Page 13 of Come Fly With Me

“What did I tell you about the surfaces?” Deke demanded. “This is a health and safety concern right here. We could get shut down over this shit.”

Jodie blinked at him, vaguely noting that Mitch hadn’t stopped holding her. “I’m not going to fall off the counter,” she said to her brother, sounding a little dazed.

“I’m not talking about injury,” Deke snapped. “I’m talking about sanitation. I prepare food on the surface your backside’s sitting on. At least you aren’t naked. For that, I’d need to bleach the counter. And my eyes. Now, off.” He pointed at the two of them. “And out of my kitchen.”

As Deke stomped over to the cleaning closet, all the while muttering about his sister acting like a horny teenager, Mitch curled his hands around her waist and lifted her down from the counter.

Jodie looked up at him. Part of her was ready to pick up where they’d left off and was trying to decide whether to invite him upstairs. The other part of her was wondering what the hell she’d agreed to in her lust-induced state. The man was a drug that dulled her common sense. Was that a thing? Was it actually possible to get high on male pheromones?

Mitch’s smile said he knew exactly what she was thinking, which made her scowl at him. As usual, it had no effect. Instead of running from her wrath, like any sane man would do, he tugged her shirt back into place, skirting her aching breasts as he did so. Asshole.

Cupping the side of her neck, he leaned in to whisper, “Don’t forget to eat your cake.”

Then, with a nod to Deke, he was gone. Leaving Jodie to stare after him with a mixture of desperation, frustration, and deep irritation.

“Friends, my hairy backside,” Deke muttered as he bumped her out of the way to get to the counter.

Friends?

Crap.

Jodie frowned at the door Mitch had gone through. She’d been played. With a growl of annoyance, she turned to fetch her cake, only to find Deke with the fork in his hand and half of the cake missing.

“Mine!” Jodie snatched the plate and fork from his greedy hands.

“Great cake,” Deke said. “Wonder who made it.”

Of course, he’d been distracted by the food. Men. They only ever thought about one thing—food.

Okay, maybetwothings.

“I’m going to bed,” Jodie declared.

“Yeah, would have been nice if you’d decided that before you contaminated my kitchen.”

Jodie ignored him and stomped up the stairs to her flat, cradling her cake while wondering how she’d been bamboozled into making a deal with the devil. The man had just messed up their nice little arrangement, and now she had to work out how to get things back to the way they were. Like she didn’t already have enough to deal with without Mitch being difficult.

With a groan, she took her cake with her to run a bath. Deke was right. It wasdamnedgood.

Betty the Babysitter

This story takes place a few weeks after the bonus story, about Betty’s living wake, at the end of Caught, Invertary Book 7.

The rumor around the Highlands was that Betty McLeod didn’t have a heart. Some said she’d handed it over to the devil at the same time as she’d sold her soul. Others said it’d been shattered when her fiancé ran off with her sister. And a few believed she’d never had one to begin with. But the truth was that Betty did indeed have a heart; she was just very careful about who she let into it. After all, there was a limited amount of space.

In saying that, by the time she’d reached her mid-nineties, there were five people firmly entrenched in her wizened old ticker. Lake Benson, her honorary son—as in, it was an honor for him. Jodie Harris, because the woman could wipe the floor with anyone in Invertary and didn’t take crap from anybody. Agnes McBride, formerly Sinclair, who gave Betty a run for her money when it came to being devious. And two little girls called Grace and Lexie Benson, whom she considered her granddaughters—much to the disgust of their mother, Kirsty. Which, as far as Betty was concerned, was a bonus.

It was these two little girls who were keeping Betty company as she sat in her La-Z-Boy armchair in the corner of their father’s security shop on a sunny Tuesday afternoon in spring. The girls had finished school for the day and were hanging out in the shop while their parents worked. Usually, the girls went between their parents’ shops—Lake’s security business and Kirsty’s underwear store—which faced each other on the high street. But that day, their mother was in a meeting with suppliers, and Lake was upstairs on a conference call, which meant Betty had been left to supervise the girls—and the shop.

Oh sure, Lake had told the latest charity case manning the front desk that she was to keep an eye on everything, but Betty knew who was really in charge here—her. She was also aware that this was the first time since her “living wake” that she’d been left alone this close to Benson Security’s storeroom. The storeroom that housed the weapons.

It was an opportunity she couldn’t let pass.

Eyeing the woman behind the counter, another mousy misfit Lake had taken pity on, Betty lifted her chin. “Hey, you, girlie,” she called, making the young woman start and her granddaughters stop coloring to see what was happening. “Lake wants the girls to have ice cream. You’d best fetch some straight away.”

“Ice cream!” Five-year-old Grace was already on her feet and bouncing around in excitement at the prospect of a sugar fix.

Her more circumspect six-year-old sister, Lexie, eyed Betty thoughtfully, as though trying to work out her angle. Betty knew she shouldn’t have favorites when it came to her girls, but Lexie was definitely an apple from her grandmother’s tree. There wasn’t much that got past that wee one.