“You asking me to sleep with you the rest of the time, vampire?”
Oh yeah, Robin definitely had him on her radar. She edged past Mirren and approached Cage with a gait more feline than avian, and he was aware of Mirren crossing his arms over his chest, probably relieved to have her focused on someone else. “What’s your name, Brit Boy? You’re kind of pretty, and I’ve never done a vampire.”
Cage opened his mouth to suggest she give doing him a try, and then closed it again. He had a feeling Robin Ashton could complicate his life way more than he wanted. And maybe kill him in the process. Plus, he was swearing off romantic entanglements. He still had one to wrangle his way out of.
“Congratulations, Ashton.” Mirren suddenly seemed to be enjoying himself. “You managed to shut up our resident shrink, something no one else in Penton has ever been able to do. Cage Reynolds is his name, and I do think he’s afraid of you.”
“Don’t be daft.” Cage’s bravado didn’t sound very convincing, even to himself. She did scare the hell out of him, and not for any reasons he cared to examine.
“A shrink, huh? You’re interesting, Cage Reynolds.” Robin smiled at him—not the predatory show of teeth she’d given Mirren while threatening to eat him alive, but something almost sweet, a touch tentative. The edges of his mouth rose in an involuntary response.
Shit. What was he doing? Whatever, it was time to stop. “If you and Nik are a couple, we shouldn’t have to change the living arrangements.”
Awkward transition, but it broke the moment. Robin felt it, too, judging by her startled blink. “Right. We’re not . . . we’re just . . . convenient. Niko?” She frowned at something past Cage’s shoulder, and he looked behind him.
Nik had left them to kneel next to the pile of bricks from the collapsed wall. He clutched one in his hand, his dark eyes looking at something a million miles away, not unlike the million-yard stare soldiers developed after too much combat.
Mirren joined them, the three of them standing in a row like see-no-evil monkeys, watching Nik as he looked at . . . what?
“Don’t tell me he’s a head case,” Mirren said. “What the hell’s wrong with him?”
“Hush.” Robin’s voice was soft and her expression worried. “Give him a couple of minutes. The faster he does this, the less painful it is for him.”
Whatever “it” was. But Cage had seen that kind of unfocused stare before, on the face of their little child vampire Hannah, when she was having one of her visions. If he had to guess, their new friend Nik might not be as much of a plain-vanilla human as he’d originally thought.
God knows Robin Ashton wasn’t plain-vanilla anything—though her protectiveness of her “convenient” bedmate Nik was another sign of the sweetness he’d glimpsed earlier. They might not be a couple, but she cared about him. It showed in the softened lines of her face, the worry that darkened her eyes.
A few more seconds passed before Nik began picking up bricks one at a time, holding each one for a few seconds and then tossing it aside. He still hadn’t spoken.
Robin knelt next to him and looked over her shoulder. “Help us. He needs to touch as many of the bricks as he can. Don’t talk to him. Anybody got a sheet of paper and a pencil?”
Cage glanced over at Mirren, who wore that uneasy expression he only got around Hannah. Mirren was all about what he could see and touch and punch the shit out of. Stuff like visions totally freaked him out. If anybody in Penton scared Mirren, it was little Hannah in the midst of a premonition.
He flinched when Cage touched his arm. “I can help them here. Maybe you could check in with Aidan and Krys. On the off chance the colonel wants to talk security, you probably need to be there.” It was doubtful that Colonel Rick Thomas would want to do anything more tonight than mourn the loss of his son, but the possibility gave Mirren a graceful way out if things were about to get weird with Nik. Make that weirder. “You could probably take Nik’s SUV and we can walk back.”
Mirren glanced down the hill at the vehicle, no doubt wondering whether he might get psychic germs from driving it. “Good thinking, but I’ll walk to the clinic and take Aidan and Krys home in the Bronco.”
He didn’t waste time, his long legs eating up the distance down the hill before Cage could respond.
With Mirren making his way north toward the clinic, Cage walked to the back side of the wall structure. Earlier he’d spotted the clipboard from the job site on the ground near the extra bricks, and, sure enough, there was a pen attached. He flipped the pages to turn blank sides up, clipped them back in, and handed it to Robin.