Page 66 of Shadow

He reached for her hand. “Baby, please. Someone set your bar on fire. We don’t know enough to trust that you’ll be safe. It’s better if you lie low too. We’ll have fun. And you can work remotely. I’m not saying you have to cut yourself off from society. We’ll outfit the bars with all the latest tech. That’s one benefit of dating me.”

“I can’t think of many else right now,” she muttered petulantly as she looked around the ugly space.

“Hey, now. That’s not what you were saying on the plane. Do I need to take you in the bedroom and give you a little refresher?”

She tried not to smirk at his salacious grin and pushed at his shoulder. “This place doesn’t even have linens yet. They couldn’t have prepared for our arrival a little better?”

He pulled her close and kissed her. A soft, gentle kiss that warmed her slowly from the inside out.

“We’ll get some supplies and try to make it a little homier for you. Speaking of homey, have I mentioned how nice your house is, Liv? I’m proud of you.”

She smiled and laid her head against his chest. “Thanks, Daddy. I’m proud of myself too. And I’m sorry for being a grump about all this.”

He tousled her curls. “It’s OK. You’re allowed. As long as you promise to listen to orders when it comes to your safety, you can be as cranky as you need to be. But let’s see if we can make things better by getting those supplies?”

She nodded, and he took her hand and led her to a couch that had seen better days and pulled a laptop out of his bag. Getting supplies turned out to be mostly online shopping. When they were done, they handed a member of security the orders and locations, along with a list of everything they hadn’t been able to order online, and he left to go pick everything up.

“Are you really not going to let me leave here?” she asked when she realized they weren’t going to be picking up the supplies themselves.

Ripley shrugged and winked. “I kinda like the idea of being trapped with you. Could be pretty hot.”

She shook her head and shoved him away when he came in for a kiss.

He laughed. “We’ll leave some. I promise. But it will be well planned. For example, going to Exposure tonight.”

Her eyes lit up, and she launched herself at him. “Thank you for setting that up.”

He pulled her until she was sitting squarely in his lap and leaned in to kiss her nose. “What would you like to do at the club?”

She brushed hair away from his forehead. “I don’t have anything specific in mind other than socializing. After being away for so long, I feel like there are a lot of faces I need to acquaint myself with. And Gage has things he wants me to do now that I’m back. It’s good to be involved again.”

“Security is still clearing my phone. Will you tell Gage and Peter that we’re coming?”

Olivia pulled out her phone—having already had it cleared—and unlocked it. Out of habit, she tapped the calendar icon instead of the text messages.

She took a second to scroll through the upcoming weeks. When she came to the following week, she smacked a hand against her forehead.

“What’s wrong?” Ripley asked, holding his hand out for the phone as if he could fix something.

She shook her head and flashed the screen at him. “I forgot I’m hosting my gaming group next week. What are the odds this will be solved by then?”

He frowned. “I wouldn’t plan on it. Don’t cancel just yet though. What kind of gaming group?”

“We mostly play D&D. But sometimes we pull out some other games. There’s a Lord of the Rings game everyone likes. Or Settlers of Catan.”

She giggled when his eyes glazed over. These games clearly meant nothing to him.

“I knew I was in love with a geek, but I can’t tell you what any of what you just said means, other than I’ve heard of D&D before.”

Wait. Did he say… love? She did her best to still her racing heart and not put too much stock into what he said. That was one of those things you said when you were dating someone. He didn’t tell her he loved her. Not precisely, anyway. And she’d told Mario she’d loved him multiple times. She was pretty sure that was never true.

Since she didn’t want to think about her ex-husband, she squashed the intrusive thoughts and focused on educating her geek-illiterate boyfriend.

“I’m surprised you’ve never played D&D before.”

He shook his head. “It all sounds complicated.”

“You’re a tech genius, and you ran undercover ops for years. And a storytelling game sounds complicated? With the skills you have, you would be great at it. If game night does happen, you can see what you think about it. You seemed interested the other night when we talked about it at Exposure.”

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