Kellen went to his closet and pulled out a couple of shirts and a pair of old shoes, then got some jeans from his dresser drawer. He threw the bundle at her. “Keep ’em.”
She blew him a kiss over her shoulder and went to get Clyde. Dumping the clothes on the couch next to him, she grabbed her coat from the back of the sofa. “Get dressed. Please. So people will stop staring at me like I’m the keeper of the loons.”
The grin he flashed was lopsided. “Have I told you you’re funny?”
“That makes two times now, and yeah, I’m a fucking riot. Go get dressed and we’ll go back to my place and figure this out.”
Clyde unfolded his big body, setting cats aside with careful hands and one last stroke of his palm. His eyes pinned hers, solemn and studious behind his glasses. They sent a thousand messages. Some she understood, some went without saying, and some she wasn’t able to identify. “Thank you.”
And hell if that didn’t make her stomach flop like a fish out of water. “You-you’re welcome.”
Slipping past her, he headed for the bathroom to change, passing Kellen on his way. “You fucking hurt her, and I’ll—”
He and Clyde were eye to eye when Clyde said, “You’ll what? Kill me? Afraid you missed that boat, partner. But if it’s any consolation, I promise to do whatever it takes to keep her out of harm’s way.” Clyde made the first move by offering Kellen his hand.
Kellen took it, but the tension in his bulk was apparent from the stiffness of his shoulders and the clench of his teeth. “You make sure you do that—or I’ll chase your ass into the afterlife.”
Clyde’s nod was curt when he stepped around Kellen, closing the bathroom door behind him.
Okay, so maybe chivalry hadn’t died a merciless death.
Hot.
To discover that about Clyde was unbelievably hot.
To have a man other than her brother stick up for her was just plain smokin’. And pathetically, desperately, sadly a statement that it had been far too long since she’d had a man’s attention.
Weak.
Very weak.
Clyde sipped his banana Slurpee with a blissful grin on his face. The dogs, littered in a clump at his feet, slept in peaceful silence. He tilted the large cup at her in gratitude. “Thanks for this. I really missed them. You think if I get the frig out of Hell, they’ll have these wherever I end up?”
Banana Slurpees.
Not so profound unless you connected the beverage back to someone she’d like to erase from her memory.
It had hit her when they’d stopped at the convenience store on the way home. Not only was it an out-of-the-ordinary, disgustingly sugary drink to crave, it was a weird coincidence to run into two people in a lifetime who loved them the way Clyde did.
And Vincent had.
Vincent had loved banana Slurpees, too. The memory had made her shudder in the store, and it made her shudder again now. Vincent holding court in her head the way he was as of late made her feel dirty, but he’d had a way of making even the most innocent of things seem dirty. The kind of dirty she just couldn’t wash away. He’d lied, cheated, stolen, and eventually killed . . . even if she could soak in a vat of disinfectant, it would never wash away the stench of his filthy memory.
Delaney gritted her teeth and realigned the bottles of herbs she’d already straightened for the umpteenth time to keep her fingers busy, looking away from the beauty of Clyde. Since this afternoon at Kellen’s, the impulse to tuck fistfuls of his hair between her fingers while he kissed the living shit out of her had been impossible to shake.
Dressed in her brother’s old blue polo shirt and jeans, he was unquestionably one delish package. It’d been an effort to keep her distance. The soft glow of the storefront, where all of her beloved remedies and books were, didn’t help either. It was too cozy and their silence too comfortable.
“I’m hoping for row after row of 7-Elevens with nothing but banana Slurpees,” Clyde said on a watery chuckle, cutting into her haze of growing lust.
Her expression went into instant consolation mode. She knew this role—the role of spirit guide. It was like an old shoe. She slipped it on with ease, relishing the buttery soft, worn leather of it.
She was at her best when she was reassuring someone they were making the right choice by choosing the up button on the elevator of eternity. “I can’t say for sure. I do know that some of the things I’ve heard uttered were said with big-time awe and wonder. I can safely say I haven’t had a single customer shriek in horror when they cross. Wherever you end up, I hope it has endless banana Slurpees, if that’s what trips your trigger.” And she did—hope that for him.
Clyde’s eyes sought hers, his glasses mirroring her reflection. “Did I mention I never believed in Heaven or Hell when I was alive?”
Her hand covered her mouth to hide her snort. “You did. I guess the logical team lost a player, huh?”