holding inside.
“Are you okay?” Shen immediately asked.
“Oh, yeah. I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? We don’t have to do this,” he said in a very low, quiet voice.
“You are so cute,” she said, loving how he continued to kind of blush when she did.
“Get in the fucking restaurant so we can get this over with.”
Giggling, she walked inside. It was a very nice, very elegant restaurant. She stood out among the wealthy diners, but she didn’t care. Maybe they thought she was a CEO from some Silicon Valley start-up.
“May I help you?” the hostess asked, her snobby gaze giving Stevie the once-over.
“I’m here for Matt Wells. Name is Stevie MacKilligan.”
“Yes. Dr. Wells is waiting for you.”
The hostess started walking and Stevie fell in behind her. As they moved through the restaurant, she turned around to face Shen, now walking backward.
“Tomorrow morning, I have therapy. Can you take me?”
“Sure. I can pick up Kyle afterward.”
“Great. But before you get Kyle,” she remembered, “I need to go see Oriana at her rehearsal.”
“Why?”
“Do I ask you questions?” she shot back.
“You ask everyone questions. Remember the yogi?”
“He was short-tempered and rude.”
“Which yogis are known for.”
Stevie bumped into something and realized it was the hostess, who’d stopped walking.
“Sorry.” She moved around the annoyed woman and Wells pushed away from the table, stood.
He was tall. Nearly six-four. With golden blond hair and gold-green eyes. And a cat. Lion male, specifically, which had been part of the problem with their relationship. Some lions were fun and interesting. And some you wanted to shove in a furnace just so you could watch them scream about their burning hair as they were dying.
“Stevie,” he said with that handsome smile.
“Matt.”
“Matthew,” he corrected. “I still prefer Matthew.”
“Uh-huh,” she said.
Stevie reached to pull out a chair, but Shen was already there, doing the job. She glanced back at him and saw that his whole disposition had changed. He’d gone from her adorable panda to the guy hired to play the Secret Service agent in a blockbuster summer movie.
He was even wearing his sunglasses. Sunglasses! At night! Inside the restaurant.
She bit the inside of her mouth so that she didn’t laugh and took her seat. Then Shen stood behind her, his hands clasped in front of him, his gaze continually scanning the restaurant.
It was ridiculous and hilarious and she was loving every minute of his lunacy because she knew exactly how much it was annoying Wells. And completely relaxing her in the moment.
“It’s so good to see you again, Matt,” she lied.
“You, too. And it’s still Matthew.”
“Is it? Because you’ve always looked so much like a Matt to me.”
A waitress came to their table and asked what Stevie would like to drink, but before Stevie could answer . . .
“She’ll have an Old Fashioned.”
Stevie felt her eyes beginning to narrow on Matt’s stupid, stupid face. She’d always hated when he ordered for her, and he would order for her all the time. Part of it was to show how well he knew her, but it was also a form of control. And Stevie didn’t like being controlled. It irritated the hell out of her.
“Actually,” she told the waitress before the woman could walk away, “I’ll have a beer. Anything you have on tap.”
The waitress looked at Shen but he just shook his head.
“Your tastes have changed, I see,” Wells told her.
“I’ve never liked Old Fashioneds, but you kept ordering them for me anyway . . . when I was eighteen.”
Wells cleared his throat, then said, “So you’re looking for work.”
“No. I’m looking for a new home. CERN has been great, but I need something new. My old boss, though, has been calling me. The last message was a little hysterical. I hear you’ve got some great work going on at your lab. And awesome financial backing. That intrigues me.”
“Really? You wouldn’t mind working for me?”
“Why would I?”
“Well, the last time we met, you said you didn’t want me anywhere near you.”
“Noooo. What I said exactly was, I didn’t want your hands or penis anywhere near me . . . ever again. And that still holds. But that was a social thing. Now, however, we’re talking science, and you’ve always said you could separate the two.”
“Of course I ca
n. But I don’t know what my labs would do with a theoretical physicist. As you know, my specialty is bioengineering.”
Stevie took her time, letting her smile slowly spread until she couldn’t stretch her face any more without ripping the skin. And she let that smile speak for itself.
Wells couldn’t hide his sneer. “Oh, I see. You’ve studied bioengineering.”
“Yes.”
“And have your PhD?”
“Of course. Four years ago.”
He looked down at his drink. An Old Fashioned. “And what brought you to that field?”
The truth was that one time Stevie forgot to eat and after fourteen hours of no food, she got what Charlie always called “the shakes.” But before Stevie realized that’s what was happening she decided she had Parkinson’s. She’d freaked herself out so badly in the twenty seconds it took her to get to that point, she had a panic attack and had to go to the hospital because she couldn’t breathe. She decided if she was going to cure her nonexistent Parkinson’s—you know, in case she actually ever got it—she’d have to study bioengineering. So she did.
What she told Wells, though . . .
“I was bored.”
* * *
Shen didn’t know Stevie could be so mean. He knew she could be dangerous when startled. He knew she panicked easily. He knew she insisted on calling him “cute” and treating him like a giant stuffed panda bear before deciding they were boyfriend and girlfriend without his consent. He knew all those things about her. But he didn’t know she could be mean.
And she was being really mean to this lion.
Which meant, to Shen anyway, that she truly hated the guy. Because she was nice to everyone else. Sweet Stevie. Known on the bear-only Queens street as “the nice one” among the MacKilligans.
Of course, this was Stevie he was talking about. She wasn’t mean to Wells like her sisters would be. She was doing with words what her sisters would do with fists or the cutlery from a nearby table.
“I see you haven’t changed much,” Wells snapped, becoming more agitated the longer they talked.
“Was I supposed to change?”
“A little humility wouldn’t hurt.”
“In science? Are you high? You expect me to be humble when I deal with men like you all day, every day? Men who seem to make it their purpose in life to convince me I can’t be good in science and math because I have tits and a pussy! My confidence is my armor. Against assholes like you.”
In a Badger Way Page 19