“Uh… okay,” she answered with zero enthusiasm.
Clearly, she wasn’t with him.
“We’ll go cautious,” he said quietly. “I might be a threat. You hopefully won’t. So it’s you at the returns. He doesn’t want to go into the library, you give him an alternate option. A home-cooked dinner and a hot shower in a real bathroom on Monday night. No strings, he can walk away. But we’ll talk to him while he’s eatin’ and do what we can to make him not want to walk away. You good with that?”
“Um… sure.”
Still hesitant, no enthusiasm, worried.
“Baby,” he tried gentle this time, “we’re not gonna swoop down on him, cuff him and throw him in a cage. Ask him what his favorite meal is. Promise him you’ll make it. You make it, the way you cook, him livin’ rough, he’ll love it. We broke through. Now we push the advantage.”
“Get to him through his stomach,” she whispered.
“It’s worked so far,” he replied and heard her soft, melodic giggle.
“Okay, Chace,” she agreed more firmly.
“Okay,” he said through a smile.
“I’m bringing champagne over tonight to celebrate,” she declared.
“I’ll pick some up today, you just bring you.”
A pause, this one slightly annoyed then, “Chace, I can afford champagne.”
She was right and she was wrong. She had a junker car, lived on the cheap in a rental that was kickass but mostly because she made it that way and, until recently, she walked pretty much everywhere she needed to go unless it was to the mall, her parents’ or her sister’s.
He’d been looking into the shit with the library and her salary was a matter of public record. She had a Master’s Degree and got paid just above half of his salary. It wasn’t poverty line but it also wasn’t what you’d expect someone with that level of education and increasing experience to get. She ran the library. Her job description was three pages long. Budgets, accounting, acquisitions, promotion, programs and managing a volunteer staff that Faye had told him numbered at five. She was a one-woman show. Her salary was peanuts for that level of responsibility.
Chace had found this disturbing, especially with the threat of closure. He didn’t know a lot about it but he was looking into it and it didn’t look good, particularly with the cutbacks at CPD. In fact, it hinted at further corruption in the City Council which would surprise him and annoy him. They didn’t need any more of that shit and he didn’t want to have to deal with it. He just hadn’t had the chance to dig deeper.
So she could afford champagne but not only would he rather she spend her money on the kid, dresses and boots like she wore to The Rooster, he was the kind of man who took care of his woman. Furthermore, he was going to the grocery store. He wanted her at his place to eat and then do other things, not making stops before she got there.
“Faye, I’m goin’ to the store in about ten minutes. No need for us both to go,” he pointed out. “I’ll get champagne.”
That bought him a quiet, sweet, “Oh. Right. Of course.”
Chace grinned at the window again.
“Well, I suppose I should climb down from cloud nine and get to work,” she remarked and he heard it as he often did. Even when she was cute, sleepy and hot on the phone in the morning, she didn’t like to let him go. She didn’t say it flat out, even tried to hide it, but it was there.
Chace liked that.
“Get to work and I’ll see you tonight.”
“Okay, honey. See you tonight.”
“Later, Faye.”
“’Bye Chace and…” she paused then whispered, “Malachi. Yay.”
She wasn’t cute. She was fucking cute.
Through his grin, he muttered, “Bye, baby.”
He disconnected, turned and his body gave an involuntary start, a reaction he showed and couldn’t bury, an unusual occurrence.
This was because, first, he’d forgotten Silas Goodknight was even there.
And second, Silas Goodknight was smiling at him huge.
“Right!” Silas stated smartly and put his mug on the island with more force than needed. “That’s that. I’ll expect you and Faye over for dinner next Saturday night. Be there at six. Sondra likes flowers, pink ones. Just tell Holly, Holly’ll know what to do. Or tell Faye, she’ll know what to do too. Other than that, bring you and a big appetite. Sondra may bitch about me takin’ care of myself but that don’t mean when company comes, she don’t like to show off.”
As Chace processed going from Silas’s surprise visit the reason for which was to tell him he didn’t want Chace dating his daughter to Silas asking Chace and Faye to dinner, Silas moved toward the front door.
With no other choice, Chace followed him.