“That face, though.” Fez cringes at me and the black mascara that I’m sure is streaking across my cheeks. “Channeling your inner Cruella de Vil?”

“Shut up.” He deserved it for that one.

Weazy and Joker step into the kitchen and let out a low whistle.

“It’s better than it was,” I say, reaching for another full trash bag to pass to them.

“Then it must have been a fucking wreck because damn . . . half the places in Mission look better than this,” Joker says, scratching his shaved head.

“Well, then I guess I’m lucky to have you three to help me, right?” I toss the broom to Fez. “Here. You’re good with one of these, right?” I give him a wink to soften the blow, as the guys start throwing jeers at him.

Sebastian’s heavy footfalls down the stairs quiet them.

“Oh, I see how it is. ‘Got caught up’?” Fez stares at me.

I just shrug. I don’t need to answer to any of these guys. “Hey, guys, this is Sebastian. Sebastian, these are the guys. You already know Fez.”

“The bro with the sick work, yeah.” Fez reaches out with a fist and, to my surprise, Sebastian responds with one of his own. If Fez knew that the “bro with the sick work” was really an ex–Navy SEAL and bodyguard, he’d have a full-on man crush in under ten minutes. And then trail Sebastian around, driving him nuts.

“Dude, I thought she wasn’t into dick?” I hear Weazy whisper to Joker from behind me.

“Seriously? She’s just not into yours.”

I shake my head at Sebastian, but he’s smirking. Speaking of dick . . . I drop my gaze.

Yeah, I know what he was doing in the bathroom.

“What time is dinner?” Sebastian asks from the edge of my bed at Dakota’s, kicking off his shoes.

“Dakota should be home in an hour.” I dry my hands at the bathroom sink and peer over to get a good look at him. He looks like hell. “You need to sleep.”

He rubs the back of his neck. “I’ll be fine.”

“Seriously, you were up all night, weren’t you? You can lie down for an hour.” I will, too, gladly. Beside him . . .

On top of him . . .

I guess we’ll see. Maybe I should actually let him sleep.

He sighs, but he’s smiling. “I was trained to stay awake for a lot longer than twenty-four hours.”

“Oh, yeah?” I wander over to help him lift his T-shirt off his body. It’s covered in drywall dust and dirt from hours of cleaning up. He could probably use a shower. Something else I’d like to try out with him, but maybe later. “What else were you trained to do?”

He eases back onto the bed, the springs creaking under his weight, to give me a good look at my work. It’s healing nicely. “All kinds of things,” he murmurs through a giant yawn.

I duck back into the bathroom to clean the smeared makeup off my face and brush my teeth, then decide that I really do need to hop into the shower to wash the day’s grime from my skin, with or without him. Ideally, with him.

“Hey, did you want to . . .” My voice drifts off. Sebastian is stretched out on his back, his arm beneath his head, snoring softly.

After my shower, I tiptoe to the other side and ease onto the bed in my towel, expecting him to wake up with the dip of the mattress. I mean, he was a Navy SEAL. Don’t they sleep light?

He doesn’t so much as twitch; he’s out cold, his normally taut jaw relaxed, his features almost boyish. So I simply lie there and watch him sleep for more than an hour as I fail at drifting off myself, until I hear the front door creak open and Dakota’s welcoming hum.

I duck out to the living room and let Sebastian rest.

TWENTY-EIGHT

SEBASTIAN

I wake with a start, my body jerking enough to shake the bed.

A soft moan beside me instantly brings me back to reality. I laid down in Ivy’s bed. It was close to four in the afternoon. I was going to just grab an hour, at most.

I glance at the window. It’s dark out now, the streetlight casting a dim light into the bedroom.

It’s . . . Holy shit. I’ve been asleep for almost eleven hours? I can’t remember the last time I slept this long without drugging myself with Ambien. And to not even stir when Ivy came around . . . No one’s ever been able to step into a room without my waking up before.

“You’re alive,” Ivy mumbles, tucked under the covers, her eyes still closed, her jet-black hair fanning across the pillow. “You missed dinner. I thought you might have died in your sleep.”

I can’t help but smile. “And you willingly crawled into bed with a corpse?”

“Corpses are quiet, and I was tired.”

“Did you even try to wake me?”

“Of course I did . . .” The words drag out in that tired, half-asleep way. “Then I stripped you down and took nude pictures of you with me, then with Dakota and with the bearded lady. Going to ask Fez to post them all over the Internet in the morning. You and Gerti are going to be famous.”

I frown. She seems coherent but she’s not making any sense. “Gerti?”

“The bearded lady from the circus. Dakota’s dinner guest tonight.”

“You’re kidding, right?” She says it all so deadpan, I’m beginning to wonder.

She sighs. “Not about the beard.”

I smile. But check my belt buckle all the same. “You’re cute when you’re half-asleep.”

“Half-asleep and naked,” she points out.

Just the thought of Ivy naked stirs my blood. Yesterday at the house, having to stop partway through was torture for me. By the looks she cast my way all afternoon, I left her just as frustrated. And then I fell asleep the moment we got here.

I reach under the bedsheet to find nothing but her warm flesh beneath. She rolls onto her back, letting the sheet fall away.

To entice me, I’m sure.

It works.

Ivy peers up at me through hazy, satisfied eyes. “I still can’t believe you slept that long. You must have been a shitty SEAL.”

“The worst.” I place a kiss on her forehead, and another one on the tip of her nose. “I’m going to duck out now.”

“Now? It’s five in the morning.”

“Do me a favor and stay put. I’ll call you.” When she doesn’t agree, I press. “I mean it, Ivy.”

“Fine,” she grumbles, rolling away from me, curling into her sheet.

The doorbell makes a low buzzing sound when I press the button. I wait, and a few minutes later I hear the footfalls coming from the other side. Whoever it is, they walk on their heels.

The door to the small pink house flies open and a disheveled woman appears, midway through pulling a short pink silk robe over her rumpled boxers and a white tank top—no bra, her small tits sagging in different directions. A waft of incense floats out the door with her movements.

I guess eight-thirty in the morning is a little early to be paying house calls. “Hi, is Dylan around?” I ask.

She looks me up and down, tucking her yellow-blond hair behind an ear and then folding her arms self-consciously over her chest. “Who are you?”

“My name’s John. I was in Afghanistan with him.” I know enough about the Marine Corps to get by. I just hope she doesn’t know enough to ask too many questions.