Page 43 of Spy With Me

He stared down at his food.

“Zach?”

“Yeah?”

“There’s no reason for you to sleep on the couch. I’m prettysure one of the cats already claimed it for the night. It’s not like we haven’tslept together before. Though we’re sleeping. Just sleeping.”

She was letting him in bed with her? “I appreciate that.”

“And I’ll do the chores and stuff, but I need to talk toTasha soon and see if I’m fired.” She picked up her fork again. “I’m supposedto design her wedding dress.”

“I’ll make the arrangements, and I’ll get you a tablet likethe one you work on,” he promised.

“Thank you.” She picked up her fork.

Zach got to work on dinner. He was suddenly hungry again.

Chapter Eight

Week One

There was a trick to making sure the irritable donkey Laceycalled The Fabulous Miss K didn’t land a kick. Oh, Devi had taken a couple tothe shins at first, but she had it down now.

Keep the feed bag in her left hand. Use her right hand todistract the aforementioned angry donkey. For some reason jazz hands worked onher. While she was Bob Fosse-ingthe fuck out of herright hand while singing “Defying Gravity” fromWicked—had to be fromWicked,she’d tried someSixon the girl and that ended with bruised shins—shemanaged to top off the feed and somehow fill the water trough.

The chickens were so much easier.

Three days on the farm and it felt oddly comfortable to walkinto this barn and clean out the stalls and make sure that donkey that hadobviously escaped from the bowels of hell got her feed.

“So you’re sleeping with him?”

She had the cell on speaker phone and thanked the universethat Zach Reed was apparently way smarter than anyone gave him credit for. Heassured her the line was safe and she could call anyone she liked. Lou, heexplained, was doing the same thing on the other side of the world with some ofthe tech she had developed.

None of the tech they gave her put phone numbers in Devi’sbrain. She explained that she knew how to call people by pressing their nameson her contact list or sayinghey, Siri, call Brianna, and that didn’twork here. So he had programmed her numbers and made this weird sat phone/cellhers. She could even text and had all the emojis.

He was getting annoyingly likable again. It had only been acouple of days, and she was fascinated all over.

Not that she was showing him.

“I am not. I mean I am sleeping with him, but I’m not doinganything else with him.” Except eating every meal, watching British quiz showswhile they drank afternoon tea, and playing games and spending most of her dayswith him. Only that. Nothing else.

After the first day, she sat in on the daily briefing thatLacey and Zach had—sometimes Arthur would join—and Lacey had gotten used tohaving a non-spy at meetings. She’d had a long talk with Devi about how shewould play in her entrails if she betrayed them, but honestly, she was used tothat. She’d heard many a lecture from her cousins, and her uncle was reallyinvested in entrails and medieval torture.

But that was all.

It wasn’t like she turned to him in her sleep and woke upwith his muscular arm wrapped around her waist and felt safe and warm and wholefor a moment.

“Well, let me tell you the spy kids are looking for you,”Bri said in a hushed tone.

“They are totally looking for you.” Daisy was there, too.“They’ve got a setup in the conference room at The Hideout because they don’twant to use the stuff at the McKay-Taggart building. Mostly because Uncle Ianis all like ‘give them some time; let Zach work this out.’ But Kala is havingnone of that. She thinks Zach knows where his mom is, and she wants a word.”

“Wait, is that a talk or is Kala going to kill someone?” Briasked.

She wasn’t wrong. Hermurderiestcousin could mean either. “I’m hoping for talk. According to Zach, he and Kalahave an understanding. Hey, what are you doing? That is not your feed, MissRachel. Shoo. Damn chicken.”

The chicken named Miss Rachel was the obvious alpha chicken,and she liked to wander everywhere and get into all the other animals’ food.And they let her. Because she was kind of mean. She was absolutely the queen ofthe chickens.

Devi rather thought she could take some cues from MissRachel.