Duty and the Beast

by Chelsea Field

  I was more a dog kind of person.

  But his lips against mine were different, restrained.

  “I need to tell you about Sophia,” he said.

  My mouth went dry. The woman he’d loved, the one who’d died. He’d promised to tell me the story someday but had been reserving this unprecedented level of opening up to me for our upcoming trip to Australia. It was less than three weeks away and one of the major reasons I didn’t want to be dragged off to Japan.

  Connor had surprised me with the plane tickets a month earlier, showing me how much he’d cared, how much he’d been paying attention. I’d been pining for a visit home ever since I’d landed in LA, and so he’d made it happen. Simple as that.

  So why did he need to tell me about Sophia now? In my apartment of all places? And didn’t he want to hear how the client interview had gone first?

  “Okay,” I said, sinking to the bed beside him.

  Part of me was squirming with curiosity, the other part jittery with nerves, and a third part anxious for Connor whom this was sure to be a painful conversation for. And having to fake break up just after he bared his soul to me was hardly good timing. But I wasn’t about to argue with something he felt he needed.

  “I met her through work. She applied for a position with Stiles Security and Investigation.”

  That made sense. His whole life was work, so where else would he spend enough time with a woman to fall for her?

  “She was a professional bodyguard. Ex-military. Had a sharp mind for strategy, was proficient at close combat, and could outshoot me nine times out of ten. I gave her the job because she was the best applicant by a mile.”

  I swallowed a pang of jealousy. Stupid. To be jealous of a dead woman. But she was everything I wasn’t, and she sounded perfect for Connor. While he and I fit together like… well, I wasn’t sure how we fit together exactly, they would’ve worked like a well-oiled machine. And now I was thinking of them moving together with oil in a different way. I was an idiot.

  Connor’s face was strained. A tiny ripple on the surface that hinted at turbulence deep below. It was hurting him to tell me this, and my mind was busy conjuring the green monster.

  “We understood each other. The job. The demons. The release of someone to share it with. We got engaged. A month later, she was killed. The job we shared—the one that brought us together—killed her.”

  My stomach dropped, and the green monster vanished without a trace. “I’m so sorry.”

  Connor went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “She was trained to anticipate and defend against physical threats, and she was an expert at it. The Taste Society had a VIP client who needed a traditional bodyguard as well as a Shade, and so I gave her the job. But the assassin found a way around both of them. I believe it must have been Stalenburg.”

  Goosebumps pricked along my arms, and my mind dredged up the day I’d first heard the name Stalenburg. The sweat-soaked hitman who’d spoken the three syllables in a reverent whisper. Connor telling me she was regarded responsible for every fatal poisoning of Taste Society clients protected by Shades in Los Angeles over the past fourteen years. That she never made mistakes, that no one had anything on her.

  He hadn’t mentioned she’d also killed his fiancée.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said again, feeling like a broken record. But no words would fix this, soothe this. Nothing could.

  “I’m telling you what happened because I love you, Isobel Avery.”

  If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Connor choked up as he said those astonishing words.

  “You do?”

  He started as if I’d shocked him. “Of course. Isn’t it obvious? I thought you knew.”

  “Um—”

  “Why else would I work so hard at being a suitable life partner for you? Someone who opens up to you, is less than hopeless at communicating, and—God forbid—tries to make you smile by making stupid jokes?”

  “Wow.” I could barely get the word out. My eyes were wet, and my heart was expanding like somebody had hooked it up to a helium pump.

  “But I can’t be with you when you recklessly throw yourself into danger without even taking precautions.”

  And just like that, my balloon popped. And plummeted to the ground. Where it was torn to shreds by a passing lawn mower.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “I ran into Levi today, and he told me about your plan to confront that human-trafficking doctor. Inadvertently that is, he assumed I already knew.”

  Oh no.

  Desperation to save the girls had driven me to lengths I’d never thought I’d go to. I would’ve done almost anything to get Doctor Dan to talk, to tell me where they were being held. But it wasn’t the line I’d been prepared to cross that bothered Connor. It was the danger I’d put myself in to cross it.

  This was going to be bad.

  “It’s one thing for you to be a Shade. I mean, that’s bad enough, but fatalities are very rare and you’re trained for it. But this?” His gray eyes met mine, and they were raw with anger. “This is another thing entirely. Why would you take that risk alone? Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

  He wasn’t going to like my answer, but I had to give him the truth. “Because… you would’ve stopped me.”

  “You’re damn right I would’ve stopped you. It was an insane risk!”

  I opened my mouth to explain, but Connor lifted his hand. “It’s done now, and I didn’t bring it up to argue about it.” There was a long pause. Maybe the longest of my life. “You asked me to communicate with you, to trust you and be vulnerable with you. Well, this is me being vulnerable and communicating. I’m asking you to stop this reckless behavior because I’ve already lost the love of my life once, and I can’t go through that again. Can you promise me that?”

  “Yes, of course!” I wanted to shout.

  I wanted to cry.

  I wanted to fall on my knees and beg his forgiveness.

  Yet I sat there frozen instead.

  Just yesterday I’d received a postcard from one of the girls I’d saved. How could I promise not to put myself in danger if the cost was other people’s lives? Innocent people’s lives. I might not be overly qualified, but I kept finding myself in positions where I was the only one around to help.

  Connor’s mask—the one I’d been so honored he’d let down for me—slammed into place. He carefully slid Meow off his lap and stood. Then he reached into his breast pocket and withdrew an envelope, giving me a déjà vu moment of the first day I’d ever met him. He handed the envelope to me.

  I cracked it open. Inside were the plane tickets he’d bought for us to fly to Australia together.

  “Maybe Etta would like to go with you,” he said quietly.

  Then he walked out of my apartment.

  2

  PRESENT DAY

  Before Connor had finished walking out of my life, I’d resolved to win him back. Pity it wasn’t just a matter of cooking him a roast the way it would’ve been to return to Meow’s good side. The same trick worked for my roommate, actually. Alas, Connor was a harder nut to crack.

  It had been a full ten days since he’d walked out of my apartment. Ten days since I’d seen him. I’d tried to change that, but my new client was selfish and demanding, which meant I’d had no scheduled time off whatsoever. On the few occasions I’d had a surprise hour to spare and driven to Connor’s house or workplace, he’d been out. But this wasn’t the kind of thing that could be resolved with a phone call, no more than with the aforementioned roast, and so it was that I was formulating a more sophisticated plan.

  But right now I was at a candlelit dinner with the wrong man.

  I rolled the tiramisu around my mouth. The powerful flavors of the coffee and liqueur, the sweetness of the sugar, and the bitterness of the powdered cocoa, formed an ideal combination for concealing poisons.

  “Got plans after we finish dessert?” the wrong man asked me.

  He was twenty-four years old
with a round, boyish face, disproportionately full lips, and hair that was supposed to be windswept but had in fact been attentively tousled. It would’ve been a pleasant enough face to have dinner with if familiarity hadn’t soured my perception of it.

  “Not with you,” I said, pushing the tiramisu over to him.

  Safe. I was almost disappointed it was free of dangerous substances.

  Rick the Prick, as I’d nicknamed him, smiled. “Really? You’d think with what my father’s paying you, you’d put out too.”

  I resisted the urge to slam my dessert fork into the hand that began fondling my leg under the white linen tablecloth.

  Only because I didn’t want my own tiramisu to taste like blood though.

  “For babysitting you? I should’ve asked him to pay me more.” My acerbic reply trailed away to a whisper as someone neared the table, and I pasted a smile on my face. We were supposed to be a happy couple.

  Rick the Prick made a strangled noise in his throat, and for a second I thought I’d made good on that dessert fork after all, but then I realized the person approaching was walking fast and clutching a steak knife.

  I stood up.

  Rick darted behind me. The bastard.

  The guy with the steak knife was over sixty with a shock of white hair and bushy eyebrows. Those eyebrows drew down farther when he was faced with me instead of Rick.

  “Hide behind your woman, will you? You cheating, chicken-livered sonofabitch!”

  His face was flushed. His hands shaking. I was guessing he was one of the unfortunate retirees who’d been scammed by Rick the Prick, and I was tempted to let him have at it.

  Tempted, but not overcome.

  I held out my hands in a placating gesture that doubled as a ready self-defense position. “Please, sir, put the knife down, and then you can yell at him all you want.”

  Being a physical bodyguard wasn’t part of my job description, but I had a feeling Knightley Senior wouldn’t be very happy with me if I allowed Knightley Junior to get stuck (or sawed at) with a steak knife on my watch. More compellingly, I didn’t want this poor old guy to wind up with criminal charges on top of his other problems.

  “He’s going to court tomorrow anyway,” I reminded him. “Is it really worth your freedom?”

  My words weren’t getting through. I glanced around for one of the waitstaff. A waitress was standing almost within reach, her face frozen. The steak knife guy turned his head to see what I was looking at, and she dumped her tray and its contents with a shriek and fled.

  That was helpful.

  Lucky I’d been keeping up with my self-defense lessons ever since I’d been abducted by a stalker and then narrowly escaped being strangled and stabbed by a human-trafficking scumbag. I was sick of feeling helpless.

  “Please, sir,” I said again.

  He was gripping the steak knife hard enough that his knuckles were white but hadn’t moved closer. Undecided whether he wanted to go through me. “How can you stand there and protect that piece of human excrement?” he asked, gaze fixed on Rick.

  Good question. One I didn’t want to examine too closely. I took a risk and snatched up the stainless steel tray the waitress had dropped. It would make a decent shield if it came to that.

  But my sudden movement pushed the assailant into action. He swung the knife—not really at me—maybe just at the world in general. This guy wasn’t an expert by any stretch of the imagination. I got the tray up in time and smacked it into the blade. The unexpected force of my blow startled him into dropping the makeshift weapon.

  Moving fast, I grabbed his now-empty hand and twisted it until he was kneeling on the floor. “Sorry, sir,” I whispered. And I was. I was filled with pity for him. His arm was trembling from shock and adrenaline. His bank account was presumably empty, and I knew what it was like to be desperate for money with debtors breathing down your neck.

  Plus I’d been thinking about stabbing Rick with the cutlery myself.

  The piece of human excrement, as this gentleman had so aptly labeled him, was looking cocky and self-congratulatory now that I’d neutralized the threat. “I want this man arrested immediately! Somebody call the police.”

  I winced and considered letting the man go so he’d have a chance to escape.

  The would-be assailant spat in Rick’s direction. “Enjoy your moment, pond scum. You’ll get what’s coming to you tomorrow.”

  I shifted my grip on the guy’s wrist to ease the ache in my back from bending over him and tried not to glare at Rick too.

  “Definitely should’ve asked for better pay,” I muttered.

  I returned home from my night protecting Rick the Prick and wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and feel sorry for myself. This was officially the worst assignment I’d had as a Shade. Even including the one where I got shot.

  The apartment was empty except for Meow’s welcome company, and I breathed a sigh of relief. She trotted up to me, and I snuggled her into my chest, unsure whether running my hand over her sleek black-and-gray stripes was more soothing for her or me.

  Meow wasn’t particularly interested in people problems, unless they were the kind that had me coming home smelling of seafood, but she was a great cuddle buddy. And she didn’t ask questions. A trait I appreciated more than usual since I’d prefer to stab myself with a dessert fork than think about my life right now.

  I’d managed to convince Rick not to press charges by pointing out it made him look weak to be scared of an old man with some cutlery, and that being gracious about it might garner him some brownie points with the jury tomorrow.

  That was the highlight of my week.

  I fed Meow, watered the houseplant that was starting to die despite my best efforts, and had just changed into my cupcake pajamas when I heard a knock at the door. Praying it was somebody selling something so I could tell them to get lost, I trudged across the new blue-and-gray-flecked carpet and then the ancient ugly linoleum to answer it.

  Two women stood on the landing. One was spirited, slender, stylish, and in her seventies. That was my next-door neighbor.

  The other was in her fifties and had a mild, forgettable presence—a leftover trait from her days as a PI. An extremely misleading leftover trait. That was Connor’s mother.

  Both of them were better than me at shooting, scheming, and just about everything else, and the pair of them were as thick as thieves.

  Etta would probably like to try her hand at thievery, but I was pretty sure Mae had more scruples.

  My neighbor slipped past me through the door. “Mae came by to visit you, but nobody was home, so I invited her to wait at my place. We need to talk.”

  Oh boy. Had any good conversation ever kicked off with those four words?

  Mae shared a smile with me behind Etta’s back and offered a quick hug. “It’s nice to see you. Is now an okay time?”

  I returned the hug and stepped aside. “Yeah, come on in.”

  Connor may or may not have told Mae about our breakup, but Etta certainly would have. She’d been unimpressed by the news and threatened to “slap me until I came to my senses” before I explained that he’d been the one to end it. Still, that didn’t explain why Mae was here. A silly part of me hoped Connor had sent her.

  “I’ll put the kettle on. I think there are some cookies around here somewhere too if Oliver hasn’t polished them off.”

  I went to the kitchen to get things started, and they took seats at the white IKEA dining table. Did they know that Connor had assembled that for me after thugs firebombed the apartment? He’d assembled almost everything in the living room: the coffee table, the muted blue couches, the TV cabinet except for two of its drawers (I’d been preoccupied with stopping Meow running off with the screws). Which meant I couldn’t sit anywhere without being reminded of him. Mae had been a huge help too, helping me wash every single thing that was washable to get rid of the reek of smoke and the ash that had infiltrated every nook, cranny, and cupboard.

  Great, w
e hadn’t even begun “the talk,” and I had a lump in my throat.

  I brought the mugs over along with the few measly cookies Oliver had left me. When we were all nursing steaming cups of tea, Mae studied me. “How are you?”

  “I’m…” My mind ran through all the things I wanted to say. Determined to get him back. Missing him so much. Still clueless about how to work things out between us. “Okay,” I finished lamely.

  Judging by the pity on their faces, they didn’t believe me.

  “Oh, hon,” Mae said.

  Etta shook her head and snagged another cookie.

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t want me telling you this,” Mae went on, “but Connor isn’t doing well either. That’s kind of why I’m here… I mean, I try not to be one of those mothers that meddle in their kids’ affairs, but sometimes Connor needs someone to meddle. He’s too hardheaded for his own good. So I was thinking that maybe I could assist you in helping him come around. If you wanted him to come around, that is.”

  Cripes. The lump in my throat swelled, and I could barely swallow my tea. I wanted more than anything to accept her help. Mae knew Connor better than anyone, plus she’d experienced her own deep personal loss and had gone on to conquer the resulting fear and pain, at least mostly. And Etta, well Etta had racked up more experience with men in her lifetime than a dozen other women combined. I would’ve loved to benefit from their collective wisdom.

  But the decision was out of my hands. It had been from the moment I’d taken on Knightley as a client.

  I’d informed my friends about the breakup as soon as I’d pulled myself together enough to do so. Not because I hadn’t been holding out hope that Connor would change his mind, but because if he did, we’d still be forced to fake our separation so as to not compromise my cover story with Rick the Prick. Even so, I’d delayed announcing my “new boyfriend” to anyone. With the media coverage focused on the scandal and Rick lying low in the lead up to trial according to his daddy’s orders, I’d figured my exact relationship with the accused could stay undefined for as long as possible.