This building belonged to Nokolai. Rule didn’t pay rent. He didn’t make a condo payment. And he’d been seriously insulted when she wanted to pay him for her share of the space. After prolonged discussion, they’d agreed she would pay half the utilities.
To Rule’s way of thinking, there was nothing wrong with the clan providing Lily’s living space as well as his. She was clan. She was Chosen. For Lily, a place she didn’t pay for wasn’t hers, wasn’t home.
But if the apartment didn’t feel like hers, it was still a great place. She was looking forward to getting there as she rode up in the elevator. She let her eyes half close and took Rule’s hand to help him with the claustrophobia he rarely admitted to—but which was one reason he lived in a high-rise. He rode in the elevator every day, and hated it each time. And proved to himself over and over that he could handle the fear.
Stupid, obsessive, determined man.
“Who was it you spoke to at the hospital?” the obsessive man asked. “The deputy.”
“Hmm? Oh, that was Cody. Deputy Beck, I ought to say. Why?”
“There was something in your voice when you spoke to him.”
There shouldn’t have been. She’d thought she kept it businesslike. Lily frowned, her eyes opening fully. “Discomfort, maybe. We, uh, we had a thing several years back, when he was with the SDPD. It didn’t end well.”
He didn’t say anything.
“That’s some really loud silence,” she observed, wide-awake now.
“There was something in your voice,” he repeated. “Something I haven’t heard when you speak to other men.”
Could he possibly be jealous? No, she decided. She was making a human assumption. He had some sort of curiosity or concern, but it wasn’t jealousy. That had been trained out of him, or else lupi lacked the jealousy gene.
And yet, stupid as the question might be, she was about to ask it when the elevator doors opened.
Then she couldn’t say anything. They weren’t alone.
There were eight apartments on this floor—five small ones east of the elevator, three larger units to the west of it. Rule had the corner unit on the north side. Two men flanked that door. One was five-eight, white, blue and brown, built slim. The other was six-three and two-ten with the dark eyes and creamy caramel complexion of a mixed heritage.
“Eric,” Rule said, giving a nod. “LeBron. All quiet?”
Eric and LeBron were Rule’s bodyguards. Two of them, anyway. The Leidolf Lu Nuncio had more or less forced them on Rule when he and Lily returned to San Diego—these two and four others. Each pair worked an eight-hour shift so that Rule could be covered 24/7 with a few exceptions . . . actually, a lot of exceptions. Rule said he preferred them to guard his home rather than his person most of the time.
Rule had sighed and accepted the necessity. “A Rho must have guards,” he’d said. “It’s as much a matter of status as safety, but Leidolf needs to know I am protected.”
The bodyguards were the most recent cohabiting bump, and the biggest for Lily. She had not adjusted to the loss of privacy.
“Except for the cat,” Eric said. “We checked it out when he started yowling, but he was just bored and pissy.”
“Did he get you?” Lily asked, digging in her purse for the key.
LeBron shrugged. “It wasn’t deep. Nearly healed now.”
“I need to advise you of a situation,” Rule said, and, as she’d expected, began briefing them of the attack on Cullen. It was only reasonable, unlike her spurt of resentment. Which she really wished she’d get over.
Lily let herself into the apartment. The thudding feet of a large beast greeted her. She closed the door quickly—and the ginger tabby streaking toward her stopped dead, glaring.
“Sorry, Harry,” she said, moving close to scoop him up. “No nocturnal escapes for you tonight.” She rubbed him along his jaw.
He immediately turned on his motor. Lily was the only one Harry allowed this particular intimacy. Others might pet him upon invitation, but only she was permitted to pick him up. It made her feel absurdly honored. She continued stroking, giving attention to the place behind his ears he especially liked. One of those ears was missing a chunk. He’d been pretty torn up when she found him.
Or he found her. “Anything to report?” she asked the cat. “No? Okay, let me put my purse up, then you get your pay.” She headed for the bedroom at the other end of the apartment.
They’d left a single lamp on, but even without it there would have been enough light to find her way. The outside wall of the great room was glass and the air was clear tonight. City lights twinkled at her from that vast open expanse—Rule’s reward, she thought, for having endured the closed-in space of the elevator to get here. There were drapes, but Rule never closed them, and she’d learned to live with the openness, even at night. They were high enough for privacy.
She’d checked.
Harry grabbed her hand in his teeth when she passed the kitchen. Not biting. Getting her attention. “You know the drill,” she informed him. Even Harry didn’t get his way every time. Her weapon was in her purse. Guards or no guards, she wanted to have it close when she went to bed.
Besides, she liked having things in their place.
With her purse in its designated spot in the bedroom and her weapon next to the bed, she headed for the kitchen, still holding twenty pounds of battle-scarred tomcat. “Guess Rule and I wouldn’t be alone even without those guards, anyway,” she said as she deposited Harry on the kitchen’s shiny slate floor. “You’re always here. At least the lupus guards don’t scratch, bite, or swear at me.”
Compromise. Living together was all about compromise. She came with a cat; Rule came with guards.
Plenty of compromising there, too, though not between her and Rule. She opened the refrigerator and took out a baggie with scraps of deli ham. Harry plunked his rear down next to his bowl and watched intently.
Rule’s brother, Benedict, had long wanted Rule to have bodyguards. Once Rule accepted the necessity for Leidolf’s guards, Benedict had promptly sent an equal number of Nokolai guards. They’d negotiated. The Nokolai guards had weekend duty while Leidolf handled weekdays.
Rule suspected that was what Benedict had wanted all along. Lily suspected he was right.
She tore up a half slice of ham and put it in Harry’s dish, and he fell upon it like the starving beast he wasn’t. Harry approved of ham.
So now the Leidolf guards lived in two of the smaller apartments in this building. More compromising had been needed there due to the question of who would pay for their living quarters. Nokolai was wealthy and could afford to subsidize them, but initially Isen insisted that Leidolf pay rent. Rule, wearing his Leidolf Rho hat, had refused. Nokolai benefited from having its Lu Nuncio guarded.
Of course, Rule could have done what he wanted about the rent, since he controlled Nokolai’s investments. But that would have been a clear—to him—violation of his duty to Nokolai, so he’d brought the matter to his father for negotiation. Only Isen could deal officially with another clan—even when that clan was represented by Isen’s heir.
It was sure as hell complicated. Lily couldn’t recall the exact details, but she thought Leidolf ended up paying utilities for the two apartments plus a token rent.
Kind of like her. She sighed and shut the refrigerator. Then for a moment just leaned against it, so tired she hardly knew what to do next. She let her eyes close . . . and saw once more Cullen’s motionless body stretched out on the ground, his eyes blank and staring.