Oh my.

He’d been shot yesterday, and he thought his life had taken a “good turn.”

That turn being me.

Oh man.

I liked that.

A whole lot.

“Okay, then I’m going to make breakfast in bed for you.”

His body started shaking so I took my head off his shoulder, pushed up and looked down at him.

Yes, he was laughing.

“What?” I asked.

“No fair. I get shot for you, and you get a leg up on the breakfast game.”

My face must have registered my thoughts because his arm moved in its sling, he winced, then he took his other arm from around me and cupped my cheek.

“You didn’t shoot me,” he said softly.

“Danny—”

“Stop it. Now.”

I closed my mouth.

“I don’t blame anyone but Fletcher Gumm for this,” he declared. “And I won’t ever blame anyone but Gumm for this.”

“It could have been worse.”

“It wasn’t.”

“It could have been catastrophic.”

He slid his fingers back into my hair, pulled my face to his and said low, “It wasn’t.”

I took in air and nodded.

“We done with that?” he asked.

“I reserve the right to feel bad, freak out or otherwise react to it for the foreseeable future. Though you’re allowed to get angry about me doing that if that lasts longer than, say, ten years.”

He burst out laughing, doing so pulling my head further down, which meant my body went down with it, and he tucked my face in his neck.

He then rounded me with his arm, tensed it and kept it that way to hold me close.

When he got control of his hilarity, he agreed, “Okay. Ten years. Starting now.”

I smiled against his skin.

“So, today, breakfast, your turn ’cause I wanna make a few calls, and you’re right, I should take it easy. Then we’ll hit your pad to get your vinyl and anything else you wanna grab—”

“Danny—”

“It’ll fuck with me, but you can carry,” he grunted.

Okay, I could do that.

I said no more.

“We’ll grab some lunch, hit the grocery store and stock up then back here to take a load off.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Evie?” he called.

“Hmm?” I answered.

“Baby,” he said in a much different tone, and I closed my eyes. “You had a big day yesterday.”

I opened my eyes.

“Yeah.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

“I…don’t think so.”

“If you do, not sure you can miss it ’cause you’re layin’ on me, and I won’t be much farther away all day, so just sayin’, I’m right here.”

God.

He was just…

So nice.

I turned my head, pressed a kiss to his shoulder, then pushed up again to look down into his extraordinary eyes with his amazing curly lashes.

“It’s soon,” I whispered, “but I don’t care. Fair warning, if by some awful happenstance Lottie needs a kidney, I’m giving her one of mine.”

“Only if mine isn’t a match,” he whispered back.

Oh boy.

Yeah.

I liked that too.

A whole lot.

There he was, my boyfriend.

There I was, his woman.

This being so, I kissed him.

It was sweet, and it was wet, and it lasted a long time.

But it didn’t go anywhere.

Because Mag had been shot the day before and we’d been active enough since then.

It was time to make breakfast.

I was hungry.

And I had to take care of my boyfriend.

Late that afternoon…

After breakfast.

After going to my pad to pack some things (the blood splatter was still there, but I was pretty proud of the powers I’d discovered I had that I called on to ignore it).

And after unloading my stuff at Mag’s, going to lunch, the grocery store, and back to Mag’s, whereupon I made a double batch of my cinnamon marshmallow clusters as a thank-you to the boys for throwing smoke grenades and rescuing me.

After all of that, I walked out of Mo’s old room where I’d gone to use the bathroom to see Mag stuffing his face with marshmallow clusters.

I also looked down at the cookie trays (Mag had cookie trays, I’d found, because, in his words: “I kick chocolate chip ass”—something I was keen on discovering), and I saw one half of an entire tray was decimated.

Such was my surprise, coming to a stop beside the island, I asked the question no girl should ask her brand-new boyfriend.

“How long was I in the bathroom?”

“Babe,” he said in a garbled way, seeing as his mouth was full, but even so, he had another cluster on deck in his hand to shove into it, “these are outstanding.”

“I can tell. You’ve eaten a quarter of them,” I remarked.

He grinned, cinnamon-marshmallow-toothed and not caring. I knew this because he shoved the next cluster in.

“Danny!” I snapped. “Those are for the boys!”

“Make more,” he replied, still with mouth full.

“I can’t. I’m out of cereal. And marshmallows. And butterscotch morsels.”

Though, not chocolate ones, we’d bulked up on those for future chocolate chip goodness.

“We’ll go back to the store.”

Yeesh.

“Danny, it boggles the mind I have to keep reminding you of this, but…you were shot yesterday.”

“So?”

So?

“We’ve been busy all day. You need to rest.”

“I can rest when we get back from the store, while you’re making more of these,” he replied, grabbing another freaking cluster.

“Danny!” I cried.

“Get over here. You’re bein’ cute. I need to kiss you,” he demanded.

“No.” I shook my head. “No way. You’re going to taste like cinnamon and marshmallow and butterscotch and chocolate and you and all of that in a kiss is going to mean we’ll do other things that don’t include you resting.”

He gave me a look that was a combo punch of sweet, sexy, playful and incendiary before he declared, “Now you really need to get over here.”

“Stop being sweet and hot,” I bossed.

“Stop being cute and fuckable,” he retorted.

“I see we’re at an impasse,” I remarked.

“Yeah, it’s impossible for you not to be cute or fuckable.”

“And it’s impossible for you not to be sweet and hot.”

His expression changed again, and it was not one that made my panties catch fire.

It was one that made my heart squeeze.

“Baby, come here. I promise I won’t do anything that will end up with us on the floor, goin’ at it.”

I studied him closely, and only after I ascertained the veracity of his assertion, I went there.

When I got there, he rounded me with an arm, which was good, seeing as his other one was in a sling and this meant he couldn’t eat more clusters.

For my part, I rounded him with both arms.