Page 15 of Protected By the BRATVA Grump

He moves to the large fridge and plucks out a small bottle of milk, setting it into a jug of warm water.

"I always knew she'd be family," Eduard says. "Sammie knew before I did. Valeria has been making jokes right in front of you. The only person in this town who didn't know was you, and I assumed you were being slow on purpose because it was the only part of your life you could take slowly."

"That's approximately accurate."

"Then stop." He holds Lilah out to me without warning, and I take her awkwardly into my arms. She reaches her little chubby hand up to my face and looks up at me with her father's gray eyes. "Marry her. Have this. It's the only thing we do that's worth anything in the end."

Lilah puts her hand flat on my mouth.

"She agrees," Eduard says.

My phone goes at twenty past five, on the drive back along the water with the light coming off it low and hard.

Demyan, five words. Ray Mosby. Address to follow.

It arrives thirty seconds later, a street in the eastern quarter I know well enough to picture, four floors of flats above a shuttered carpet showroom with a service road behind it and no cameras on either end.

I pull into the lay-by past the boat sheds and sit with the engine running, reading the name until it stops meaning anything.

I put the car in gear.

Delilah

The door hasn't finished swinging shut behind Jasper when Sammie says my name in a way that tells me she knows.

"Hmm?" For some reason, I’m holding out hope that if I remain calm and unbothered, she won’t pry, because I don’t know how to tell her what happened between me and Jasper last night.

She raises her perfectly arched eyebrows at me. "‘Hmm?’ That’s the best you can manage?" She has her coat over one arm and the pram parked in the warm patch by the window. I peek over the edge of the pram and find Lilah asleep with both fists up beside her ears. "I walked in here and found Jasper Federov drinking coffee before opening time."

"He was being helpful. Fed the cats and everything." That’s the second I know I’ve let too much slip.

Sammie’s grin grows wider.

"He was being something..." She hangs the coat, ties her apron, and takes her place at the register with the serenity of a woman who has decided she can wait all day if she has to. "I’m glad you two have finally seen sense."

And that's all she says. She lets it go entirely, which is significantly worse than if she'd pushed, because now it's sitting in the room with us like an eighth cat.

Judging.

Old Bill arrives at nine on the dot and I put his Danish down in front of him along with a slice of yesterday's apple cake he absolutely did not ask for, since my first attempt at baking this morning wasn’t salvageable.

"I didn't order that."

"It's free."

"Nothing's free." He looks at the cake, then at me, over the top of his glasses. "You're humming."

"I hum." I shrug as if to emphasize that this is totally normal behavior for me. Which it is. I do hum.

He picks up his fork and considers the burnt edge with the seriousness of a man inspecting foundations. "Are you running tonight?"

My hands go still on the tray. Yesterday I rolled my eyes at him and said something breezy. Today I'm thinking about seeing Jasper holding a man against a tree and telling me I was being followed.

"No," I say. "Not tonight."

Bill's eyebrows go up so far they nearly leave his head altogether.

"Good," he says at last, and goes back to his paper with the air of a man who suspects he's been cheated somehow.