“Chace!”

He leaned into me and said quietly, “Baby, turn on the f**kin’ truck.”

Oh God.

Baby was nicer.

Like, by a lot.

I put my coffee between my knees and turned on the truck.

“What does it take? Around a year for this heap to warm up?” Chace asked before taking a sip from his coffee.

“It’s dependable,” I told him, taking my coffee from between my knees.

“Jeeps are. That being said, this should have been put out of its misery about ten years ago.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s a heap.”

“It’s fine, Chace,” I snapped then kept snapping. “What are you doing here? You’re blowing my cover.”

His eyes came to me and his lips were tipped up at the end.

Oh jeez.

His handsome lips on his handsome face tipped up looked nice.

“Blowing your cover?” he asked.

“I think you’re endowing our street urchin with bigger powers than he has. He’s just a kid.”

“He’s a kid living on the streets which means he’s in survival mode. Since no one, including teachers, knows who he f**kin’ is, that means he’s survived awhile.”

This was news.

“The teachers don’t know him?” I asked.

He shook his head and took another sip of his coffee which reminded me to take a sip of mine.

Hazelnut latte. My favorite.

“Nope,” he answered after he swallowed. “Asked the day after you reported seein’ him banged up, principal approached his staff. Went back with the sketch, no one recognizes him. Fingerprints were a bust too.”

“No one?”

“Nope.”

“How can that be?” I asked.

“He doesn’t go to school?” he asked back but it was an answer.

“Oh,” I whispered, his eyes dropped to my mouth and his lips tipped up again.

I liked that.

Frak.

Before I could get my wits about me, Chace spoke. “What’s in that haul?”

“Pardon?”

He tipped his head to the library, taking another sip of coffee so I took one of mine and looked to the library.

Then I looked back at him when he asked, “Those bags by the return bin. What’s in them?”

“A new coat, hat, scarf, gloves, three pairs of wool socks, two pairs of jeans, two warm sweaters, some underwear, a pint of milk, three bottles of water, bologna, cheese, bread, a box of granola bars, three apples, bananas, a cucumber and a ginormous bar of Hershey’s chocolate,” I shared. Chace stared at me without saying a word and he did this awhile so I finished, “He won’t eat the cucumber but Dad would be disappointed in me if I didn’t add roughage.”

“Christ,” he whispered.

“Don’t start,” I commanded. “I know I shouldn’t have added the chocolate but he’s a kid. He should have a treat.”

He kept staring at me without speaking and he did this another while and he did this in a way that made me weirdly nervous. The weirdly part was that I was nervous in a good way so I did the only think I could think to do.

I kept talking.

“By the way, I’ve been thinking on things, Chace, and you chased him too.”

“What?” he asked quietly.

“Thursday night, or Friday morning… whatever. You chased him. You told me I shouldn’t but you did too.”

I got another lip tip. It made me more weirdly nervous in an even better way and he muttered, “True enough. Though, I started out chasing you.”

I felt my brows go up. “You were chasing me?”

“Yeah, I started to chase you but the way you were goin’ after him, hell bent for leather, it occurred to me you would not be best pleased I caught you and stopped you. I didn’t want to deal with that backbone of yours getting any stronger if you were denied what you wanted. Especially in the middle of the night with you in an emotional state, in the throes of dealing with hearing Dobie Gray’s undeniably kickass but, no offense to you, honey, or Dobie Gray, in my opinion not cry worthy song. It also occurred to me you would be pleased I caught the kid for you so I went after him instead.”

It occurred to me, right then, that he was teasing me. Just a little bit but he still was.

And he said straight out he went after the boy for me, which was super nice.

This made me more nervous, the good kind so, of course, I kept talking.

“Right then. Also, I will point out, when we first saw him, you put your hand to your gun. So it could be me shouting at him that terrified him. But you have to admit it could also be you not only having a gun, but putting your hand to it when you saw him. Then you chasing him and being bigger, stronger and faster than me, and, I’ll repeat, doing this in the possession of a weapon.”

“I’ll give you that too and it’d suck, I freaked the kid out but no way I’m gonna be in an alley in the middle of the night or at any time with a pretty woman, hear a crash, know an unidentified person was in the alley and not go for my gun. So, I get the chance, I’ll apologize to the kid. What I won’t do is apologize to you.”

Holy frak!

Not only was my ass now sweet, I was now a pretty woman.

What was going on?

No, no, I didn’t want to know. Chace could be sweet or quiet or soft and then he’d switch off, go remote, get mean or walk away.

I wasn’t going to go there. Not again.

So I went somewhere else.

“I know you find it hilarious that Dobie Gray moves me but, for your information, life is pretty crazy right now. Not to mention I’m worried about some kid I don’t know, like super worried so even the littlest thing might set me off. Including Dobie Gray.”

This, of course, was me defending my reaction to a lie I’d told him about a song I wasn’t listening to, but I thought it was my best course at that moment.

It was, I would find, not.

His brows drew together and he asked, “Life is pretty crazy?”

Fabulous.

More proof lying got you into trouble in a variety of ways.

“Yes,” I answered, luckily not a lie, and said no more.

“Your life?” he enquired, sounding incredulous. I shifted my booty in my seat and squared my shoulders all while I watched Chace shift slightly up in his. His eyes lit and he muttered, “Christ, here we go. Backbone.”

At his mutter, I got it.

And it irritated me.

Therefore, I snapped, “Is it that surprising I have a backbone?”