Tiny Glitches: A Magical Contemporary Romance (28 page)

“I know I’ve been sitting outside in a cold, cramped car for the last seven hours while you two were wrapped up in a nice comfy bed, and then I come in to rescue your ass from some enraged psychopath, only to find it’s you. And I’ve gotten zero thanks.”

Hudson rolled his eyes. I scooped up the bakery box containing the leftover coffee cake and a fork from a kitchen drawer, then plunked myself down in the recliner where I could see both men. No sense leaving behind good coffee cake when I left.

“Cake?” I lifted the box toward Matvei in offering.

“Is that coffee cake?”

“Yep.”

He grimaced. “If there’s no chocolate, it’s not worth it.”

And I’d trusted this man with my safety last night?

“Your point? I assume you’re planning on getting to it,” Hudson said.

“Yep.”

“Any day now.”

“I don’t know. I like seeing you rattled.”

“Matvei . . .”

“Killjoy,” Matvei said. He pushed away from the wall, and his teasing grin vanished. “Last night was boring. Nothing interesting. But around five this morning, a teal Tercel parked at the end of the block. The two guys haven’t gotten out and they seem to be watching your place. One’s big, dark, and looks like a crowbar couldn’t wedge him into—or out of—that tiny car. The other—”

“Looks like he thinks he’s Kanye West,” Hudson finished. “Yeah, we know about them. They’re mostly harmless. Atlas and Edmond. Didn’t catch their last names, but if you want to run the plate and see what pops up, that’d be great.”

“Harmless? You weren’t the one they handcuffed and kidnapped,” I said.

“I think you’re forgetting they helped us out last night.”

“I think
you’re
forgetting being held at gunpoint by our dear, harmless Atlas,” I shot back. “Or perhaps you’re used to it, what with your charming response to a little help—”

“You can’t mess with a guy’s office and not expect—”

“Him to behave like a child? Oh, did a
girl
invade your private lair? Poor
Monty
—”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Which one’s Atlas?” Matvei asked.

Hudson didn’t look away from me. I gave him a saccharine smile. I was in the wrong, and I knew it. I should never have moved anything of Hudson’s without his permission, even if it would benefit him. But his criticism that I’d made things worse grated, and his accusation that
I
was the root of his problems hit too close to home. I wasn’t going to back down first.

Hudson broke our staring match and ran his hand through his spiky hair.

“The skinny one,” he finally answered Matvei. “But, honestly, they’re not a concern. Just let me know what you find on them.”

“Oookay.” Matvei glanced at me, then back at Hudson. “What about the FBI? Do you know about them, too?”

I shot Hudson a glance. A sombrero replaced the top hat, and the little green army men lined up along the rim.

“I don’t know what you guys are into,” Matvei said, “but the feds rolled up this morning about a half hour after the Tercel, and they haven’t left yet.”

Jenny’s parting words surfaced in my memory.
Don’t screw up with the FBI; tell them nothing.

“Jenny,” I said. “The background checks.” My voice sounded hollow.

Or the FBI knew about Kyoko. My stomach chilled and I set down the coffee cake.

“Do you think they know?” I asked.

Hudson paced, tapping a finger against his chin as he thought. A Rubik’s Cube twisted in the air in front of him, the grids turning and flipping, aligning and misaligning colors with each twist. The sombrero remained, but the army men disappeared. A jagged-toothed fish flickered in and out of existence, gnawing at his stomach.

“No. Not about Kyoko,” Hudson said. “If they did, they wouldn’t be out in their car.”

I nodded in agreement. They’d either be in here arresting us, or they’d be at Annabella’s. Neither of us said that aloud, though. Not with Matvei listening.

“We could tell them about the ninjas,” I said.

“The ninjas?” Matvei echoed.

“How would we explain it?” Hudson asked.

“We don’t have to explain anything. They’re the ones who attacked us.”

“Do you remember anything about them?”

“I know where their van is broken down,” I said.

“It’s probably gone by now. Besides, the feds will want to know why we were selected as targets.”

“Random act.”

“And when they start digging?”

I sighed. “What about the cousins? Can we at least tell them about Atlas and Edmond?” I knew it was wishful thinking before Hudson shook his head.

“The less we tell them, the better.”

I liked law enforcers. They had a tough job, and I appreciated their dedication to keeping everyone safe. A plan that included lying to them made the coffee cake squirm in my stomach.

“Unless you want to tell them everything,” Hudson said, giving me an unreadable look. I did my best to not show the whiplash of fear his words elicited. Telling the FBI everything might mean we’d reduce our sentences for our involvement with Kyoko, but it would also mean the end of my life. The moment we handed Kyoko over to the FBI, Jenny would expose my curse, and I’d be whisked off to some high-security facility for detainment and endless testing.

I shook my head and looked away from Hudson’s piercing gaze. “What do you think they’re waiting for?”

“Are you guys going to tell me what’s going on?” Matvei asked.

“No,” Hudson said.

“Then you might want to brush your teeth and grab something to eat, because if they’re waiting for something, permission or information or confirmation, the office opens in”—he checked his watch—“twenty minutes.”

Cussing, Hudson stalked from the room. Matvei quirked an eyebrow at me.

“You sure you don’t want to tell me?” he asked.

“Are you sure you want to know?”

Matvei glanced toward the master bedroom. “What turned our easygoing Hudson into such an ass? Yeah.”

“I don’t know.” I raised my voice. “Perhaps you should ask
all the women
he slept with before me.”

“Not going to let that one go, huh?” Matvei asked.

“You’re kidding, right?”

Matvei grinned.

I grabbed my duffel rather than rooting for my toothbrush in front of Matvei, and stalked down the hall.

I rounded the corner of the bedroom and ran into Hudson. He grabbed me by the shoulders and backed me into the wall. Anger and another emotion I couldn’t identify tightened the corners of his eyes and set his mouth in a hard line. When he swept in for a kiss, his lips pressed hard, almost painfully, against mine and my body responded instantly. I dropped my bag and fisted his shirt in one hand, holding tight to his shoulder with the other.

He pulled back until a few inches separated our panting breaths.

“I’m pissed as hell at you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like you, and it doesn’t mean I want you running off into danger, okay?” he said. “We’re in this together.”

“I don’t go ‘running off into danger.’ I’m not some dim-witted damsel in distress and you’re not my white knight. I’m very good at taking care of myself.”

“So you don’t need my help? Is that what you’re saying?” His expression turned stony.

“No more than you need mine. Like you said, we’re in this together. It’s not ‘Hudson Single-Handedly Rides to the Rescue,’ okay? It’s not ‘Protect Eva from Harm and Herself.’ And while we’re clearing the air, I don’t mess things up with my feng shui ‘crap.’ I fix things. That’s my job; I make people’s lives better. Open your thick head and look around,
Monty.
Your problems are obvious. You’ve got a stagnant career that feeds your bank account but not your heart. Women leave you because they’re never fully welcome in here”—I prodded his heart—“or here.” I waved toward the bedroom. “People trust you, but I bet you’re having a hard time convincing your boss you’re worthy of that next level of responsibility, the one that would boost your salary. The helpful people in your life—your mentors and your repairmen and the customer support people—they’re hit or miss, right? And I don’t even want to touch on your family. That’s a tidal wave of baggage and buried emotion. You should be thanking me for what I did in your office . . . even if it wasn’t my place.” The halfhearted apology came out stilted.

Hudson fell back a step, and he stared at me with wide eyes.

“How did you . . .”

“It’s all right here.” I circled a finger in the air to indicate his whole house. His slack-jawed expression eased the last of my anger. I stood on tiptoes and kissed him gently. “Stop discounting what you don’t understand.” I picked up my bag and walked to the bathroom, then turned back. “And I like you, too, even when you make me so mad my hair curls.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“How well do you both know Ms. Winters?” FBI Agent Coutu asked. Hudson and I were settled on the couch. Coutu’s partner, Agent Sevallo, had taken the recliner. Coutu remained standing, though she was short enough that if she did attempt to intimidate with her height, it wouldn’t work. Then again, I was being questioned by the FBI. I was already intimidated.

“Not at all,” Hudson said.

“I went to high school with her.”

“What did you talk about outside Galileo Gallery three days ago? Jenny seemed agitated.”

My stomach went weightless, but the appearance of a ham sandwich on the folder Coutu held distracted me. I’d seen the divination before. Recently. Where had it been?

“Hang on,” Hudson said. “Have you been spying on us?”

Short of vaulting the back fence, there’d been no way to avoid the FBI agents. Minutes after Matvei had left, they’d pounded on the front door and politely requested a moment of our time. We were past introductions. We were solidly in the acting phase of this conversation, where I pretended I knew nothing and suffered no guilt or nervousness. I had my fair share of lying experience, but I’d never pitted my skills against people trained to detect deceit. Already I felt like fidgeting.

Coutu’s gaze never settled, always flicking back and forth between us, reading our body language and watching for clues. The agent came up to my shoulder, had soft dyed-red curls that didn’t touch her suit jacket’s collar, and looked to be in her late fifties. An apparition of an FBI badge clung to her gray jacket over her heart. Very literal. I could appreciate that. Literal was much easier to interpret than her ham sandwich or the rotten banana slices now dripping from Hudson’s chest.

Sevallo’s eyes landed on me more often than not. At least two decades younger than Coutu and almost two feet taller, he had short, thick black hair and a slight Asian cast to his Caucasian features, and when he looked at me, pink rose petals scattered across the coffee table between us. I didn’t think Sevallo was having strictly professional thoughts about me. Fluffy socks draped over his arm, flickering in and out of existence with every glance my way. Finally, he scowled, and the socks disappeared along with the rose petals.

“We’ve been keeping an eye on Ms. Winters,” Sevallo said. “Ms. Parker, please, answer the question.”

“She was in a hurry,” I said, glancing at Hudson. “And you know how it is when you run into someone you haven’t seen in years. You think there’s so much to catch up on, and then you realize you actually have nothing to talk about.” I cringed inwardly at not providing the whole truth, but then I thought of Jenny’s threat. A few carefully worded answers were going to have to weigh on my conscience.

“Yet she left her truck with you,” Coutu said. “A truck we later found off West Pico, abandoned. It looked like she’d been hauling livestock. What do you know about that?”

“The truck broke down. We had to leave it there.”

“The truck works fine,” Sevallo said. Hudson tensed beside me, but he didn’t say anything about his elephant-curse theory. Sevallo acquired a Santa’s hat. It sagged to the left, the white fluff at the tip of the hat dangling to touch his shoulder. “We think Jenny asked you to move the vehicle and dump it for her.”

“No. She just wanted it moved, but then it broke down. And the trailer got a flat when we exited the freeway.” All true, but even I didn’t believe me. “I never imagined I’d be talking to the FBI about it. We didn’t do anything illegal, did we?”

“Why did she need it moved?”

“I don’t know. I was just doing her a favor. You know, good karma.” God, I sounded inane.

“What about the next day? Did she ask you to break into her house?”

“I didn’t break in,” I protested. Again, not a lie, but I teetered on a razor’s edge. Hudson had been the one to do the breaking in.

“What were you there for?”

Hudson crossed his arms over his chest. “Where is this going?”

“Just trying to put the pieces together, Mr. Keyes,” Sevallo said. I couldn’t look at him, not with his dunce-like Santa’s cap.

“The truck,” I said, pouncing on the first plausible answer. “I didn’t have her number, but I wanted to let her know about the truck.”