Savage saw a lot, and he seemed to have a really good bullshit meter. She had to be careful to be truthful, even though that wasn’t the only reason she had cried.
He stepped close to her but didn’t touch her. Those piercing blue eyes of his could chill her to the bone. They could also see far too much.
“We’re used to pain, Zyah. He’s going to get through this.”
She nodded. “Thanks for being so good to Mama Anat. She really hates being confined to her bed. She can’t get from the bed to the chair, and she said you put her in the chair yesterday so she was able to move around a little bit. That meant so much to her.”
He shrugged, drawing back into the shadows. “It was no big thing. She wanted to make cookies and some other kinds of baked goods and needed to get into the kitchen. She’s a little thing, so it was easy enough.”
Zyah’s eyebrow shot up. “She baked? With her broken arm?” Her grandmother hadn’t said a word about baking. There hadn’t been any baked goods in the house. Not one single cookie when she came home.
Savage was silent for a moment. Too long of a moment. She tipped her head back and moved closer to the shadows so she could see him, not letting him disappear. “She had you baking those cookies, didn’t she?” Her grandmother could get anyone to do anything. She was pure magic. “She talked you into letting her walk you through the recipe, didn’t she?”
Savage had one hip against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest as he regarded her coolly. He didn’t answer, just kept looking at her like he might do her in if she persisted in the conversation. Zyah didn’t know whether she could keep a straight face or whether she should even bother trying.
“I’ll bet you had flour all over you,” she taunted.
He didn’t blink. He just continued to stare at her.
She grinned at him, quirking an eyebrow. “Did she make you wear an apron? She does that because she doesn’t like a mess in her kitchen.”
Savage didn’t so much as change expression. As opponents went, he was good. Really good. Zyah could imagine her grandmother having great fun with him. There was no sound to warn her, but she knew they weren’t alone in the hallway. Her neck hairs tingled, giving her a warning prickle. That had to be another member of Torpedo Ink, or Savage would have reacted. Savage and Destroyer were usually the two partners, so she took a stab at it.
“She has frilly aprons. You could have worn the one with the sunflowers and Destroyer the one with the bluebonnets all over it. You would have looked so cute, especially if you got flour all over the aprons. I’ll have to ask Mama Anat if she happened to get pictures of you both. She loves to use the camera on her cell phone.”
Mama Anat loved to use the camera, but more often than not, she had it pointed in the opposite direction or up at the ceiling or down at the floor.
Destroyer stepped around her. “This woman is trying to blackmail us with damaging photographs, Savage?”
“There’s no proof,” Savage denied.
“There’s proof,” Zyah said.
“Anat had the camera pointed toward herself,” Savage said in his perfectly expressionless tone.
Zyah laughed quietly, always cognizant of Player asleep in the other room. She didn’t want to wake him. It was so like her beloved grandmother to have her cell phone out and recording and the camera pointed in the wrong direction. But it also proved Zyah was right and Savage and Destroyer had baked cookies because Anat had asked them to. She would have given anything to see the two men following her grandmother’s instructions.
“I knew you baked those cookies for her.”
“What cookies?” Savage asked. “There aren’t any cookies.”
“Because you and Destroyer ate them all,” Zyah accused. “I know darn well you did. Anat will try to cover for you, but she can’t lie worth a darn.”
“Go to bed,” Savage ordered. “You have to work in the morning. You’ve worked on Player half the night already.”
For the first time there was a hint of gratitude in his voice. Just a hint. Along with respect. Neither Savagen nor Destroyer gave much away, but that didn’t matter to her. She always knew her grandmother was safe when they were watching over her. Now she knew they were pushovers just like everyone else around Anat. That really endeared them to her. She lifted a hand to both men and made her way to the next room, where she closed the door quietly and just let herself fall facedown onto the bed. She really was that tired.
“Seriously, Zyah, you should stop by the restaurant before you go home,” Alena encouraged. “The boys are with your grandmother. It isn’t like she’s alone there.”