Page 100 of Wayward

“I don’t want you to get hurt, and if anyone tries to, I will be very displeased.”

He reached the door and opened it, then stepped inside and gave me a look before closing it behind him.

I ran to catch him and knocked on the door until he opened it, looking out at me through the narrow space that the chain lock allowed.

“That’s easy to just kick in, you know.”

He closed the door.

Laughing, I knocked again. Same scenario, he opened it just a crack, the chain still on.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t know, scary person, but you’re freaking us both out.”

Misha was not concerned, as evidenced by his happy yips as he pawed the air.

“And no,” Gale added, “we’re not getting you a knife.”

“I’ll just use yours.”

“So scary,” he whispered to Misha as he closed the door slowly again.

When he looked at me out the window, my heart skipped a beat. There was no doubt about it, I was crazy about Gale Malloy. And so was my dog.

After dinner that night, Gale ran to his place to get clothes to sleep in, and Ada said she was retiring early.

“We’ll just be out here, watching TV, then,” I told her. “The great mahjong rematch will wait for another night.”

“There will be no rematch,” she informed me.

“Yes, there will be, because you cheat,” I informed her right back.

“You can’t cheat at mahjong, and besides, I want you to go to Gale’s.”

“What? No. You can’t be alone. You’ll be scared.”

“I will not be scared even a bit. I wasn’t scared that night, and I’m certainly not scared now,” she said emphatically. “I was far more terrified the night I found the alligator sleeping under my bed.”

I could give her that.

“You haven’t lived until you look into the darkness, upside down, and see eyes staring back at you.”

Jesus.

“But again, I’m not scared, and you need to go stay with Gale before he combusts into a flaming ball of desire.”

First, I was horrified. Then I was simply confused. “A flaming ball of what?”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Maks! Open your eyes. The man wants you terribly. Every time he looks at you, there’s so much naked yearning there that I start to get hot flashes again like when I was going through menopause. How are you missing that?”

“I—gross.”

She whacked me in the chest. “Oh, don’t be such a prude. Just take the man to bed already and let nature take its course.”

“This is the most unsexy conversation I’ve ever had in my life.”

Her glare should have killed me right there. “Get out of here now. Take your clothes, take whatever else you need—my brother had exotic oils he brought back from Borneo, but that was ages ago—and go have some fun.”