I frowned when I heard a sharp rap at the door, looking up as it was thrust open.
“I knew you’d be hiding away in here!” Candy announced.
“Go away,” I snarled, turning back to my monitor.
“It’s lunchtime.”
“Don’t care. I’m busy.”
“We talked about this, Riley, remember?”
At her much softer tone, I finally looked up. Candy Baker could be a bossy, manipulative, pushy fucking bitch, but she was also my bitch. I tended to neglect myself, getting lost in what I was studying, pushing myself harder and harder until… Well, basically Robert stepped in and forbade me from working through lunch hours and spending too long in the lab after hours.
“You’re no good to me dead,” he’d said brusquely. “I’ve had to watch way too many promising minds collapse due to burnout, and I told myself no more. Candace, can you remind Riley to take breaks? You don’t seem to have quite the same focus issues that she does.”
“Nope, my eyes are on the prize,” she had replied, “and the prize is food.”
“So, The Caledonian?” I asked, looking for my bag.
“Nah, I figured you’d be a bit overwhelmed by this morning, so I ordered in.”
“Yeah?” I took a deep breath in, smelling now the savoury scents coming from the break room. “What did you get?”
“A few things. You looked kind of mad before, so I didn’t want to ask.”
“Mad? You pull that kind of shit again, and I’m going to break into your house and fill all your body wash and shampoo bottles with depilatory…”
I didn’t complete my threat because my brain was too busy thinking of new ones as I stood in the doorway of the break room, looking aghast at the contents. She had somehow managed to put on an impressive spread of food on the shared table. I could see Thai and Chinese, Mexican and some sandwiches from the amazing place down the road, but that wasn’t all.
“I knew you werethirsty, so I got you a drink, and then I decided you might need a littlesnacc…”
A plastic cup filled with my favourite juice blend was shoved in one hand, a muffin in the other, but that was probably because if my hands were full, I couldn’t slap her. All around the table were the small team of people I worked with, but they’d been joined by the Vanguard pack.
“Riley! Good to see you joining us. Your friends decided to put on lunch for everyone,” Windsor said, “which was incredibly kind. After all the questions you’ve just been through, it should’ve been us feeding you.”
You’re dead, I mouthed at Candy as she skipped away, sitting down between Windsor and the bane of our existence, Suck Up Evan.
“Come and have something to eat,” Fen said, getting to his feet and ushering me forward, that light hand on the small of my back burning through my blouse. “What are you hungry for?”
“I know what I’m hungry for,” Haze muttered, then shot the table a polite smile before his eyes slid to me. I was slotted into a seat between Fen and Haze, who without a care for the rest of the room, leaned in and sucked in a big lungful of my scent. “Fuck, I forgot how you smell. You left a shirt around our place after a swim one day, and I kept it under my pillow for so bloody long…”
“Calm down,” Fen hissed at him as he surveyed the table. “Eat your food and shut the fuck up.”
“What he said,” I told Haze with a cock of my eyebrow, and he just grinned in response, plucking a spring roll from a tray and eating it with gusto.
I tried to do the same, taking the plate handed to me, even if I paused for a second, struck by those long strong fingers, but as I piled it up with food, I realised everything here was one of my favourites.Don’t think about that, I thought.Don’t get sucked in by this. I shook my head and started eating.
“So did you come to the city just to assist us with data collection, Fen?” Windsor asked. “Or are you here on pack business?”
“Pack business—” Fen started to say.
“We’re here for Riley,” Colt stated baldly. Ryan let out an unhappy little hiss, then looked over his burger at me.
“Oh, wanting to catch up with childhood friends?” Windsor asked.
His tone was affable. He was trying to make some connections, ensure he had support from a reputable alpha pack, to make it easier to call upon them when we were looking for more subjects. He was also a good person, tough but fair, so he probably did actually care about how they were doing. It’s just no one was prepared for the truth.
“Yeah, we were—” Ryan started to say.