Death and Relaxation (Ordinary Magic #1)(42)

Fact: I’d been frozen in place. Caught by something in him.

Fact: I should probably double-check our database and make sure he wasn’t a long-lost descendant of some kind of creature with kissing powers.

Fact: Did I mention he’d kissed me?

“Let’s all calm down.” I pulled away from Jean’s hold and took a couple steps toward Myra so I could grab her before she decided to swing Cooper around and frog-march him to the street.

And wonder of wonders, everyone calmly stared at me.

Well. No pressure or anything.

“Cooper, I don’t know why that just happened, but it’s not happening again.” Ryder wasn’t the only one who could use a put-the-gun-down tone of voice. “Sorry if you thought that might be something more—”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t feel that,” Cooper said with a scowl. “There was something there. Something between us. You know it. You felt it.”

Oh, yeah, I’d felt it. But I hadn’t liked it. One look into his eyes had me frozen, unable to control my own body, and throwing myself into his arms.

“Cooper…” I said.

“You think you can ignore me? Think you can jerk me around?” He took a step forward. Two things happened in quick succession:

One, Myra reached out and smacked a hard palm into his shoulder.

Two, Ryder crossed the room so quickly, it didn’t register he’d done it until he’d grabbed Cooper’s other arm and twisted it up behind his back and shoved his palm flat against the back of his neck. Ryder’s stance was squared with a foot inside Cooper’s stance. One twist, and Cooper would be kissing linoleum.

Jean tugged me back and slid around in front of me, her hand on her sidearm holstered at her hip.

Okay, that was three things, but it all happened so fast, a couple of them together.

“Steady,” I said in a voice that was exactly that. “Cooper, we’ll talk later. Myra, please make sure he gets to his car. Ryder, you need to release him.”

Ryder was watching me over Cooper’s shoulder. A flash of hot anger clouded Ryder’s hammered-gold eyes. Then he smiled, all the anger stowed as if it had never been there.

“Sure,” Ryder said with an easy chuckle. He released Cooper’s arm and stepped back, sliding his hands into his back pockets. “Sorry about that, Cooper. Didn’t mean to go all self-defense on you. When I first moved to the big city, I took a couple classes, and I guess they kicked in.”

Cooper shifted to the side so he could glare at Ryder. “Keep your hands off me.”

Ryder held both hands, palms out. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to jump in the middle of this…whatever this is.”

“Let’s go, Mr. Clark.” Myra pointed Cooper toward the door. She wasn’t holding on to him yet, but her body language said if he tried anything, she’d have him in cuffs.

Ryder just stepped to one side so they’d have a clear path to the door. I noticed that he’d also left the takeout and drinks on the floor, neither bag nor drinks disturbed.

“Let me get that.” Ryder scooped lunch back into his hands.

Did his eyes linger a moment over Cooper as if he were looking for a weapon? Did his gaze flicker to the door, to Myra’s Glock, to the distance, her reach, Cooper’s height and level of animosity?

Did Ryder just do cop things?

Before I could settle on an answer to that, Myra had Cooper out the door, and Ryder was standing there with the lunch bag in one hand, drinks in the other. “By the coffee pot?”

“Right over there,” Roy, who had been quiet this whole time, said. The sheer normalness of his voice did a lot to settle the tension in the room. Or maybe just the tension in me.

Ryder walked around the front counter and back to where the coffee was set up.

I put my hands over my face for a moment.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Even behind my hands, I could feel Jean lean toward my ear. “So Cooper’s back in town. Are you okay?” Her breath still smelled like fake fruit.

I dropped my hands. Ryder was at the coffee table, his back toward us as he pulled Chinese food boxes out of the bag.

“I am now,” I whispered, even though I still felt a little feverish. “That was weird.”

“How weird?”

“Ordinary weird. Track Cooper’s blood heritage. Make sure we’re not missing something.”

That was all the whispering we had time for. She patted my shoulder, letting me know she would.

Roy shifted in his chair and it made a crunchy metal-on-metal noise. “You get me my salt and pepper squid?”

Ryder still hadn’t turned around from sorting containers. He held up a little white box and jiggled it.

I swallowed down my revulsion to all things tentacled and tried not to imagine Roy chewing through the deep-fried wriggly things.

“They threw in an order of pork fried rice.” Ryder turned.

“Well, don’t hold out on me, rookie.” Roy held up a hand and Ryder tossed the box, which Roy easily caught.

“No throwing food in the station.” Wow. Could I sound any more like a mother? Boss. I sounded like a boss.

Ryder gave me an apologetic new-guy-at-the-job shrug along with a small smile that about melted me into my boots. “Do you have time for lunch, Delaney?”