Raven tried to get rid of him, but Paxton Booth was rather like a bulldog once he made up his mind about something. No, a bulldog was the wrong image. A terrier perhaps. Yes, he was happier with that comparison. A cute blond terrier hanging off of his arm, teeth sunk determinedly into the cuff of his shirt and refusing to let go. Short of smashing him against the wall a couple of times, he really had no idea how to get his jaws off him.

It was the situation of course. Despite having lived for several hundred years, Raven had failed to come up against anything of the sort. In his experience, people were a bother and never failed to bring chaos with them. Men especially. He’d always been a sucker for a damsel in distress. He couldn’t recount how many times he’d found himself stumbling across a man with troubles and suddenly finding his whole life in turmoil while he fought a battle, a duel, or a war for him. Of course, he always won and saved the day. Still, somehow he never got the man. In the end, all his efforts and the upheavals in his life left him watching the man walk away with someone else.

That wasn’t the situation here. Paxton Booth, editor, was not a damsel in distress. In fact, he apparently saw him as the one in distress. Paxton was staying “for his own good.” He was saving him, in his mind, and intended to “wake him every hour on the hour should he fall asleep,” to save him from his own foolishness in refusing to go to the doctor. Mr. Booth made that announcement the moment they were seated in his living room, then calmly set about removing the Raspberry tea bags from the pot and pouring tea while he gaped at him. Raven didn’t need his help. He hadn’t really hit his head that hard, and even if he had, his body would have repaired itself quickly. But that wasn’t something he could tell the man.