by Ruby Knoxx
By the end of the interview, which ended up stretching over three hours as we talked, laughed, and told stories of our own love affairs over the years, I knew I had the job. Jan was retiring, and while she would still own the company, she needed someone to run it. That was my job, and she had every trust in me that I would do it well.
I wished I shared her trust.
Now, as I went through the emails of new clients and new mates, and despite having already been there long enough that I should have the hang of the job, I began to feel overwhelmed. Jan had gone through everything with me, and for the most part, trained me well. But I was on my own now, and I was determined not to riddle her with questions in my first solo month.
There were several ongoing accounts that I had familiarized myself with, and there were now new ones coming up. Since there were far fewer shifters in the world than humans, it meant that this wasn’t a massive business. However, there was enough to it to keep the company more than afloat and to offer a good salary to the employees.
However discrete the business itself was, we had gotten rather a lot of attention. At least, the attention of someone who was big in the economic sphere.
I knew that I had a VIP client who was to take top priority. I already had a list of potential suiters as long as my arm for him. These, of course, were all selected by compatibility algorithms on the computer. It would be my job to go through them one by one and decide if they fit the mold of what he was looking for.
Who knew that love could be found this way?
I sighed as I scanned the potential names I had listed for him. I had a picture of Royce Rogers up on my computer as well, to help get an eye for the match that would be suitable. He had relayed that he had never found his mate and hadn’t even dated much. He wasn’t old, only 53, and while he had a pleasant smile and a very round head, there was almost something about him that made me wonder if he was ill.
That was of course, none of my business. My business was to find the right partner for him. I must have had about sixty women as possibilities, so far. This was just the first run. All these women were looking for love or just to be looked after. It suddenly felt like a big responsibility, that I held their futures in my hands. I knew that wasn’t entirely true. After all, the women could always turn down a proposal if they weren’t pleased with the match. Though that was a mark against me and the agency if and when that happened.
I guessed I was a little old fashioned. I loved the idea of love. Romcoms, romance books, The Notebook, watching proposals on YouTube—I was a sucker for all of them. I wanted everyone to have a taste of it. But for me? That ship had long sailed. I had Kitty to think about, and after her father, I didn’t think anyone would be able to compare. He was perfect, at least, as far as I could remember. I hadn’t seen him since before the accident. He was long out of the picture, and Kitty was enough for me. I could want the perfect love life for my daughter when she was old enough, and I could indulge in fiction for myself. That was all I needed.
For now, the only important thing was that I kept this job and raised my daughter. And for the immediate now? I needed to get Mr. Royce Rogers a mate.
Chapter 3 – Leon
The benefit of working with someone who was in Riverside County was that I was able, for the most part, to make my own schedule. My absolute lack of enthusiasm for this particular assignment had me taking my time during my morning routine. I even made myself breakfast: pancakes, sausage, and bacon. I even cleaned all the dishes and wiped down the counter tops immediately afterward. I made two pints of juice, chopping up oranges, carrots, apples, spinach, kale, ginger, and turmeric. I cleaned my juicer and drank all of my nutrient-packed juice.
Finally, I got to the point where I knew I couldn’t put off leaving for my assignment any longer. I had to actually do some work.
I locked up the apartment, waved to my new neighbors on their way in from walking their dog that never stopped barking, and headed down to the garage to the car.
It was everything in me not to run my mouth off when they gave me the assignment. I was used to working with prominent figures. After all, they were the bread and butter for the ops, the ones who usually had fairly simple assignments that came with a high price tag.
However, playing matchmaker? That was not what I signed up for when I was chosen to be a part of an elite government operation. I wanted to make a difference and keep my country safe. I wanted to be able to ensure that no delicate information was leaked, that no threats were carried out, and that my fellow Americans could sleep safe at night. That was my job.
Or had been, until I found myself alone on the taskforce. Since Jax, Maxen, Jonas, Neo, and Zane had one by one found themselves mated and were thus required to step away from the ops, the number of assignments had greatly diminished. I no longer had a team. And I had no idea if I would ever be given a team again. After all, we were elite shifters, not just a group of people with special skills. Finding those who would fit that category and train them was not only time consuming but expensive.
As long as the ops were still funded, I would remain. I had found my mate, and she was no longer in this world, which meant I would never find another. I had the ops, and that was all I needed in my life.
At least, that was what I thought until I was told that my next assignment was to work with the owner of RRC Bank, Royce Rogers. That in itself wasn’t a surprise. I was used to working with people like him and with companies such as banks. Royce Rogers was a powerful man, which was why the military thought it fitting for them to hire out their remaining ops member for the task. He had a lot of money, and that money could always sway a job. Furthermore, I was told that if I did well with this task, Rogers was interested in putting a retainer down for me for any future wants or needs he might have.
The problem was that the reason he wanted me was to vet his potential mates. I was not a matchmaker. I did not play cupid or think it was cute to pair lonely hearts. I was a military man, trained in combat, specially selected for my skillset and for the fact that I was a shifter.
Still, a job was a job, and with only one of us left in the ops, my missions were becoming fewer. And, while I inwardly sneered at the job, it was still important for future relations.
With AC/DC echoing from my open windows, I pulled my car into a parking garage and parked, happily paying a higher price for the garage and its security than to risk anything happening to my mat-black Mustang. I took the stairs to the street level of downtown LA and crossed the street to the building, scanning the directory before I walked through the rotating glass doors with gold edges.
The building looked like it should have been a hotel, and perhaps it had once been. In the entry was a fountain, and to my surprise, there were boutiques that lined the first floor, as well as the faux outdoor seating of an Italian restaurant. Light poured in from the glass ceiling, some twenty floors up, though it didn’t quite reach the main floor. Still, it didn’t stop whoever owned the building from decorating the ledge of the fountain with plants.
A red-carpeted staircase went up to the next floor, and a wooden banister lined the walkway of each floor going up. I knew that there were offices on every other floor, some for businesses who owned the full floor, some that were just one rented room. I jogged my way up the stairs to the fifth floor, turned left at the landing, and followed the placards until I read Mail Order Mate.
I took a deep breath before I went in. I was really going to do this.
The door opened into a small lobby, where an empty desk greeted me. I didn’t know if a secretary was meant to be there who was late for work or if perhaps they just hadn’t hired one. Light music was playing, classical cello, which vibrated through me, sending me back to my youth when I sang in choirs. While I didn’t listen to classical music anymore, there was a slight tug of nostalgia at the sound of it.
There was something about the empty lobby that took the edge off. I was still annoyed that I had to be there and a part of the assignm
ent, but the quiet almost felt like a blanket wrapping around me. I was tempted to sit down and wait for the secretary so I could see the director of the company. I just wanted to indulge in the relaxation of the space. I felt like I was close to home.
I shook my head. It was just the music. That was all. I had spent all my years, all the way through college, listening to classical music, being trained to sing in church choirs, opera, you name it. I was a terrible actor, but plays would put up with it just because I could sing. That put me through college.
I had left that behind long ago, along with so many other things. I wasn’t who I was in my youth anymore.
Get ahold of yourself, I thought, reminding myself that I had a job to do. I wasn’t there to sit quietly and listen to music in a lobby.
I walked past the empty desk and to the door behind it, seeing the aluminum placard with “Head Mate-Maker” etched into it. I rolled my eyes and put my hand on the handle before looking in through the narrow window of the door.
My breath caught in my chest. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
I stared through that window, not even noticing the burn in my chest from lack of air. I wasn’t even a part of my body anymore. All time seemed to stop. Everything I knew to be true was shattered.
It wasn’t until I started to feel dizzy that I realized I hadn’t been breathing. I sucked in a lungful of air and coughed, needing to lean forward on the doorframe until I got ahold of myself. I couldn’t believe it. There she was. Justine Wilson, or Justine Justice as I had once known her as.
She sat at her desk, working on her computer, her black hair tied back into a high ponytail, dark fanned eyeliner over her eyelids, almost obscured by her thick eyelashes. Her lips painted a light pink as she chewed on her pinky nail, painted in dark brown and partially flaked off. She wore a button-up white blouse, yet still kept a black cord around her neck with a little silver charm.
I felt like I was seeing a ghost. She was dead. She had been dead for nearly six years. How was it that I was seeing her there, sitting in that office, like she never had been?
I took several deep breaths before I pulled myself together. There was no way it was her. This woman was just someone who looked shockingly like her and also happened to have her style. That was all.
Then her eyes shifted from the computer, probably noticing a figure darkening the window of her door, and the flare of recognition ignited. She shifted back, taking a sharp breath in at the sight of me.
It was her. It truly was Justine Justice.
I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to tear that door off its hinges and leap over her desk and pull her close to me, breathe her in, and know that she was real. I wanted to kiss her and promise her I was never going to let her go again. I remembered the last time I told her I hadn’t wanted her to go, when I held her in my arms in bed before she collected her suitcases and left. She had promised me she would be back, but she never did.
A ripping pain tore through me. She was alive all this time, all these years, and not once did she try to find me. My mate. She went about the world, living her life, and giving no thought to me. Not a word. Despite my desperate need to be near her and to hold her, part of me felt so deeply broken by this truth that I wanted to turn and have nothing to do with her.
How could I have anything to do with someone who was so careless with my affection?
My hand tightened on the handle, and I clenched my jaw. I had a duty. A sworn duty which rendered me at the will of the black ops. I went where I was told, and I carried out my work. And talking to this woman, as complicated for my personal life as it might have been, was my duty.
Suck it up, buttercup, I told myself before pushing down the handle and opening the door.
Her scent filled my nostrils as that door opened, and it was like time ripped open and threw me back to when I saw her last, to when I held her last. We were in a house outside of the city. It had been a strange romance, from the time I first saw her performing with her band on stage, to buying her a drink, to suggesting we forget reality and escape. I rented us a house for a week so we could be tangled in our want for one another, just until she had to leave. She had a ticket to fly out to Egypt to visit her sister who was working as a professor there. And I wanted her to think of me every minute she was away.
The morning of her flight, I held her hand, pressed it to my lips and told her that I loved her, told her who I was, what I was, even showed her my lion, all before I told her she was my mate and that there was nothing I wouldn’t do for her. I pushed her black hair from her face and looked into her dark brown eyes and kissed her, telling her I would count every second until she returned.
Justine hadn’t known how to respond. She told me as much, that it was a lot to take in. She was human, after all. She said she cared about me, the week had been amazing, but she couldn’t just fall as quickly as I had for her. She promised me that she would be in touch with me when she got back, that this wouldn’t be the end of what was just starting. She held my face in her hands and kissed me, and I believed her.
Then she got in the taxi, blowing a kiss to me through the window.
Later that night I saw the news about the plane that went down. I looked up her flight, and it was hers, and there were no survivors. Just like that. My mate was gone.
Except now, there in Los Angeles, sitting in an office on the opposite side of the door, she was staring at me, just as alive as ever, her eyes locked on mine. She hadn’t gotten on that plane. Or there had never been a flight that she had to catch. I didn’t know. All I knew was that she chose to run from me instead of embrace me. My mate who wanted nothing to do with me.
Just get this over with, I willed myself. I pushed open the door and stepped into the office.
“Jesus, Leon,” she breathed, standing from her desk chair. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” I said, unable to keep the growl from my voice.
Her eyes narrowed as her eyebrow arched. “I run this company.”
“All this time?”
Justine drew a long breath, her fingers all poised on the desks surface as she straightened her back. Her blouse tucked into a black skirt with a thin silver belt. In that moment I hated how hot she looked. It was distracting.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” she said slowly, “but I just took over this position.”
Did that mean that she had been working there, in LA all this time? Not once thought to look me up? I knew it wasn’t a fair assumption. The last time she’d seen me was in Northern California. She had no way of knowing that I would be so far south, especially given the many places I had lived over the years since she … deserted me.
“That’s what you have to say?” I asked.
“Excuse me?”
I pressed my lips together, pinching the inside of my mouth with my teeth, and looked away. My fingers dug into my palms as I tried to restrain myself from expressing all the hurt that was churning inside me.
I cleared my throat and started again. “I’m here on behalf of Mr. Royce Rogers. I hear he has employed your services to find him someone to marry. I’m here to vet them all and ensure that they aren’t a danger to him or his company.”
“Of course,” she said, lowering herself into her chair, never taking her eyes off me. “I um … I heard that he was sending someone for this process.”
My heart hammered so hard in my chest, I thought she would be able to hear it, even with her human ears. My palms were slick, and my knees were locked. I needed to calm myself down. I was going to pass out if I wasn’t careful. The heat in the office felt overwhelming, despite the consistent gentle flow of air-con breezing through with a hum.
I cleared my throat again, feeling my throat sticking to itself. I needed to calm down. I was there for a job. I had a duty, and no matter what my past held, my first priority was the ops. That was what I had dedicated my life to, and I had no intention of letting that slip away. That, at
least, would always be there for me, in some manner or another. That, at least, wouldn’t hurt me.
“What else do you know?” I asked.
“Not a whole lot,” Justine said, turning her chair so she faced the computer screen again, her hand moving to the mouse. She clicked away at a couple of buttons before her eyes ran down the screen. “Just that he’s a rich guy and apparently needs a bodyguard. I’m assuming that’s you.”
“Something like that. For now,” I said, struggling to remember that I needed to keep my mind focused as she moved her lips. They were beautiful lips, and I remembered what they could do. Stop it, I scolded myself as a new wave of heat ran through me, gathering at my loins. “It might not need to be said, but I’ll say it anyway. Mr. Rogers needs his business with you to be kept close to heart. That is, he requires your complete discretion regarding this pairing.”
“Of course,” she said. “All our clients receive complete confidentiality.”
As she said the words, I managed to tear my eyes away from her, scanning the various pictures on the walls of happy couples on their wedding day. I returned my gaze to her and arched my eyebrow.
“Their pictures don’t count or something?” I asked.
She smiled. I felt like I had been punched in the gut. How could I have forgotten the impact of that smile of hers?
She moved a loose whisp of hair from her face as her own eyes scanned the photos. “No, we ask for permission for those. I mean, kind of. We are often mailed or given these photos with thanks for the match-making. And we ask permission to frame and put them up in the office. They understand that people will see these.”
I nodded, pressing my lips together, and leaning on the back of the chair across the desk from her.
“Anyway,” Justine went on, “I have a whole list of potentials for Mr. Rogers. It’s not the narrowed-down list, just the broad one. I can get you the compiled list before I start tossing people, or you can wait until I trim the list down, and I can arrange a meeting for you with them.”