Page 47 of Ex Somnis

I’m sure Lennon would love to help me arrange a nice family dinner for her.

“I guess.” Nevan looks at the inn. At the guests milling around the front, two couples with coffee cups and the easy morning energy of people who are on holiday and have nowhere to be, then he looks down at himself.

I reach into the back seat and pull out the spare jacket I keep there. Running jacket, waterproof, never quite made it back into the house. I hold it out.

“Thanks.” He takes it, gets out of the car, and pulls it on. Then he pauses with the door open, one hand on the roof.

“Dr. Bennett.”

“Paul.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “About your face. And your glasses. And just, generally, I’m sorry.”

“I know.” I nod.

He returns the gesture, then closes the door.

I watch him walk toward the inn in one sock, spray can tucked under his arm, and several inches of boxer shorts still very much on display beneath my jacket.

Two of the guests look up with an amused expression.

Absolutely not.

I’m out of the car before I consciously decide to be. “Nevan.”

He turns when I reach him, and I’m already pulling the ruined jacket off my shoulders. “Put it around your waist.”

He doesn’t argue and knots it around his hips, covering the situation.

Better. Not good, but better.

Something faintly amused flickers through his expression. “Thanks, Paul.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I need that back before the paint sets.”

He huffs a quiet laugh and keeps walking, but instead of heading back to my car, I follow him.

We go around the side, through the gate, and into the garden. The cottage sits at the back the way it always has, slightly separate from the inn, surrounded by the herb beds that Seraphine keeps somehow even in this cold.

Mabel is in the chair by the cottage door with a mug. Seraphine is in the chair beside her, hands loose in her lap, looking at the garden.

Mabel takes in the jacket situation, then my face.

“Well, hello, nephew.” She raises a brow. “What happened to you?”

I had a boy in his underwear spray paint me in the face in front of the Vaughn mansion at seven this morning.

“Nothing.”

“You have paint on your face.”

“I’m aware.”

“And the boy’s trousers?”

“He lost them. That’s why I gave him a ride.”

“From where?”