Page 94 of Thunder with a Chance of Lovestruck
A tiny snort came from me. “Honestly, I was thinking about how different my life is now than it was thirty-six years ago.”
He chuckled. “Yeah. I’d say you had a pretty big life pivot.”
“So did you,” I reminded. “Have you gotten used to no longer owning a law practice anymore? Decide what you’re going to do with all your ‘free’ time yet?”
He’d been forced to stop practicing law full-time eighteen years ago. Circumstances left his availability questionable and at the mercy of others—namely me. Even though he’d not been able to devote much time to the incredibly successful law firm he’d helped to build with a partner in Grimm Cove, Robin had continued to be part of it all—on paper and behind the scenes. Then, several months ago, out of the blue, he looked at me while we’d been on a case out in Colorado and informed me that he felt it was time to sell the firm. That the time had come to pass the baton, whatever that meant. Within a short period of time, it was sold.
“I know you, Rachael,” he said with a smile that lit up his handsome face. “You’re going to spiral into guilt. I didn’t sell my part of the practice because of you.”
I focused on the road, not him. If I looked at him, I might get emotional. Itwasmy fault. I knew that. Whatever had happened around the time he’d come to help me, he’d found himself in hot water with the people he answered to. “Robin.”
He put his hand on my thigh and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I’ve told you before, I’ve been alive a very, very long time. I’ve had too many professions to count.”
“But you love the law,” I countered.
“Nah, I just like breaking rules. Helps to know them all, so you know which ones are funniest to break,” he said, his voice lighthearted.
“You were going to be a judge. I know you’d have won that election,” I said, still staring at the road and not at him.
“I could have waved my hand and made that a reality,” he returned. “I was only running because of a bet. I was goaded into it by a vampire I know. He won the bet on a technicality because I had to pull out of the race.”
I stiffened.
He patted my thigh. “I’d do it all again a thousand times over. Who knew I’d end up having a Frankenstein as one of my dearest and closest friends? A hot, sexy Frankenstein at that.”
I knew he was trying to keep the tone light. Robin, outside of a courtroom, was playful and something of a jokester.
“Besides, it felt like it really was time to make way for the next generation to handle things in Grimm Cove,” he said. “I’m told the woman who took over the practice is a ballbuster. You’d probably love her. I should introduce the two of you. She’s a Van Helsing. You know how much they like killing bad things. Like you do.”
That made me laugh. “I don’t love it.”
“Bullshit,” he said with a snort.
I glanced at him. “I know I’ve said this a few hundred times before, but thank you for everything you’ve done for me and for Demi.”
He winked. “It was nothing.”
It was hardly nothing, and he knew it. He’d saved our lives, and he’d been there every step of the way since.
Demi was actually living in his house in Grimm Cove and had been for the past five years. I’d offered her the home I’d bought there. Saying it was a fixer-upper was an understatement, so I didn’t take offense when she elected to go with Robin’s mansion. She was working on her degree at Grimm University. Since everything had gone haywire right before her graduation and stayed that way for years following, she’d had to delay college. She never once complained, but I knew it bothered her.
Hunting for her cousin had taken priority.
After we’d escaped the attack right before graduation, we’d driven straight through to Grimm Cove, trying to get in touch with Astria the entire way. We’d gotten to town and gone right for the house she’d been sharing with the other girls her age.
No one was there.
And no one seemed to know anything about where they were, when they’d be back, or what had happened to them.
Robin had been about to do whatever it was a Fae of his level could do when he vanished into thin air as well. He returned three days later, appearing out of nowhere in my motel room in Mill Hollow, which was just outside of Grimm Cove.
He’d scared the daylights out of me. The look on his face had worried me even more than having him materialize behind me. When he’d lifted his hand and held up a pendant that was similar to the ones Demi and Astria wore, but red instead of black, I’d just somehow known it was vital I agree to whatever he’d been about to ask me.
I fondled the pendant more.
Robin nudged me with his elbow. “You’re overthinking it again, aren’t you?”
It was hard not to. Turned out Robin had been holding what was to be his jail cell for the next twenty years. “Robin, how did you get sentenced into a pendant?”
