Damon was known for maintaining his cool under the most challenging conditions, but he’d never had his damn shoes set on fire before. He yelped, and then he leapt over the top of the counter into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of water, and poured it on his shoes.

His eight-hundred dollar, English leather, shoes.

Which were now, pardon the expression, toast.

“You. Ruined. My. Shoes,” he said, biting off the words, and blistering her with his most ferocious scowl.

The gorgeous little witch yawned—actually yawned—and then blinked a long, slow blink. “So. Cat. Don’t be a pussy.”

He could actually feel his mouth fall open, like he was a character in a particularly bad cartoon. “You—what—I—”

“Don’t be a pussy,” one of the parrots advised him.

“Don’t be a pussy,” the other one chimed in, after flying over to land on Lily’s shoulder for moral support.

He looked past Lily to Parker, but the tech guy just grinned and shrugged. “Don’t be a pussy, man.”

He’d never liked Parker.

Damon considered shifting, right there and then, and reversing the no-eating-scarlet-macaws rule that he’d made up only minutes before, but instead he took a deep breath, knelt down and untied his shoes, and tossed them in the garbage can sitting in the corner of the kitchen.

“Fine. Let’s try this again.” He walked out of the kitchen. “I have the power and right, under the Supernatural Species Protection Act of 2003, and the Quartering Act, to commandeer your home in the pursuit of one Harrison Bannon the Third, suspect in a series of international drug trafficking offenses. Concurrent regulations include 7 United States Code section 2155, kidnapping and transport of supernatural creatures.”

Lily stared at him but said nothing.

He tried again. “The Quartering Act—”

Lily rolled her eyes and looked at Parker. “Does he always talk like he has a two-by-four rammed so far up his ass he gets splinters in his throat?”

Parker had an unfortunate coughing fit at exactly that moment, rendering him unable to answer. In fact, he was turning purple, so Damon helpfully pounded him on the back.

Hard.

Parker stumbled three or four feet across the floor and almost dropped his equipment.

Lily sighed. “At least put all that gear down before you hurt yourself, Mr. Parker.”

“Mr. Parker,” the birds chimed in.

Damon sighed. “Delicate and fragile, my ass.”

Lily rounded on him, hands on hips and eyes flashing. “What did you say?”

Damn, but she was gorgeous. Skin like melted caramel. Lush, deep brown hair the color of the teak table that had been the centerpiece of his grandmother’s dining room, and all that beautiful wavy hair fell to the middle of her back. Not too tall, but not short. Curvy and athletic. Rounded hips that were made to fit in his hands.

Huge dark eyes that seemed to see right through him.

Suddenly, he was finding it hard to breathe.

Words. He needed to make words now. “Say? Nothing. Okay, here’s the deal. We need to catch this asshole. You don’t want him back in your life. Can’t we work together on this one?”

“Why does working together have to involve your presence in my house?”

“Because Bannon is a seriously bad dude, and he’s coming after you, Ms. Cardinal,” Parker said, all traces of humor gone from his amiable face. “We’ve tracked chatter six ways from Sunday, as my granddad likes to say, and all of it says Bannon is moving his base of ops from California to Ohio, because of you.”

Lily’s fingers began to glow a bright, hot, orange, and she started pacing. The parrot that had been perched on her shoulder hopped over to the kitchen counter and stalked back and forth like a miniature feathered general reviewing his troops.

“Get to the chopper,” it shouted, shaking its head and fluffing out and then resettling its wings. “Get to the chopper!”

“Your parrots are Schwarzenegger fans?” Damon looked at Lily with disbelief.

“We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” the other bird told him.

“Hugging is. Mugging prefers Jaws,” Lily said dryly, but her cheeks turned a little pink.

“That is so cool!” Parker said, grinning like an idiot. “Have you ever shown them Princess Bride? It has so many great—"

“Back to Bannon,” Damon interjected, before they could get caught up in a Bird Movie of the Week discussion. “We know he’s coming after you. We’d like—”

“To use me as bait,” Lily snapped. “Yeah, I get it. I’m not as stupid as I look.”

He couldn’t help it. It was the way the word “look” came out from between those sensual lips. He tried, he really did, but he was physiologically unable to keep from, well, looking. Again. And, hell, in that outfit she was definitely something to see.

But he was better than that. He wasn’t a sexist ass, and he certainly wasn’t going to invade her home and then make her feel unsafe by leering at her.

Not that a woman who could set him on fire had any reason to feel unsafe.

Still.

He swallowed, hard, and met her gaze. “You don’t look stupid. I don’t think you’re stupid, and I don’t think you’re a criminal. I think you’re a smart, law-abiding person who got caught up in something really, really bad.”

She started to make a sarcastic retort—he could read it in her eyes—but then she stopped. Thought about it. When she finally spoke, he could see that he’d rattled her.

“Harry always gets whatever Harry wants,” she said, so quietly she was almost whispering.

He nodded. “And he wants you.”

“And he wants me.”

Driven by a powerful urge he didn’t understand, he shook his head. One sharp, decisive shake. “He’s not going to get you. I will keep you safe, Lily.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I’m used to keeping myself safe.”

“Then let me help. Let’s get this psychopath behind bars where he belongs.”

She hesitated for a long, long moment, but then she nodded and held out her hand. “Deal. And you leave the minute we get him?”

“Absolutely,” he said, knowing he was lying, even while he shook her hand.

Because, suddenly? He didn’t want to leave her at all.

Which was crazy. He didn’t do relationships. He was too busy. He lived for the job. Blah, blah, blah, all the words that basically meant he was great at sex but worse than awful at the stuff that came with the sex. The ugly stuff: the “what happens next” discussion. The long conversations about feelings. The “meet my parents” demands.

Cuddling.

He shuddered. It was enough to neuter a man.

One of his exes had accused him of being more lion than man; of wanting a harem he only had to screw and forget, leaving them to cater to him. She’d been wrong, of course. He didn’t want anybody catering to him. He just wanted to eat his breakfast alone. Read the paper alone, with nobody stealing sections out of order.

Not have to talk about his feelings.

He respected and admired women. His female colleagues in P-Ops were among the smartest, toughest people he’d ever met in his life. But they never tried to talk to him about their feelings, either.

Lily snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Earth to Jones. Are you in there? Parker asked you a question.”

Damon blinked. This was bad. He’d totally zoned out there for a moment.

“Sorry. I was thinking about the job,” he told them.

Parker nodded. “Yes, sir.”

He’d always liked Parker.

“What’s first?” Lily asked, but her phone rang before he could answer. She held up one finger, snatched her phone off the counter and answered.

“Lily Cardinal.”

There was a silence, during which Lily’s eyes got bigger and bigger and her fingers started glowing again.

“Better hide your shoes,” he told Parker.

“What do you mean, my furniture is in Canada?” Lily shouted. “No, I don’t want any maple syrup!”

“Get to the chopper,” Hugging warned.

“I hear you, bird,” Damon said.

---

Damon closed the door behind Parker, and he and Lily stared at each other across the floor of a room that had suddenly grown too small.

“So, that’s all the surveillance and recording equipment installed, then?” Her voice sounded surprisingly tentative, which surprised him. She was more of a “give commands” than “ask questions” kind of woman.

“He’s not coming back to monitor things or whatever?”

Her phone rang, and she made a weird growly sound, deep in her throat.

“It’s that idiot again. My damn furniture is probably in Guatemala by now.”

“Why—”

She thrust her phone at him. “You handle it. You’re the FBI, right? You handle interstate crime.”

He took the phone. “Crime?”

The parrots shook their wings in his direction. “Crime. Crime. Crime.”

He shot them a look, and they went quiet.

“My furniture has gone from California to Washington D.C. to Canada, on its way to Ohio. If that’s not a crime, I don’t know what is!”

“Point taken,” he admitted.

“Point taken!” the birds intoned. “Point take—”

He glared at them. “Stop repeating me, or we’re going to be talking bird soup for dinner.”

The parrots looked at each other, at Lily, and then back at him. When they opened their stupid beaks, he knew what was coming and tried to warn them. “Don’t even think about—”

“Don’t be a pussy.”

“Dammit.”

Lily tapped her foot. “My furniture?”

Right. Zane would be laughing his ass off right now to see his normally calm, cool, in control partner driven bat-shit crazy by a couple of birds.

Parrot-shit crazy?

“Hello,” he barked into Lily’s phone. “Who is this?”

Silence, broken only by heavy breathing.

“Louis. I’m in the FBI. You realize I can track you by computer tracking and satellite retasking, right?” He glanced at the phone. “Not to mention call waiting.”

The breathing grew frantic, and he heard the sound of a hushed but frantic argument. Lily made big “What the hell” gestures with her hands thrown out to her sides, and Damon shrugged and put the phone on speaker.

Finally, a man who sounded like Darth Vader crossed with Scooby Doo spoke up.

“What’s retasking a satellite mean? Do satellites have tasks?”

Lily groaned and clutched her head with both hands. “That’s him. Shawn Louis, of AAA Moving. Possibly the stupidest man on the planet.”

“Hey! I heard that,” Louis huffed out. “I’m not—”

“I don’t care,” Damon said, in his coldest, badass FBI agent voice. “This is Damon Jones, of the P-Ops division of the FBI. You have now crossed over into the territory of interstate trafficking in stolen property. You have five minutes to tell us where Ms. Cardinal’s property is and five hours after that to retrieve it and deliver it here, to her address, undamaged, or we will be talking about fifteen to life in a very dark cell in a very dark prison.”

Silence. He looked at Lily. Lily closed her eyes and shook her head.

Damon tried again. “Did you understand me, Louis?”

“So,” Louis said, sounding interested. “Does my satellite for my satellite TV actually track me?”

Lily started banging her head against the wall.

It looked like it hurt.

“Eff. Bee. Eye,” he told the phone. “I will make it my personal mission to make your life a living hell if you don’t find that furniture and get it here. Do. You. Understand?”

Silence.

Then an older woman’s voice came on the line, and Damon winced. Suddenly, he knew exactly where Louis had gotten the Scooby Doo component of his voice.

“So, Mr. FBI. Does that come with good benefits? Because my Shawn, he works hard and he tries hard. We used to watch that X-Files show all the time. Do you work with Scully and Mulder?”

Damon eyed the wall, considering banging his own head against it. “No Scully, no Mulder. But arrests for illegal substances you may happen to have in your home? Sure. I’m an expert at that one.”

Mama Louis’s voice turned brisk. “We hear you. I’ll call Joe Bob’s mama, and you can bet she’ll get his sorry butt moving and on his way to you. It might take more than five hours, but not by much.”

Realizing he had made his point to the power behind the Triple A Moving throne, Damon put his professional FBI agent voice back on. “That will be sufficient, if you continue to give us regular reports. You can contact Ms. Cardinal—”

Lily shook her head and made “no way” motions with her hands. Either that, or she was signaling that the runner was safe.

Nah, probably the no-way thing.

“…by text,” he continued. “Every hour on the hour, starting now until her undamaged furniture is in the driveway here. You have this address?”

The woman rattled off the Wildflower Lane street number. “And this means you’re not coming out here with none a’ them drug sniffing dogs, right? Don’t like no dogs on my property except for Mrs. Puddles, here.”

“No dogs. So long as you deliver.”

He ended the call before she could ask him if the truth really is out there and handed the phone to Lily. “You’re welcome.”

“Really? You want me to thank you for a phone call when you’re commandeering my entire house and my entire life?” She brushed past him and headed for the back of the house. “How about this, Cat? How about you start holding your breath now, and keep doing that until I apologize?”

“That long, huh?” He tried not to notice her extraordinarily fine ass as she walked away from him down the hall, but it was a losing battle.

“Leopard?” she called over her shoulder.

“Nope.”

“All right. Give me a minute and I’ll take you out for some pizza that is so good you don’t deserve it, before my hangry gets too much for me and I blast you again.”

“Pizza sounds good,” he caught himself telling the birds.

Damn. Now he was talking to birds.

Screw dog psychologists. He was probably going to get his own man card revoked.

“Be nice,” Mugging advised him. “Until it’s time to not be nice.”

“ROADHOUSE?” Damon shouted down the hall. “You’re ROADHOUSING me?”

The silvery sound of her laughter was the only response.

“I’m in big trouble,” he muttered.