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He clears his throat, releasing my hand. “Cherub, that’s inappropriate.”

“I’m an adult.” He’s pulling away from me, both physically and emotionally, and I know I shouldn’t try to chase after him when he’s like this, but I want to.

For a brief a few seconds, Des had been mine. And I’m pretty sure I didn’t imagine it.

“You’re sixteen,” he says.

“Exactly. The House of Keys thinks I’m an adult, I don’t know why you don’t.”

“You have day of the week panties,” Des says. “That means you’re too young for me to stay over.”

“How do you know I have day of the week panties?” I ask suspiciously.

He rubs his temples. “I should go.” He begins to stand, his impressive stature unfolding before my eyes.

I scramble to my feet as well. “Please don’t.”

We’re beginning to sound like a broken record. I push him too far, and he flees. The scariest thing of all? The more distance he puts between us, the more desperate I am to close it, and the more I try to close it, the farther away I push him.

I’m losing my best friend, and we both know it.

Des drops his hands. “Callie, if I stay, I give in. If I leave, I don’t.”

Then just give in.

But he doesn’t, and he won’t. Because despite everything the Bargainer says about himself, he’s an honorable man when it comes to me. And that really is the root of our problems. He might actually be the best man I know.

Present

Well shit.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. That’s all I can think about on the flight over to Catalina Island.

We land in front of Des’s embarrassingly impressive house, and I walk out of his arms without a word. I can feel him at my back, his gaze assessing me.

The devious fucker is surely trying to figure out how to best approach me.

He’s going to have to keep puzzling over it. EvenIam not sure how to best approach me right now because I have no idea what exactly I’m feeling.

Annoyance, definitely. My leash just got a lot tighter. Anger—and incredulity—that the Bargainer actually forced me to move in with him for the foreseeable future. Depending on how slowly he makes me pay off my debt, I could potentially live under his roof for the rest of my life.

I ignore the spark excitement that comes with that thought; my heart is obviously an idiot.

Beneath all these frustrated emotions, there’s relief. Relief that I didn’t have to cave to my ego and stay inside a house that felt unsafe, or swallow my pride and beg this man to let me stay with him again so soon after I left.

“I have no regrets, you know,” he says behind me, his even voice carrying across the yard.

Ignoring him, I head up his stone steps and into his palatial house.

“Breakfast and coffee,” I say. “I can’t be civil with you until I have some breakfast and coffee.”

I feel a hand on my back as the Bargainer materializes next to me. “Then let’s get the lady what she wants. I have just the thing for you …”

Douglas mutha-freaking Café.That’s what he was hinting at earlier.

“It’s been … years,” I say, looking around the familiar café. The place looks unchanged, from the polished wood tables to the framed photos of the harbor, to the glass case filled with pastries.

When Des led me to his portal room, I was more than a little reluctant to venture down one of his ley lines again. But when we stepped off the line and onto the Isle of Man, my opinion did a one-eighty.