Page 35 of Reaper & the Lioness
Eva: And next time you’re at the store, can you get some creamer? That is the strongest coffee I’ve ever had.
I shook my head as I went back to the blueprints.
Ipicked up my regular—a grilled chicken salad—and Eva’s carb and sugar coma at the sub shop and headed back home.
Hawk barked at me as I opened the door, latching onto my pant leg. With my hands full, I dragged him across the wooden planks to spread our lunch across the counter, swearing as his sharp teeth scraped against my calf.
Eva spoke animatedly to the person on the other side of her video call, her hair pinned up in a professional bun and dark-rimmed glasses perched on her nose. She wore a sharp navy blazer and white top, giving lawyer vibes. But on the bottom, she wore a tight pair of leggings adorned with skulls. I smiled at the juxtaposition.
She ended the call in an upbeat, chirpy voice I’d never once heard her use and closed her laptop, letting out a deep sigh as she removed her glasses. She stood and her eyes lit up as she moved toward the feast before her on the countertop.
“Thank you! I’m starving,” Eva said, unwrapping her sub and biting into it like a rabid street dog.
“Do you not know how to cook?” I scanned the kitchen as I thought of ten things she could have whipped up this morning.
“Of course I know how to cook. It’s just hard to do between meetings.”
Her tone sounded sharp and defensive. I raised my eyebrows at her as I took another bite of my salad. I didn’t believe her for a second, because Linc’s background check included her credit card statement, which mainly consisted of takeout and delivery charges.
“How do you stay in such good shape when you eat like a ten-year-old?”
“Are you saying I have a nice ass?” Eva smirked, her eyes challenging me.
I met her gaze, refusing to be baited. “I’m saying there’s no way you’re eating a nine-hundred-calorie sub, a hundred grams of sugar in your drink alone, and two cookies daily, and you look like that without doing CrossFit or something.”
“I take Pilates classes. Speaking of, what are the chances I could go to a class this week? You could come work out with me to make sure no one, you know, offs me.” She mimed drawinga blade across her neck, sticking her tongue out the side of her mouth like a cartoon.
Her cavalier attitude toward her near-death experience grated my nerves. It was either a coping mechanism, or she truly didn’t grasp the gravity of the situation.
“Zero chance. You can’t go anywhere, especially to a business you go to often. Those will be the first spots they’ll be watching for you.”
She chewed on the straw and dragged it up and down in the cup, the sound of squeaky plastic worming its way under my skin.
My phone pinged. Linc had the rest of Eva’s background check ready, and Thane wanted to talk.
“I have to go handle some club business,” I said as I finished the last bite of my lunch. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
The roar of my bike did nothing to drown out the chaos in my head. I prided myself on being cold, calculated, and unshakeable. Most women had a healthy dose of respect and fear for men like me, especially ones like her who spent more time in boardrooms and behind desks than in sketchy bars and back alleys. They instinctively knew I was a threat. But Eva was the first woman I’d ever met who I thought could meet my threats with her own. She stared me down with her chin held high like a dare. I couldn’t decide if she was brave, stupid, or just too new to my world to know better.
I downshifted hard, gravel spitting under my tires as I tried to shake off the restless energy gnawing in my gut. I didn’t like feeling off-balance. She wasn’t scared of me, which made her dangerous in a way I couldn’t pin down.
As I strode into the clubhouse, I hoped Linc could offer more answers about this enigma of a woman who had barreled into my life with her pint-sized furry piranha. The stale beer-and-gun oil stench of the clubhouse did nothing to ground me as Isat beside my brother. The air hung heavy with cigarette smoke, curling in the dim light.
“What do you have?” I asked Linc, cracking open the beer he’d slid across the bar, condensation spreading across the obsidian countertop.
“This woman’s a walking Molotov cocktail,” Linc said with a grin. “Want the long story or the short?”
“The fucking short.” Linc’s long stories had an irritating number of irrelevant details.
Linc laughed. He’d expected that answer. “I’ll do my best, but some of these were just too good to leave out. Eva has more than a record. This pretty little vigilante has left a trail of broken bones and blood behind her since she was just a kid.”
He spread the contents of Eva’s folder across the clubhouse bar.
“Freshman year of high school—a classmate bragged about how he’d roofied a girl at a party. Eva followed him to the bathroom and beat the shit out of him.”
A slow smile tugged at my lips as I imagined this woman facing off against a boy probably twice her size.
“She broke two of his ribs against a urinal,” Linc continued. “But they couldn’t prove it, and her friends claimed she had been with them. It was his word against hers, and she hadn’t been in trouble before. She was a straight-A student.”
