After that, we got out of the tub and started drying one another off. That led to us making love again, much more slowly and intimately this time around. Eventually, we were properly bathed, dried, cleaned and dressed.
Eventually in this case being almost three hours!
Time well spent in my opinion, down to the last second.
Later, she all but threw me out of her wing of rooms, her mind becoming focused on her coppersmith work, and I, with a huge silly grin on my face, decided to go and get a well earned meal.
A big one too.
Finding an empty mostly private table wasn’t hard, and I suspected the reporters outside harassing everyone had convinced many guests to either tour the city, visit old friends and family, or simply stay in their rooms with room service.
Annoying, but useful to me at the moment.
Silver linings and all that, or so my family would like to say.
After that it was time for food. Sandwiches had always appealed to me more than soups, and after the hell I’d gone through this morning, not to mention everything else that followed, I was very hungry.
I quickly ordered a very large sandwich meal, and also sent a bell hop out for a copy of today’s newspaper, since I figured now was the best time to see it. The food would help blunt the outrage of Lillianne’s latest overblown, overdramatized tall tales about me, and I had a feeling I was going to need all the help I could get on that front.
Yet even with that issue, and the hunger, I couldn’t help but smile.
“My my, but someone certainly seems pleased with themselves. I wonder why?” An amused feminine voice purred from right behind me.
I managed to keep myself from half jumping out of my seat in shock through sheer force of will.
Taking a breath to calm myself, I slowly turned around to glare at the woman standing practically right next to my elbow. It turned out to be a very familiar, white and grey furred beastkin cat woman.
A very smugly grinning familiar cat woman.
“Maggie.” I drawled calmly, still glaring.
“Jake.” She drawled right back, her grin only getting more mischievous. And knowing.
“What could I possibly be pleased with?” I asked, deliberately playing sarcastically dumb, just because. “Could it be about successfully making it through a battle alive, and as a victor? Or how about getting all of Orna’s gear and equipment back? Or making new friends with tiny mouse people? Or escaping an inquisitive interviewers questions? Or helping a street cat and her gang take down a rival, basically for free?”
I looked at her with a smug smile of my own.
“Dealers choice.”
She rolled her eyes and even stuck her tongue out at me as she strolled around the table and took a seat across from me. “More like how you and Orna have finally stopped dancing around your mutual hunger for one another. It was seriously getting annoying, and I’d only been stuck in the middle of it for a few hours!”
I stared at her for moment before it clicked in my head, and I sighed in annoyance.
“You can smell her on me with your beastkin nose?” I asked, just to confirm what I already knew.
“All over you, as it turns out.” She giggled with a nod. “Though the big silly grin on your face, that you weren’t hiding at all by the way, was giving it away all on its own.”
I shrugged, refusing to be shy or embarrassed, even as I felt myself blush a little.
“We worked things out.” I replied, feeling my grin form again. “Vigorously.”
She stared at me silently for a moment, before we both began to chuckle and laugh openly. It felt good. Then my food arrived, and I was able to start digging in while Maggie ordered her own meal.
“Well, I’m glad, for both of you.” Maggie stated a few minutes later. “It’s good to see her genuinely happy again. So please, don’t mess that up.”
“I don’t really know my own feelings on this subject.” I sighed as I enjoyed my own meal. “For heavens sake, we only met yesterday! I mean, it feels so much longer than that, somehow, but we’ve barely known one another for the full length of a day and night.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“True.” Maggie replied, smiling at me fondly as she met my eyes. “And yet?”
“And yet, the thought of her being left behind, hurts.” I replied slowly, shrugging as I met her eyes in return. “I still intend to leave this city on that fancy Albion airship. I’m bound and determined to keep on traveling.”
“Sounds exciting.” Maggie chuckled as her food arrived. “But there is no rule you must travel alone. You started off with just yourself and your horse, but now you have a whole group. Nothing wrong with that, and no one is telling you to stay here.”
“So, what are you saying then?” I asked, curious. I was getting mixed signals from her, which told me I was having more than one conversation, and was probably missing something in the middle.
A pretty standard problem when chatting with women, I’ve found.
“More like asking,” Maggie replied slowly, looking from her food to me, and then back again. “All I ask is that you take care of her, and all those that join you. I’ve known her all my life, and I want for her to be happy.”
“Of course I will.” I stated immediately. “For as long as we’re together, I’ll happily take care of her. I would never do anything less.”
“I figured as much.” Maggie answered, her smile getting bigger, and more mischievous. “We’ve shared most everything, all our lives. We’ve been like sisters, the good kind, and that’s not going to change. I was there for her when her parents died, and when the first boy she loved also died. She was there for me in bad times as well. Where she goes, I go.”
“Even if she decides to follow me out of this city to parts of this twisted world unknown?” I asked, becoming a bit somber.
“Sounds like fun!” Maggie chuckled again, eyeing me in a odd way. “We’re a package deal. Aren’t you lucky?”
“I suppose.” I replied, frowning slightly at the phrasing. I felt like I was missing something. Something to do with how these city folk talked about with relationships. I had a nagging suspicion that it was something important, but at this point, I didn’t care. However, I was out of this city in a few days, so had no need to dig up more trouble.
I already had more than enough.
Even though in my heart, I doubted that whatever it was I was missing, wouldn’t still try and catch me.
Maybe I was just being paranoid.
I hoped so anyway.
In the midst of my swirling thoughts, Maggies food arrived, as did my newspaper, and a letter.
“What’s this?” I asked, curious as the bell hop delivered it on a small little tray.
“It just arrived for you sir.” He answered with a shrug before leaving.
“Huh.” I grunted, picking it up, but once I saw Carnegie’s name on it, I understood. It probably was about whatever came next, so it could wait a moment, as I felt my eyes inexorably drawn to the newspaper.
And to the front page headline, in big black letters, above the fold.
WILD RANGER BATTLES MONSTERS DURING JOURNEY TO NEW YORK!
“That damn woman!” I snapped, glaring at the paper like it was a riled up, coiled up rattlesnake.
“Oh I knew she’d be fun!” Maggie burst out laughing, snatching my newspaper before I had a chance to read the damn story about me.
“Hey!” I snapped, annoyed. “That’s my newspaper you bratty cat! Get your own!”
“Yours is more convenient.” She shrugged, opening it and disappearing inside of it with an air of smug nonchalance. “Besides, you have a mysterious letter to read.”
Grumbling about cats and women, and cat women, I opened my letter from my resident patron, and began reading.
“Ah, that concert he wants me to go to.” I muttered as I read over the instructions and information. Inside the envelope were several tickets, just in case I had a guest, or two, or more.
“A concert?” Maggie asked, lowering my newspaper to eye with interest.
“At his newly built Carnegie Hall. There’s a big concert there tomorrow night with all the super rich and city elites.” I shrugged. “I am to come as his guest, dressed up as if I just came in from the Frontier. Guns and all. Best I can tell, he just wants to show me off for some reason.”
“Probably.” Maggie shrugged, then grinned a toothy grin. “Are you allowed to bring any guests?”
“I can.” I nodded, holding up the tickets. “I suppose I’ll ask Orna if she would want to go. Take a break from her work before the big day.”
“She will not.” Maggie chuckled. “She’ll be working like mad to get ready for her big exhibition chance. Her little brother might, he is a little music man, though it will likely be past his bedtime. I doubt Halona would really care, or fit into the place. So, I’ll simply go with you.”
“Oh you will, will you?” I chuckled, eyeing her with exasperation.
“Indeed I will.” Maggie continued to chuckle. “After all, it sounds like fun, and we wouldn’t want you to go alone. Unless you’d prefer to let Ms. Lancaster be your date?”
I shuddered in horror at that thought! Her damn sister would have another whole book ready to go with what Lillianne would drag out of me by the end of the night!
“Besides, Mr. Carnegie is paying for all this, so he might as well get his money’s worth. Instead of one legend, he’ll be getting two, arm in arm.”
I chuckled to myself at the thought of what that would do to the crowds of so-called elites. It might actually be fun.
“You’ll need some kind of dress. Something clean and nice, and yet in keeping with the whole infamous street warrior gangster woman.” I told her, chuckling. “It’s tomorrow night, so you better get cracking.”
“Don’t worry about me.” Maggie laughed, going back to her paper. “Worry about whatever Lillianne is asking the mouse people about you. And what they’re enthusiastically telling her.”
She looked at me over the top of the newspaper, her grin obvious even though I couldn’t see it.
“I have a feeling I’ll be seeing you in a lot more newspapers these next few days.”
I groaned as I returned to my food. She’s probably right. I thought with a sigh.
Though as I ate and looked over the letter again, I couldn’t shake the odd feeling that something was off. Like I was going into an ambush, and the only thing I could do was fight my way out of it.
But it was just a concert with a bunch of rich folks. What the hell could happen besides a little personal level drama?
Right?
Still, deep in my heart, I had the feeling I was bumbling along into more trouble.
I just hoped I was being paranoid.
But my heart doubted that.