As much as I hated to admit it, even to myself, I’d been completely unprepared for my run-in with Painter. After we dropped off the stray, Marc had laughed at my bewildered expression as he’d pulled item after item from a trunk emergency kit, the likes of which I’d never seen because I’d never had reason to use one. The kit included two shovels, a rol of 3 mm black plastic, duct tape, black jeans and a black T-shirt, a pair of old sneakers, and an ax.

I didn’t ask what the ax was for, because I doubted its uses involved fallen tree branches and cozy campfires. Regardless, Marc was nothing if not prepared. He was like an overgrown Boy Scout. A Boy Scout with gorgeous gold-flecked brown eyes and glossy black curls crowning a physique solid enough to stop a fucking freight train. A Boy Scout who could bring a girl screaming with a single lingering glance…

Okay, he really had little in common with the Boy Scouts, other than the whole overpreparedness thing. And his damned emergency kit hadn’t kept me from letting him bake in his own car, now, had it?

Thoroughly satisfied with my revenge, I dug out a change of underwear and a nightshirt and tossed them onto my bed, then plodded into my private bathroom and straight into the shower. Ten minutes later, I stepped out into the suddenly frigid bathroom, soaked but smelling of lavender-scented soap, rather than sweat and dirt. To a cat’s sensitive nose, smelling good is very, very important, especially in human form, where body odor, unlike personal scent, isn’t socially acceptable.

I was reaching for my robe when the first few grunts of Pink’s “U + Ur Hand” rang out from my cell phone. I pulled my robe from its hook and shoved my arms through the sleeves on my way out of the bathroom. In the middle of my bedroom floor I glanced around for my phone, my focus sliding over my dresser, bed, nightstand, and wal shelf before finally landing on my desk. There. Only lower.

My gaze dropped to the clothing I’d kicked off to the right of my door.

Squatting in front of the pile, I searched my jeans pockets frantically, wondering who the hell would be calling me at 10:00 a.m. on a Thursday.

Unfortunately, I no longer had much contact with the world outside of the Lazy S, and my fellow enforcers wouldn’t bother knocking on my door before barging in, much less calling first.

Maybe it was Abby. She’d spent most of the summer on the ranch, recovering from her ordeal at Miguel’s hands with a fellow survivor—me.

And she’d called me at least a dozen times in the three weeks she’d been home, with little to say except that she was fine. She seemed content to hear that I was fine, too, and to listen to me prattle on about my endless, exhaustive training.

But Abby should be back in school by now, so who…

Sammi. A smile formed on my face in spite of my fatigue as I thought of my college roommate, and how long it had been since I’d spoken to her.

My fingers closed around the phone and I flipped it open without bothering to look at the caller ID. “Hello?” I said, fully expecting to hear Sammi’s perky, ful -speed chatter from the other end of the line.

“Miss me?” The man’s voice was sharp with hostility, obvious even in just those two words.

The unexpected voice—and the angry question—surprised me so much that I fell on my tailbone, smacking the back of my skull against the edge of my desktop. Confused, and still rubbing the new bump on my head, I held the phone at arm’s length to read the number on the screen.

I didn’t recognize it.

“Should I miss you?” I asked finally, pressing the phone against my ear.

“I guess that’s a matter of opinion, Faythe. My idea of what you should do obviously has little in common with your own.”

Irritation flared in my chest like heartburn. “Who the hell is this?” I demanded, half convinced that my judgmental caller had the wrong number, even though he knew my name.

Deep Throat clucked his tongue in my ear, and I gritted my teeth against the intimate sound and feel of his disapproval. “How soon they forget,” he whispered, and the enmity in his tone chilled me.

Bewildered, and now truly pissed off, I glanced at the phone again, hoping to identify the number on second glance. I couldn’t, yet the caller obviously knew me. In fact, he spoke as if I should have been expecting his call. As if we were picking up an old, unfinished conversation…

And suddenly I knew. Andrew.

Shock knocked the breath from my lungs. The phone slipped from my hand and landed in my lap, then cartwheeled to the floor with a carpet-muffled thud. Miraculously, it remained open.

I’d never heard my human ex speak a word in anger before, and the rage in his voice rendered it completely unrecognizable.

For a moment, I simply stared at the phone, too astounded to move. I hadn’t spoken to Andrew in three months, since before I’d quit school and agreed to work for my father. Hearing from him now was odd and uncomfortable, especially considering how mad he obviously was.

But then, that last part was at least partially my fault.

After surviving a beating from Miguel, taking a life in defense of my own, and becoming the country’s first and only female enforcer, I was no longer the same girl Andrew once knew. The entire col ege experience—including the exotic-because-he’s-normal human boyfriend—seemed real y tame, and much less relevant to my new life.

Which was actually my precol ege life on steroids.

I’d tried to tell Andrew I was leaving school, and that Marc and I had gotten back together, but Andrew hadn’t answered his cell phone, and his roommate didn’t know where he was. And honestly, I thought it would be easier for al concerned if I let my efforts rest there, so we could all move on in peace.