Page 33 of Trickster King

I laughed at the woman’s honesty. “You don’t mind me keeping your husband for a while?”

“Take him. I want to go to the beach without him sighing over his fate and having to retrieve me in the evenings. Return him in comparable condition, and if he misbehaves, you let me know so I can correct him upon his return. Go feed the cattle before that boy loses his mind. Catch a nap if you need one and watch your back. Now, off you go.”

As Geoff’s wife meant business when she issued edicts, I herded Geoff off so we wouldn’t face her wrath. Once safely out of earshot, I whispered, “She’s a lovely woman, but did you forget to run when she caught sight of you?”

“She was wearing a bikini and I got distracted,” he replied.

While she wasn’t my Jessica, I could understand how the woman in a bikini might ensnare the RPS agent. “I might have forgotten to run, too. If Jessica had picked a bikini as her first weapon of choice, I would have been even more hopeless than I was then.”

“I find that difficult to believe.”

I laughed. “She showed up the first time at my apartment dressed like the rodeo queen she is, and that was bad enough. A bikini would have ruined me. Or might have resulted in me fainting from shock. I had enough trouble coming to terms with a princess visiting my apartment as it was.”

“An apartment she viewed as utterly adorable. Did you know she thought about buying the entire building just so she could get her hands on that specific unit?”

I hadn’t. I halted and stared at Geoff. “But why?”

“That was where she realized you were it for her, Pat. Why else? That apartment is one of her favorite memories.”

Huh. I hadn’t thought about it that way before. “Is the building even still standing at this point?”

“It hasn’t been that long.”

I’d packed so much into my life since becoming Jessica’s king. I did the math in my head and realized he was right. “It’s in a good location, it’s quiet, and generally safe. Put in an inquiry with the owner about the unit. We’ll enter a permanent leasing agreement with him and use the unit for incoming RPS agents who need housing and so on. If there’s someone in the specific unit, offer them a year’s worth of free rent to move somewhere else and cover the difference in their rent.”

“You’re going to be unreasonable about this, aren’t you?”

“About as unreasonable as the suite in the palace nobody else can use because I refuse to relinquish it to one of our children,” I admitted with a shrug.

“Are you two causing me trouble?” Geoff’s wife demanded.

I laughed. “Absolutely. Want to help us cause some trouble?”

“Do I ever. What do you need, Pat? Your expression says you have a new idea you will pursue or you will have one of Adam’s tantrums. We have you figured out. Adam gets his tantrums from you. And that shocks everyone because you work so hard to avoid having tantrums. You must have been hell on wheels as a child.”

I filled her in on what we’d discussed, gave her the address, and set her loose before taking Geoff to the barn to start the morning work. Randy and Eddie had beaten us and had already started tending to the cattle.

“What kept you?” Randy asked, eyeing me.

“Geoff told me my wife had tried to buy the entire apartment building where I used to live, and I came up with a better—and actually feasible—plan for her to get what she wanted.”

“Geoff,” Randy complained.

“It’s been bothering her.”

I recognized when the RPS agents had been bickering over the situation, which meant everyone knew what had been going on except for me. “Next time, just tell me when something like that is bothering her. There’s usually a practical solution that won’t break the budget. We need temporary housing for incoming RPS agents anyway, and there’s no reason we can’t be notified when the apartment is available so she can take a walk down memory lane. She probably wants to be able to have yams and chicken and cake without having to worry about the kids now and then. That apartment was the one place she could escape to. I have the ranch. If she needs an old apartment, then there’s no reason we can’t make it work out.”

“Told you,” Geoff stated.

“I’ll take care of it.”

I snickered. “Geoff’s wonderful lady is already on duty and will be handling the matter personally.”

“What did that landlord ever do to you to get you to do that to him?” Randy blurted.

Geoff snickered, grabbed a pitchfork, and went to the hay bale Randy had been working on before our arrival. Once we filled the hay bins, we’d check the water, haul the feed bags to the proper bins, and make sure everyone had their breakfast. Bullmanchu and his friends would get groomed assuming they weren’t busy entertaining their new ladies, and we’d be on the road within two hours—after we all had a quick shower and changed our clothes.

“I was after efficiency, but that may have been an act of cruelty on my part. After we get the cattle fed, we need to hit the road. How far to Micky’s ranch?”

---