Whatever the cat thought of Dag, it neglected to share that information. After a thorough survey, the cat pirouetted on the arm of the chair and leaped to the ground, padding silently across the hardwood floor to Kylie’s side. Stretching up on its hind legs, the cat rested one paw against her leg and used the other to bat her arm in silent demand.
Without pausing in her work, Kylie lifted her right elbow up into the air to allow the cat a clear path into her lap. King David took immediate advantage of the opening, jumping up to circle twice before curling up on the female’s denim-clad lap. Dag could hear the animal’s satisfied purr from several feet away.
Then he heard the hitch in the female’s breathing a second before she spoke. “Oh, wow. Dag? I think I might have a clue as to why Ott decided to turn against the Order.”
“What do you see?”
“I think they killed his girlfriend.”
*
Kylie had been about seven seconds from running after Dag when he reappeared in her office door. Luckily, the complete inability of her own legs to hold her up prevented that from happening.
It would have set a very poor precedent if she had gone searching for him and attempted to cajole him out of his snit. It might have led him to believe first of all that he held the upper hand in their relationship, which clearly could not be allowed to happen; and even more damaging, it might have indicated to him that he was in the right in this particular situation. Since there was not a right made of lefts in kissing a woman as some kind of twisted punishment, then running off as soon as she got all hot and bothered, Kylie had a duty to ensure he had no chance to interpret things that way.
The problem with this little strategy of hers was that Kylie’s personality didn’t lend itself to extended snits. Sure, she had a temper, but it tended to flare hot and fast and burn itself out before she had a chance to build up to holding a grudge. She occasionally thought someone deserved to have her carry one with their name on it, but quite frankly, she found it to be a big waste of energy. There were so many more interesting and entertaining things to do in the world. Why would she want to expend all that energy on hating someone when she could just ignore them?
With Dag, she only managed that for a few minutes. Her determination suffered its first crack when he looked as if he intended to evict King David from his chair. Considering that the cat had been sitting in the chair for way longer than the gargoyle, and that the cat hadn’t pissed her off in the last few hours, no way was Kylie going to let that happen, so she had been forced to speak to warn him off such a stupid move.
The crack got larger when he managed to ask her the completely civil and surprisingly nonarrogant question of what she had found in the files. Given his history so far, she had expected him to demand that she tell him everything so that he could decide what was important or not, or to simply take over from her and pat her on the head like a good little human. If he had tried it, she had been fully prepared to bite his fingers off. She almost felt cheated when she didn’t have to.
But the final crack in her armor of annoyance appeared when King David gave the Guardian his formal stamp of approval. Oh, it was a subtle thing, but the cat had taken a good long look at Dag and decided the warrior would be allowed to stay. From the King, that amounted to a ringing endorsement.
Okay, so King David left a lot of things to subtext, but given that he hadn’t bitten, scratched, hissed at, or sprayed urine on Dag, his reaction to the giant male absolutely constituted approval. Other men and women who had ventured into Kylie’s house hadn’t fared nearly so well in the past.
By the time she had skimmed the contents of the first document Dennis Ott had written and saved on the thumb drive, most of her anger had dissipated. Honestly, she knew the kiss should never have happened. For all intents and purposes, she and the Guardian were coworkers, and even she knew that office romances were a bad idea. Better to keep things on a professional level so that everyone knew where they stood and no one got hurt.
But, damn it, she wanted to be the one to make that mature and logical decision. She didn’t want it thrust on her when the one who kissed her went running from the scene of the crime as if he’d just eaten a piece of bad sushi. That was not how a woman wanted someone reacting to one of her kisses. She wanted him to burn for her, to be consumed with her memory day and night. She wanted a man to try and move heaven and earth just to keep her safe—
The words jumped off the page at her, and Kylie felt her eyes go wide. Bouncing twice on her balance ball, she called out to the Guardian. “Oh, wow. Dag? I think I might have a clue as to why Ott decided to turn against the Order.”
“What do you see?”
“I think they killed his girlfriend.”