“Ow!” She stopped moving.
“I didn’t step on your foot.”
“No, you bumped my arm. The one in the sling,” she added pointedly.
He looked stricken. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I forgot. You shouldn’t be dancing.” He took her good elbow. “You need to sit down.”
Freddie’s habit of telling her what she needed was one of many reasons she avoided him whenever possible. It brought out the worst in her. She managed to clamp her lips together until they were off the dance floor. ‘Thanks for being understanding. I think I’ll go graze off the buffet.“
“All right. I’ll fix you a plate.”
“I can feed myself these days, you know.”
“You’ve only got one good arm.” He kept hold of it, too, steering her toward the dining room where the buffet was laid out.
Lily sighed. She didn’t want food. She wanted to get away from Freddie. From everyone, really, but that wasn’t possible, so she might as well suck it up and try to be pleasant.
“Mother tells me you’ve finally quit that job of yours,” he said as they reached the buffet table. “I’m relieved. So is Mother. I’m sorry it took being wounded for you to see that—”
“Wait a minute.” She jerked her arm out of his grip. “I didn’t quit the force because I got shot.”
“Whatever the reason, I’m glad you’ve come to your senses. Police work is dangerous and exposes you to, ah, the wrong sort of people.”
Like criminals, she supposed. Or maybe he meant other police officers. “I guess your mother didn’t have all the news. I’m still a cop. A fed, maybe, but still a cop.”
“A fed?” He looked deeply suspicious.
“FBI. You have heard of them?” She reached for a plate.
Freddie never noticed sarcasm. His frown was thoughtful, not offended, as he piled food she didn’t want on her plate. “I guess that’s an improvement. You’ll be dealing more with white-collar crime, not murderers and thugs.”
Lily’s lips twitched at the idea that FBI agents arrested a better class of criminal. She could have told him that she’d taken her only line-of-duty bullet after being recruited by the FBI, not before. She didn’t. He’d tell his mother, who’d tell Lily’s mother, who had jumped to the same conclusion—that Lily was in a safer job now.
No point in rocking that particular boat. She looked at the plate in her hand, which he’d piled with enough food for three people. “I hope this is for you. I’m allergic to shellfish.”
“Oh.” He glanced at the plate. “Forgot. Well, I can take it and get you another one.”
“Never mind.”
He didn’t listen, of course. He just started filling another plate. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”
“Don’t go there.”
He paused to frown at her. “I guess you think of yourself as taken right now. By, uh, that Turner fellow. The, uh…”
Pig eyes, she thought. Freddie had greedy little pig eyes. “Lupus. It’s okay to come out and say it, you know. It isn’t a bad word.”
“I was trying to be tactful. Tell me, is it true that they—”
“Yes. Absolutely.” She glanced around. Who could she use as an excuse to escape?
“You didn’t let me finish!”
“Didn’t I?” All, Beth was talking to one of Susan’s doctor friends. Lily managed to catch her little sister’s eye, but Beth just grinned, crossed her eyes, and then turned her back.
The rotten little rat fink. Beth always had been spoiled.
“I want you to know that I won’t hold your liaison with Turner against you,” Freddie announced. “I’m a fair man. What’s sauce for the goose and all that. And, uh, I’m aware that his kind… well, they exert a certain sexual compulsion. Though I was surprised to hear that you… but it’s not your fault.”
Her gaze jerked back to him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Your affair with Turner. Really, Lily, I shouldn’t have to repeat myself. It’s only polite to listen.”
“Oh, I’m listening. I just didn’t think I’d heard right, since my personal life is none of your business.”
“We’re cousins. And one day, when you’ve finished your youthful experimentation—”
“I’m twenty-eight, not eighteen.” She shook her head, exasperated. Once Freddie got an idea into his head, it took a sharp scalpel to get it out. “Read my lips. We are not going to get married. Not ever.”
His smile was patient. Tolerant. “Your mother wants it. So does mine.”
“My mother wants me to get married, period. You’re the right gender; you’re Chinese; you have a good business. That works for her, but she’s already married. Give it up, Freddie. You don’t want to marry me. You don’t even like me.”
“Of course I do. I’m very fond of you. You’re my cousin.”
He meant it, too. Or believed it, which was almost the same. She sighed. “I agree with your mother—you do need to get married. Soon. Just not to me.” She handed him her plate, patted his arm, and made her getaway while his hands were full.
Relatives could be the very devil sometimes.
She’d dance some more, she decided, heading for the other room. That wouldn’t eliminate the possibility of nosy questions, not when so many people here felt entitled— obliged, even—to ask about her shoulder, her new lover, or her career change. But it limited their opportunities.
The DJ was playing “I Want You to Want Me,” and the room was crowded. Lily stood at the edge of the dance floor tapping her foot, more in irritation than to keep time.
Freddie was not exactly the soul of insight, which made it all the more irritating that he’d put his finger on the truth. She was taken, all right. Taken over, it sometimes seemed.
Her gaze drifted across the crowded room, past cousins and strangers, acquaintances, family friends, and those newly related by marriage. It snagged on Aunt Mequi, who was dancing with Lily’s father.
Mequi Leung was her mother’s sister. They ran tall on that side of Lily’s family, and Mequi was thin all over— thin body, thin face, and a thin smile that looked like a bandage slapped over something painful. Lily’s own lips twitched. Aunt Mequi hated to look ridiculous, and Edward Yu’s head barely topped his sister-in-law’s shoulder.
He wouldn’t be troubled by that, she knew. Her father possessed a marvelous capacity for ignoring things he considered unimportant. He was probably talking about option strike, vertical spread, and other esoterica of the broker’s world.
Probably… but Lily couldn’t know for sure. They were fifteen feet away. She couldn’t hear them over the babble of other voices.
Three weeks ago, she would have been able to.
Relief mixed with a wisp of disappointment. For a while, the mate bond had made her hearing as acute as Rule’s, but the effect had faded. She didn’t know why it had happened in the first place, or why it had gone away. Inhumanly good hearing might have come in handy at times, but so much had changed in her life in such a short time. On the whole, she was glad one thing had reverted to normal.
Of course, it might come back.
Lily touched the small charm dangling from a gold chain around her throat. The toltoi was the outward emblem of all those changes, the token she’d been given when she formally accepted membership in Rule’s clan. Her foot began tapping faster, losing the beat of the music altogether.
Rule thought the bond had responded to danger by blurring the lines between their separate abilities. Maybe he was right. At the time, he’d been able to draw on some of her own immunity to magic, and they had definitely been in danger. A nutty telepath had been trying to sacrifice them to her goddess.