Page 171 of Avenging Angel

“Cap?”

“Right here.”

I said nothing, but I knew he saw the happy tears shimmering in my eyes, because he kissed me hard and closed-mouthed.

When he was done, he asked, “You call Luna and tell her how that went down?”

“I talked to her on the way home.”

“Okay, baby, gonna say something now you won’t hear often, but unwrap yourself from around me. I gotta put the fillets in.”

I unwrapped myself.

Cap moved to the opposite counter.

I hopped off the one I was on, went to my purse, got my phone and texted Dad about Cap’s idea.

It went off with aswoosh, the oven door closed with athunk, and I took my phone with me when I hiked my ass on a barstool.

“So,” I said in order to begin the rundown of my day. “Went into work to discover Tex making coffee in the coffee cubby at SC. Otis, our cubby guy, was thrilled. He’s been needing help for a while. Tito obviously didn’t care, because he and Tex hooked up to follow me to Frost to be close when I sat down with Dad. And Dream showed to give us an update on her sitch, at the same time be a bitch to Luna for no reason. She’s going to do at-home daycare. And Dusk’s dad is gonna be a part of his life.”

Cap looked at me while bringing over the prep for a salad he was making so he could do it at the counter where I was.

Then he said, “It’ll be nice you have a quiet night tonight. Your life is crazier than Jules’s was when she was out trying to clean up the streets.”

Uh-oh.

I hadn’t told him my plans for that night weren’t going to be quiet.

Cap kept talking.

“Speaking of Jules, Mace wants to know if you can come over on Sunday, sometime after your dad leaves. She’s heading back to Denver on Monday, and she wants to meet you before she goes. She knows your dad is in town, and Luna’s birthday party is Saturday so that’s out. But she and Vance have three boys. They’re hanging at the castle with Daisy and Marcus while they’re gone, and she wants to get back to them and has to get back to work at the shelter.”

“Castle?”

“Daisy and Marcus live in a castle.”

“A castle in Denver?” I pushed.

“Precisely, it’s in Englewood, a suburb of Denver. But yes, it is one hundred percent a castle.”

That was just as weird and awesome as everything else I’d learned about the RCHB.

I moved on from that.

“Okay, first, I reserve the time to have my delayed freakout you’re taking me to Stella Gunn’s house for a get together, and I’m meeting Jules, and you’re just going to have to put up with the intensity of that freakout when it happens. Because I have to have it before I meet them, so I won’t act like a dorkwhenI meet them.”

We might be new, but Cap was getting to know me really well.

I knew this when he asked suspiciously, “What’s second?”

“Luna and I need to go out and case a gentlemen’s club tonight. But we decided to see if we can recruit a couple more Angels, so Jessie and Harlow are going to be here at eight thirty so we can see if they’re in. If they are, we’ll perform some kind of sacred rite to establish their allegiance, which will probably just be shots of Fireball and a pinkie promise. Then we all need to sit down with my wall before we head out.”

Yes, we’d made that decision. Mostly because, if we didn’t let Jessie and Harlow in at the semi-beginning and recruited them later, and they discovered we’d been doing this for a while, they’d never forgive us.

Harlow would get over it.

But Jess could hold a grudge.

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