Page 33 of Robb

Staring at the menu board, Robb gave up on choosing.

Maybe all of this is worth a little chaos.

Maybe this was the smallest form of chaos possible – but still, he’d spent so many years maintaining such discipline over himself, always ensuring his control was perfectly intact. Trent had once said Robb doesn’t even get out of bed without a plan, which, to be honest, had been truer than Trent had known. Robb had always made it his business to know what was happening before it happened.

“Surprise me,” he said, keeping his voice deliberately neutral. If she liked it when he played the straight man, then he was happy to indulge her. Even when he was giving her the control. Even over something as trivial as what he ate for lunch.

“Ooh, how exciting for you,” Tahnee said with a grin. “Are you sure you’re up for it?”

Robb was pretty sure that she couldn’t surprise him too badly, unless she decided to order a hamburger with a banana fritter inside or something ridiculous like that, but he just nodded. “I can face any challenge. I’ve been training my whole career for this moment.”

“Well,” she said, raising an eyebrow, still grinning. “Remember that you asked for this.”

Tahnee proceeded to order up a storm. Battered fish, grilled fish, hot chips, dim sims, battered sav, a couple of steak sandwiches with the lot, hold the fried egg…

Robb tuned out after that, choosing instead to look inside the drinks fridge, until eventually Tahnee seemed to come to the end of her gargantuan order.

“… And a couple of potato fritters,” she finished up.

Robb turned from the fridge, deciding that maybe he could do a little needling of his own. The intricacies of battered potato product nomenclature across the country were, after all, no laughing matter. “You mean potato scallops.”

“We only sell potato cakes here,” the dead-eyed teen behind the counter apparently saw fit to chime in.

Tahnee sighed. “You can call them whatever you like, as long as they’re drowned in chicken salt.” Nudging Robb, she added, “Get yourself a drink already, will you? And grab me a ginger beer.”

Bringing over the drinks, Robb reached for his wallet – only for Tahnee to tap her card first.

“Too slow,” she said, laughing, and Robb sighed. He could only hope that she was paying with money from a legitimate source – he knew that she didn’t charge shifters for the use of her sanctuary.

He did know that his superiors had unofficially put the charges against her on the back burner several years ago. She still had a file, even if he refused to look at it, but his boss had made some vague comments that basically implied that she was no longer a priority.

He supposed that the Agency had come to see her sanctuary as a valuable resource that they didn’t want to risk losing, and also that she was now – presumably – on the straight and narrow. On balance, it made sense for them to focus on pursuing actual threats, of which Tahnee was no longer one.

Still. He was going to have to explain all of this to his manager at some point, and it would probably be at least slightly less complicated if he didn’t have to try and explain why he was eating enormous takeaway meals purchased with the proceeds of ill-gotten gold. The very least he could do was pay for his half, both in terms of his own conscience and in terms of just being polite.

The two of them sat down at the tiny plastic table, and Robb handed Tahnee’s ginger beer over to her.

“Ta,” she said, taking the drink and tilting it gently, the ginger pieces slowly drifting from the bottom of the bottle towards the top.

“Thank you,” Robb said. “I’ll transfer you half the amount.”

“Are you kidding?” Tahnee squawked, before lowering her voice. “No way. This is my treat. Do you think I’m cheap or something?”

Robb felt his eyes narrowing slightly despite himself. Of course she wasn’t going to make this easy.

“I could just find out your bank details,” he murmured. “It wouldn’t be difficult.”

Tahnee scoffed. “As if you would. You’d hand yourself right over to your superiors for disciplinary action if you even so much as thought about doing it, and you know it.”

He did know it. Despite the fact that he’d already pushed a ton of boundaries over the past twenty-four hours, there were some things he just knew he wouldn’t do.

Resolving silently to take out some cash and slip it into her handbag later, he switched his attention to opening his bottle of lemon, lime and bitters.

Tahnee’s voice softened a bit as she smiled. “It’s one of the things I like about you, ridiculous as it is. I’m not sure what that says about my taste in men, though.”

It says that she has excellent taste, the dingo piped up. Of course our mate would be excellent in every respect.

Thankfully, before Robb had to come up with an answer to that particular gem, the teenager at the counter called out their order. Tahnee hopped up and brought it over to the table, before practically tearing open the paper wrapping.