“Who were they?” she repeated. “Who are you?”

He gave her a hint of a smile. “Who do you want me to be?”

“Come on,” Addie said in exasperation. “I just went through hell. Tell me something.”

Kendrick’s mouth hardened. “They were Shifters who used to work for me. I thought they still did work for me. I thought . . .” He shook his head. “Someone has been stirring up trouble, and I need to find out who.”

Robbie had let go of Kendrick. While Addie blurted questions, he brought the cubs’ clothes from the car and tucked them into one of the two wide saddlebags on the bike. The saddlebags had been modified to have small seats inside them, and the two cubs scampered down Kendrick’s arms and fixed themselves onto these seats.

“Where are you going to go?” Addie asked.

Kendrick kept his eyes on her, the green visible in the dark. “Someplace safe for them. I want you to go somewhere safe, Addison. Take a vacation; go far away. You’ll have my scent on you—leave Texas for a while. And burn this.” He reached out and took a fold of her sleeve between two fingers. He didn’t touch her, but she felt the heat of him brush her arm.

“Your scent? What the hell does that mean?”

“They can track you through it. Any Shifter can. I can’t risk that they won’t use you to get to me.”

“I can’t just leave. I have a job . . .” In a shot-up diner that would need a hell of a lot of work before Bo could open it again. She probably wouldn’t have a job at all for a while.

“Safer for you to be nowhere near here.” Kendrick reached into his coat and took out a thick wad of rolled-up bills. “I don’t know how much this is but it will help you travel.”

Addie stared at the roll, which was very fat, her eyes widening. The top denomination, as far as she could see, was 100. “I don’t want your money. Besides if I showed up at an airline counter looking like this and tried to pay for a ticket with that, they’d call security.”

His lowered brows told her he had no idea why. He took her hand and pressed the roll of money into it. “However you go, take it. Buy a new car.” Kendrick’s glance at the vehicle behind her was full of skepticism that she’d reach anywhere in it. “Go far, Addison. Don’t go home.”

Addie’s heart burned. Ivy would be up waiting, worried about what had happened at the diner. Tomorrow it was Addie’s turn to drive Tori and Josh to school after Ivy made breakfast, and Addie had planned to look some more into signing up for college classes before heading in to work. A normal day in Loneview.

Kendrick closed Addie’s hand around the cash, the warmth of his fingers coming through the cool leather of the glove. “I thank you, Addison. Truly.”

The words told her more certainly than anything that she’d never see him again. He’d ride off down the road and disappear, his cubs with him. Addie would have to find a new job—she needed the money too much to wait for Bo to put the diner to rights, if he ever did. There would be police reports and insurance . . . insurance could take forever.

Kendrick would become a memory, his strange hair, his intense green gaze, the powerful way he moved, his voice deep and resonating, the way he was so careful with the little boys. He’d fade into her past and become a strange, confusing, heart-pounding memory.

“Oh, what the hell,” Addie said softly.

She closed the space between them, flung her arms around Kendrick’s neck, and pulled him down to kiss him fully on the lips.

CHAPTER FOUR

Addie felt Kendrick’s body move in surprise under her kiss, then he went very still. She expected him to not respond, to freeze until she stepped back, embarrassed and apologetic.