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Me: Then come to dinner, Ms. Delilah. Agnes made you steak and fries.

Me: I’m going to feed it to Titus if you don’t come down here in two minutes

Delilah: Using your dog to threaten me is low. And here I was thinking you were a better man than that

Me: No one has ever mistaken me for a better man, Delilah

Delilah: Why is there a rack of bathing suits in my room?

Me: So you have something to wear the next time you go swimming

I expect her to follow that crumb, but she hops to the next topic without following up.

Delilah: What did you do while I was at the doctors? Did you go to work or is it a secret?

Me: I’ll tell you when I see you downstairs

Delilah: Will you, really? Or are you just lying to get your way?

Me: It’s down to one minute now

Delilah: Say please

Me: Come downstairs or I’ll bring you down here myself

Delilah: Fine. I’m coming.

Chapter 19

Less Than Friends

ADONIS

One cut into my baked potato is all I make before Delilah starts firing her questions my way.

“Why don’t you have a wife?” She sprinkles pepper on her steak fries with an expectant tilt of her head.

Every time I think about how dry her food is, I want to grimace. Pancakes with no syrup. Fries with no ketchup. She’d probably eat cake with no icing too if she could.

But beneath my judgment, a thread of relief runs through me every time I see her eat more than a bite of something.

“Eat your food.”

“I am,” she murmurs, her lips set in the faintest pout. “Are you having someone track Indigo?”

“No.”

“I didn’t tell you who Indigo is…”

“You forget I have access to your phone.”

Her skeptical orbs slide over me, narrowing at the reminder.

“Then why is someone showing up at our door with cryptic messages for me?”

“Don’t know.”

“Are they going to hurt her?”