Elemental Assassin 04 - Tangled Threads

Grayson’s low, sexy baritone rumbled through the receiver. “Do you know where I can get a good plate of barbecue?”
    I leaned against the counter that ran along the back wall of the restaurant. “Sorry. I don’t have a clue.”
    He let out a low laugh that warmed me, and I found myself smiling at nothing in particular. There was no one that I’d rather have heard from right now than him. For some reason, Owen soothed me, especially after the terrible dream that I’d had last night. I really was getting soft in my retirement, just like Roslyn Phillips had said. But right now I didn’t care.
    “You know, you left without saying good-bye yesterday morning,” Owen said.
    “I do have a restaurant to run you know,” I drawled, trying to make light of the fact that I’d skipped out without waking him up.
    “Was that the only reason?”
    I hesitated. Owen and I hadn’t been together all that long but he could already pick up on things that I wished he wouldn’t—like my newfound skittishness when it came to our relationship. Or whatever we were calling it. Owen made me feel a lot of things that I didn’t know if I was ready for, especially since I was in the middle of trying to take down Mab and had LaFleur and Natasha to worry about in the meantime. Emotions, feelings, letting down my guard. Those were all weaknesses that I just couldn’t afford to indulge in right now. Maybe not ever.
    “Yeah,” I said about five seconds too late. “That was the only reason.”
    “No worries,” Owen said in an easy voice, pretending that he hadn’t even noticed my long pause. “It kept me from having to hide your Christmas present from you.”
    He couldn’t have shocked me more than if he’d just gotten LaFleur to pump me full of her electrical elementalmagic. For a moment, I just stood there, mouth open, blinking. Then reality set back in.
    “Present? You got me a Christmas present?”
    He let out another low laugh. “In a manner of speaking. That is the Christmas tradition.”
    “Oh.”
    I’d gotten a few small things for Finn and the Deveraux sisters, but it had never occurred to me that Owen might expect something too, given the newness of our relationship. I grabbed a nearby pen and scribbled a note down on the top sheet of my order pad.
Buy Owen Xmas present
. Too bad I had no idea what that present would be or what he would even like. Shopping had never been high on my list of priorities.
    “Actually, that’s why I’m calling,” Owen said. “I wanted to talk to you about Christmas. I thought it might be nice if you came over.”
    “Oh.” It seemed that was the only thing I could say. “But Christmas is family time. I thought that you’d want to spend that with just Eva. I don’t want to intrude.”
    “You’re not intruding, Gin,” Owen said in a firm voice. “You are never an intrusion.”
    I fell silent. I didn’t know about that. Having an assassin around was kind of like having an elephant in the room. It was so big that you just couldn’t look away from it, even when you did your best to pretend it wasn’t even there.
    Owen must have taken my silence for acceptance because he continued. “I was thinking that you could ask Finn and the Deveraux sisters to join us. Maybe Roslyn and Xavier too, if they’d like. Eva plans to invite Violetand Warren Fox over. We could make it into a real holiday party.”
    A party? That didn’t sound so bad. At least then I wouldn’t have to be alone with Owen and Eva and feel like an awkward, socially inept third wheel. Killing people was far easier than making polite chitchat.
    “And you could even ask Bria, if you wanted to,” Owen finished.
    “Oh.” I was really dazzling everyone with my conversational skills today.
    Owen knew that Detective Bria Coolidge was my long-lost sister and that I desperately wanted to tell her who I really was. But, of course, that I was also afraid of what Bria might do when she found out I’d been an assassin for years and that I was the Spider, the mysterious woman who’d declared war on Mab Monroe.
    “Gin?” Owen asked. “Are you still there?”
    The bell over the front door chimed, indicating that I had a customer, and saving me from answering him. I hoped it was the call-in order that Sophia had taken a few minutes ago so I could close my gin joint down for the night and get on with finding Natasha.
    No such luck. To my surprise and consternation, Jonah McAllister walked through the door.
    Despite his