Page 133 of Pack Baby for the Silver Foxes

“That doesn’t happen twice.”

I believed him.

Artem waited until Hudson lifted his forehead from mine.

“Study,” he said.

Lincoln looked back at him. “I’m not leaving her.”

“Then bring her,” Artem said.

Maeve stood. “She can sit in the study while you all plan whatever masculine nonsense is about to happen.”

“It’s security,” Ivan said from the doorway.

“Masculine nonsense with guns,” Maeve replied.

“Usually,” Gregor said.

“I’m coming.”

Hudson looked at me. “You don’t have to.”

“I know. I’m coming.”

The study smelled like leather, coffee, firewood, and Fergus’s wet coat. Artem stood behind the desk. Ivan took the chair nearest the screens, already pulling up something on a laptop. Gregor leaned against the wall by the window, arms folded. Maeve sat beside me on the sofa with one hand on my knee. Hudson and Lincoln stood behind my chair until I looked up at them.

“Sit down,” I said.

Lincoln blinked.

“You’re looming.”

“I’m not.”

“You are. Sit.”

Maeve made a small sound into her hand.

Hudson sat on one side of me, Lincoln sat on the other.

Artem watched that with interest but didn’t comment.

“Callum landed at a private field outside Guildford,” Ivan said. “In a helicopter registered through a shell company. The pilot filed a route from Dublin to Kent with a stop amendment twenty minutes before arrival.”

“Can he be detained?” Hudson asked.

Artem’s eyes moved to him. “On what grounds?”

“Harassment. Threats. Trespass.”

“The estate airspace issue is messy,” Ivan said. “Threats are harder unless Mary wants to make a formal statement.”

Every man in the room looked at me and then, to their credit, looked away before it became a tribunal.

“Not today,” Maeve said for me.

I squeezed her hand.