He sounded so cautious, and it made Gretchen’s heart ache a little. He had relaxed with her, of course, but she was his mate. She could see how hard it was for him to joke around with a relative stranger, and she knew how risky it must feel for him to open up his life again. His last group of friends had kicked his heart around like a soccer ball.
Gretchen had been so much luckier than he had been. She could look back on her life now and see that her childhood had left her with more scars than the one on her shoulder—she had spent a long time feeling small and defensive. But she’d never doubted her family’s love for her, and she’d spent her whole adult life surrounded by people who thought the world of her.
And she thought the world of them, too—something that was particularly vindicated as Colby handled Cooper’s joke lightly and deftly.
“I would never deprive someone of the opportunity to experience my world-class grilled cheese. But I’ll expect to be heaped with a lot of praise. It’s the only way I’m going to console myself for being stuck on the ground.” He tipped them a little salute and returned to the kitchen, slinging a dish towel over his shoulder as he went.
Cooper now wore the shyest, most beautiful grin Gretchen had ever seen.
See? You’ll do just fine now that you’re with the right people. You’re one of us now.
He took a bite of his grilled cheese and instantly made a face she hadn’t seen since their all-too-brief roll around Ford’s bed.
“Oh my God.”
Yeah. Colby really did make a good grilled cheese.
“Now might not be a good time to tell you I can’t really cook,” Gretchen said.
Cooper swallowed. The orgasmic ecstasy of the perfect sandwich still lingered on his face, but he put his arm around her. “Neither can I. When we’re alone, we’ll live off cereal, and then we’ll just try to eat at Colby’s house whenever we can.” He lowered his voice. “He’s not the one with the mate who makes the rock-hard cookies, right?”
She stifled a laugh. “No, that’s Martin’s mate, Tiffani. She has a lot of other good characteristics. And Martin can cook, so I promise the food will be safe if we’re invited to any dinners there.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder. She was familiar enough with the glory of a Colby Acton Grilled Cheese Special to be able to eat one now without actively swooning, and that let her just take the moment to unwind.
It was eleven o’clock at night, and she was in her home office in the Sterling courthouse, wrapped in a blanket, snuggled up against her mate, and eating a grilled cheese while her boss woke up every governmental official he could find to tell them that there was no way in hell Cooper Dawes was spending another night in prison. She’d been through a round of first aid, a bumpy trip back home, and a visit from a shifter doctor. She was bandaged, sore, and exhausted. It had been a long, long day.
And somehow, this felt like exactly the right ending to it. This was where she wanted to be. She liked her house just fine, but this was her home—and these people were just as much her family as the ones she was related to by bl
ood.
She liked thinking of Cooper being welcomed into that big, lovable mess. But he wasn’t just another part of her life. He had helped her define herself in a way no one else ever had or ever could. She didn’t just want to share her home with him, she wanted to share her life with him. She wanted to share herself.
Before she could think of exactly how to do that, however, Martin came out of his office with an enormous smile on his face.
“Oh, I like that look,” Gretchen said, straightening up.
“You should.” Martin turned to Cooper. “You don’t have to go back.”
Until she saw his face just then, Gretchen hadn’t realized that Cooper hadn’t even been letting himself hope for that. Now it was like pure light was shining out of him.
“Really?”
“Really,” Martin said firmly.
Gretchen’s face hurt from how much she was smiling. “So for right now, what are we doing?”
“For right now, Cooper’s officially in our custody.” Martin looked a little sheepish. “I might have implied to some higher-ups that there’s some complicated shifter-related reason why he can’t be anywhere else. There almost is. I hate the idea of separating the two of you.”
“We hate the idea of being separated.”
“I can imagine,” Martin said softly, and Gretchen knew that he was thinking of how impossible it would have been for him to have to spend so many nights without Tiffani. “Having Phil alive makes things much, much easier, as you can imagine, and Theo already got him to agree to make a full confession in exchange for an eventual transfer to a draconian prison—he’ll be moved as soon as the scrutiny dies down.” His mouth hardened. “I’m fine with that not being any time too soon. He deserves some discomfort.”
Gretchen couldn’t agree more, and she didn’t think even a long, cold flight nestled in Cooper’s talons had come close to filling the bill.
“And Monroe?” she said.
Martin’s expression shifted to one of supreme satisfaction. “I had roadblocks set up all around the mountains near Ambergris, and traffic cops stopped him about an hour ago.”