In the meantime Kami had come trotting down the hallway. It would have been impossible for her not to come running with all of the yelling going on. Her expression was less than pleased. She kept throwing surreptitious glances at Devon as though she expected him to somehow make this problem go away.
For just a moment Devon wanted to shake some answers out of her. Had she really been going through the contents of his desk? Why? And why would she get into an argument with Orion and just expect Devon to fix it. Things weren’t that easy. Not at all.
“All right, lady,” Orion said with a curled lip and a tone that could have peeled paint. “You claimed that my brother would defend you. Let’s talk about what was happening earlier today.”
“Earlier today.” Kami’s tone was nowhere near submissive or respectful. Devon felt his heart sinking as he realized that Orion had pushed the young woman too far. Kami was a wonderful, caring, creative, and passionate woman. When she got her back up, though, you had better watch out! “Are you talking about when you spontaneously showed up for work about four hours earlier than the usual time and then pretended to know what usually goes on at that time of day? Is that what you’re referring to? How I did my job exactly like I do every single day, but since you were actually here to watch it you decided to be a pain in the backside and accuse me of snooping or doing other horrendous things?”
“You were snooping.” Orion’s flat words were exactly that. Flat. He was challenging her and it wasn’t going great for either of them. “I saw you. There was a folder open on the desk. You shoved it back into the top drawer when you realized that you had been caught.”
That tidbit of information sent Devon’s mind spinning. What was in his top drawer? It was the only one that locked. That meant either Kami had a key or she had managed to get it open. Not that Devon was surprised she had that ability. Kami had experienced a very different upbringing when compared to his own. If she could pick locks Devon could not think that surprising. But he still did not know what it was that she could have found in his top drawer worth looking at. Did he have documents in there? What would they be? He hadn’t been fibbing to Orion when he’d said he kept things at home or on his computer and not in his desk drawers.
“Stop.” Devon forced himself to be just that. Forceful. He did not care to think about what kind of complaining he was going to hear from Orion about it later. “Both of you stop. I don’t want to hear another word against Ms. Delgado, Orion. The woman was only doing her job. She is contracted to clean this building. Her particular area is our floor and it has been that way for the last five or six years. If you haven’t noticed Ms. Delgado until now that suggests you either never get to work on time or you don’t pay a damn bit of attention to anyone but yourself.”
Orion was gaping. Oh yes. Devon’s defense of the cleaning woman had probably just earned him at least a two-hour interrogation from his big brother. Fine. Whatever. At the moment Devon was more concerned about his brother Zane’s vigilante activities and whether or not Zane would eventually discover that he could possible include Gemini in this mission he had assigned to himself.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Orion fumed. His expression twisted, and for just a second Devon tensed as he considered placing himself bodily between his brother and his—Kami. Kami Delgado. Orion was eyeing Kami as though she were a demoness. “You’re completely off your rocker. You know that?”
“And I think you need to be focusing on Zane and our mother and not on some stupid vendetta you’ve decided to take up against the janitors!” Devon fired back. He was getting angry. His temper was a slow boil, but when it got going there was no doubt that it existed and right now he’d had enough. “I’ve had a long-ass morning because I was the one trying to find out what was happening with our brother. Now I come in here and you start ragging on me about a supposed invasion of privacy by someone that I have trusted in my office on her own for nearly a decade! Go back to your own office and do something productive, Orion. Now. Before I call the rest of the family and arrange a freaking intervention or something!”
For one brief moment Devon felt as though he had somehow managed to penetrate the icy cold barrier that Orion kept around his psyche. Then all of that changed and Orion’s expression darkened to epically stormy levels. He spun on his heel and stalked out of Devon’s office presumably on his way back to his own space.
That left Devon alone with Kami. At least for the span of a few seconds it did. She gazed at him with those beautiful up-tilted dark eyes and Devon was reminded of the first time he had seen her. Kami was absolutely unique. She was unlike any other woman that Devon had ever met.
She was so short that he stood at least a full foot or more taller. She was softly rounded in all the right places for a woman. Her hips and her breasts were soft and absolutely curvaceous. Her abdomen was flat beneath the shapeless coveralls that managed to hide the fact that Kami Delgado was all woman and more. But those coveralls did not hide the soft caramel color of her complexion or the way her full cheeks looked when she smiled. Her wild black curls were carefully contained in a bun on top of her head. And right now there was not a hint of a smile on her face. Her long thick dark eyelashes brushed the full tops of her cheeks as she refused to look at him and stared at the floor instead.
“I have work to do,” Kami said quietly.
And then just like that she was gone and Devon was alone in his office with no idea what had just happened. What a way to start a morning. He had been confused as hell by Zane only to come in and be more confused by the strange obsession that Orion had regarding a cleaning woman who was now also apparently angry at Devon.
So… Pretty much everyone was mad at Devon. At least he knew where he stood in life.
Chapter Five
Kami was so mad that for just a moment she was afraid that her head was going to explode. Of course, that would mean that her mouth would just start spewing all over the office as she shrieked at Devon and demanded that he actually defend her for once.
Shoving her trash can down the hallway, she struggled to keep a lid on her temper. She was done with cleaning the offices on the corporate floors. Even all of the leather was conditioned. But then, it was ten o’clock in the morning and she only had an hour and a half left on her shift. Her boss didn’t like her to work more than forty hours in a week. She did eight hour shifts from four-thirty to twelve-thirty Monday through Friday. Of course, on the weekends she had another job to go to, but that had nothing to do with janitorial work.
Bathrooms. She still had to do the bathrooms in the stupid building. She was so angry with Devon that suddenly the bathrooms seemed like a refuge. She could just stay busy and forget about him. Or at least that was her plan right up until Devon found her on the eighth floor right in front of the entrance to the bathrooms at the back of the building.
The public restrooms on each floor of the King building were in exactly the same place on every floor. There were additional private bathrooms for the department heads, but those were the cleaning responsibility of whomever had been assigned to that floor. The public bathrooms were different.
Each bathroom—both men’s and women’s—had four stalls. They were airy and well-maintained and probably the nicest public restrooms that Kami had ever seen. They didn’t really take very long to clean if she did it every day. So today was a day like any other with her gloved up and brandishing a toilet brush and a container of cleaner.
“We need to talk.”
Kami snorted at Devon. “Easy for you to say. You’re not standing here holding a dripping toilet brush.”
They were in the men’s bathroom on the eighth floor. That meant she needed to get rid of him before she headed into the women’s bathroom. Or, it might be a handy way to end the conversation. That was possible too.
“Kami, please?” Devon touched her arm.
Dammit! She hated when he touched her. No. She loved it. That was the problem. His hands were so gentle and the way that he touched her was absolutely
unlike anyone else in her life. There was no expectation in the touch. No demand. It was gentle and coaxing and right now she wanted to drop the toilet brush and the cleaner and stand there huddling in his arms until everything got better.
But that was not realistic.
“I don’t have time for this, Devon. You know that.”
He chuffed out a huge sigh. She could tell that he was frustrated. Good. He deserved to be. He had thrown her under the bus. Sort of. What did she want from him anyway? Did she even know?
“What do you want from me?” he asked quietly. Great. Was he actually reading her mind now? She would not have been surprised. “I got Orion off your back, didn’t I? I’m so sorry that he decided to poke his nose into things today of all days.”
“Where were you?” Kami swung around and glared at him. She hadn’t wanted to ask and yet she could not stand the thought that he had been somewhere else. Somewhere he’d rather be. Like in someone else’s bed. “Did you find someone else? Did you spend the night at her place? What’s really going on?”
“Kami, you know better than that.” Devon’s chiding tone made her feel guilty. He had really given her no reason to suspect him at all. And yet right now she could not imagine feeling secure about anything. “I’m not that kind of guy.”
“I don’t know what kind of guy you are!” Kami burst out. She could hang onto her composure no longer. “I feel like I don’t know you at all. Not really! You’re some rich man with a father who died and left the company to him and his brother! Maybe that changes things for you. I don’t know! You never talk to me. You never tell me what’s going on or how this affects me. You never let me know what’s really happening in your life. You just keep me at arm’s length like a dog you want to play with and pet when you remember that it’s there!”
“Wait a second,” Devon murmured. His expression was strange, as though something had just made sense to him. “You were reading my father’s will? That’s what you were doing? You were in my office reading the copy of the will that was in my top drawer and you’re asking me if I’m doing something wrong? Seriously? What the hell, Kami?”
She felt guilty. Why was she the one feeling guilty? It pissed her off so much that she turned her back on him and shoved her cart into the women’s restroom where he could not follow. Except he did follow, which was super awkward.
“This is a ladies’ restroom,” she reminded him. “You’re going to risk a sexual harassment suit if you try to hang out in here for very long.” Then she muttered something angry in Spanish because she could.
Unfortunately, she had long ago taught Devon to speak the dialect that her family used at home and that meant he understood every word out of her mouth. He snorted and shook his head. “I don’t think anyone is going to be chasing me out of here with a broom. But you’re welcome to smack me around with that toilet brush if you really want to.”
“Shut up!” She rounded on him for a moment and then forced herself to turn away. Scrub, scrub, scrub. She swished the cleaner around in the pristine white toilet bowl in stall number one. Then she moved to stall number two. “I’m going to get the toilet brush absolutely disgusting and then sling dirty toilet water at you.”
“From a ladies’ restroom that you clean religiously every single day?” His dubious words were both a compliment and an insult and she didn’t know quite what to make of it. “I highly doubt that you would even do that, sweetheart.”
“Do not sweetheart me!” Kami snarled. Oh, she did not want to hear that from him at all! She didn’t want to think about any of that. She didn’t want to contemplate what he was thinking in the deep recesses of his mind and whether or not he was just trying to get in her pants or not. “You don’t get to do that! Do you understand me? You don’t get to just make me feel like a freaking servant and a second-class citizen and then turn around and say something complimentary right before you try to get me to forget that I’m pissed at you!”
It took her a minute to realize that she was actually railing at him in Spanish. It was a good thing he was fluent because she had been talking so fast and so furiously that her words had practically slurred together in an enormous rant that probably made little to no sense to anyone else.
Kami finished the bathroom with the sinks. She sprayed the mirrors and wiped them down. The faucets she scrubbed until they gleamed. Being a cleaning person was not her dream job. She hated it. But there was something to be said for taking pride in her work and that was something that Kami took very seriously.
Finally she pushed her can out of the bathrooms and headed for the elevator. She had to go to the seventh floor and work her way back down to the basement level. Then she could leave. She could take herself to her favorite place and just try to calm down. It had been a taxing morning and it did not promise to get better. Unfortunately, she could not see the outside from here, but she had a feeling that her walk to the coffee shop after work was going to be cold and wet.
“Kami?”
Oh right. Devon was still trailing along behind her. He got into the elevator as soon as the doors opened and waited for her. It was tempting to take the stairs. Except you did not wheel one of these trashcans into a stairwell. It never ended well.
Going one floor at least meant there were no people in the elevator with them. Sometimes Kami had to endure the glares and ugly stares of the other employees in the building who were less than thrilled with having to share elevator space with a trash can and a janitor.
“This building needs a freight elevator,” Kami muttered.
Devon seemed momentarily thrown by the swift change in topic. As the elevator doors swooshed closed, he bobbed his head up and down. “You’re right, actually. I don’t know that it would be very easy to add in now though. Maybe we could find some way to adapt the big freight elevator from the loading docks downstairs to be an elevator that you and the other crew members could use.”
“It only goes to the sixth floor,” Kami reminded him dully. “My boss and your father discussed that a few years ago.”
“Oh.”
Sometimes Kami was surprised at how little Devon and his brothers actually knew about the day-to-day running of the building itself. That was part of the company, but they all took it for granted that the building ran like clockwork. What they rarely seemed to realize was that this happened because Mac King took an interest in everything that happened in this building. In fact, the cleaning crew probably knew more about the way things worked around here than all five King brothers and their bitchy mother combined.
“What are you thinking?” Devon asked as the elevator dinged and the doors opened onto the seventh floor.
Kami exited past several women waiting to get on the elevator. They all gave her dirty looks as though she were intentionally trying to touch them with her trashcan. It was so tempting to grab the duster and start wiping every single one of their stylish outfits with the oily surface of that duster in hopes of leaving streaks that would never go away.
Kami did not speak again until she was within the safety of the men’s room. It was a relief to put up the cleaning sign and be away from the stares of the people who worked on this floor who were no doubt wondering why one of the King brothers was following a janitor around. It probably made Kami seem untrustworthy or something. Like she needed a babysitter and the company had assigned her one of the corporate guys.
Devon did not seem bothered by the stares. He did not even seem to notice. “I asked what you were thinking,” he said once they were inside the faux privacy of the bathroom.
“I was thinking that you and your brothers really never knew your father or Tex Jackson.” Kami pulled on a new pair of latex gloves and started on the toilets. Tex Johnson had been their father’s business partner here at King Security Solutions, Inc. The man had been an insufferable ass, but nobody really knew that side of him, did they?
“How so?” Devon prompted. “You say that. So back it up.”
Fine. Kami would happily c
omply. Maybe it was time to start rattling his cage. Maybe that would make him realize that she was more than just a janitor and a casual part of his life that he seemed determined to use like toilet paper. “Did you know that your father used to meet once a week with my boss to discuss building maintenance? He and Tex would meet with my boss. But my boss—Joe—and your father used to play golf together about once a month when the weather wasn’t unbearable. They made a lot of deals and handled a lot of problems that way.”
Devon blinked. His eyes were the most arresting shade of blue, but they were almost always so flat that Kami could never actually read them. Finally he nodded his head. “You’re right. I didn’t know that. I suppose one of us will have to contact Joe Flores and see if we can set up a meeting.”
“I guess.” Kami scrubbed underneath the toilet rim and tried to decide whether or not his response pissed her off or not. He made it all sound so minimal. Like okay. Fine. We’ll meet with Joe. It can’t be that big of a deal. Right? Kami cleared her throat and moved onto the next stall. “Your father used to be in his office right next door to Tex Johnson’s office when Tex and your mother were having sex.”
“Excuse me?”
Okay, so that had probably been a bit of a bombshell. Surely Devon had known that his mother wasn’t faithful. Surely that was common knowledge amongst the brothers. Devon had never discussed it with her. But then Kami and Devon had never really discussed that sort of stuff at all. They just kind of went from light-hearted topic to light-hearted topic and spoke of things like hopes and dreams for the future. Kami could have given a list of things that Devon wished could happen in his life. She knew that he could do the same for her. But at the same time they really didn’t have a very real grasp of each other’s actual situations, and that was kind of disturbing considering the truth of their association.
“My mother and my father had a very unique relationship,” Devon said stiffly. “I’m sorry that you think I’m like him. I’m sorry that you honestly believe that I was out with some other woman this morning.”
Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5 Page 75