She scooched the bowl of keys just a little left of center on Zed’s little foyer table. She also moved the table just a little bit closer to the nearby outlet, so she could plug in her phone charger there. She kicked off her shoes and left them in the shoe basket on the floor, meant to keep them from tracking bayou mud all over the house. She put her purse on the table and her key, situated on the little silver bee keychain Zed had given her, in the bowl. She stood back, observing the concrete evidence that she was now a resident of the cave, and gave a happy little sigh.

“Well, it’s not like you had a lot of boxes,” Zed said. And no furniture. This is way better than the time Bael asked me to use my truck to help him move a gold statue of a hippo. A life-size statue, mind you, with ruby eyes the size of my fist. The thing was creepy. Dragons get very weird birthday presents.”

Dani noted that during this little anecdote, Zed had glanced at the foyer table no less than three times.

“I moved the table.”

Zed cleared his throat. “Oh, no, no, no, no, it looks great . . . way over there, really. I was just admiring it.”

“You literally just said ‘no’ four times,” Dani said, laughing lightly. “You know that if I’m living here, I’m going to have to occasionally touch your stuff, right?”

Zed closed his eyes. “I’m trying not to be weird about this, but it’s challenging every one of my compulsive housekeeping nerves.”

“If this is too much too fast, I can ask about renewing my lease at the maison,” Dani insisted.

Zed’s eyes snapped open and went wide in alarm. “No!”

He opened his arms and slung them around Dani, holding her close. “I definitely want you here. I don’t want you anywhere else. I’ve just been on my own for so long, it’s going to take a little time to get used to sharing my space.”

“OK,” she said, kissing him. “I promise not to do anything permanent without talking to you first.”

“Thank you. Besides, I’m sure there will be plenty of distractions to keep me from thinking on it too hard,” he kissed her, snaking a hand around her waist and giving her ass a little pat.

Dani peered up at him and asked, “Like the fact that Mel is moving into your mom’s place this weekend?”

“Yeah, like that.”

Dani immediately regretted putting that frown on his face. It was, admittedly, a low blow. Zed was trying to be supportive of his mother’s relationship with the adorable little frogman. He didn’t begrudge his mother her happiness. He just didn’t want to think about it too hard.