by Nana Malone
It was probably silly. Maybe I’d just misplaced the folder.
You didn’t.
Damn it. Why was I so much like him? But I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I went down the rabbit hole. So instead of pouring myself another glass of wine, I switched out my shoes for boots. I wanted nothing more than to sleep, but I needed to ask the questions.
I opened my door to find the one person I didn't want to see again today, or any other day for that matter, on the other side my door. "Hi neighbor, how's it going? Can I borrow a cup of sugar?"
He winked at me when he said sugar. And that made me want to both laugh and slap him.
"Sorry, fresh out. All I have is piss and vinegar." I shrugged. He laughed at that.
"Well I figured since we're neighbors, and we work together, and we’re trying to get along, we can occasionally share a meal. I've got some takeaway. Vindaloo curry. Since you're full of spice, I figured you might enjoy it."
My stomach grumbled. Oh my God, I would have enjoyed it. But no. I had somewhere to be, and since I was pretty certain he wasn't going to just give me his curry without also insisting on his company, I had to pass. "You know what, it's been a very long day. I'm really in no mood."
"Oh, that's too bad. I guess you don't want to hear about the VIP client I saw today?"
So that’s what he’d been doing. Asshole. "You know what? I don't even care. I'll see you around."
He called after me as I marched to the elevator. "Where are you off to?"
"I have a hot date."
His brow snapped down. "We haven't even had our second date yet. How are you on a different date for a different app?"
"Hey, all that was said was that I had to use the app to see how it worked. Three dates. No one said that I had to exclusively use that app. Besides, our dates aren't real."
His grin was slow, and he leaned against my door forcing my gaze to his shoulders and the way his t-shirt tapered at the waist. God, he was so sexy just standing there being a total pain in my ass. Why was it the one man that I never wanted to see again was the one man I saw everywhere?
"Well you have fun on your date. Just know that you still owe me two more dates. If you want LL Hotels, all you have to do is resist me. You can try dating someone else if you want, but I'll be the one you'll be thinking about."
One of these days I really was going to slap him. Could be any day now. Swear to God.
In my fog of exhaustion, I took a taxi. I couldn't be bothered to deal with the rigmarole of the tube. Within thirty minutes, I was in East London somewhere near the O2 arena. It was a Wednesday, so the crowds weren't nearly as crazed as usual. I took about two wrong turns before I finally found the place.
It had an old world look to it. Complete with cobblestones out front. But inside, it was a full-on, modern-day ink studio. A girl with a pierced eyebrow, jet black hair, pierced septum, and something poking out of her cheek smiled at me. "Hi, can I do something for you?"
"Yes, actually." I knew what she was seeing when she looked at me; someone too clean cut, someone who wouldn't understand anything about this lifestyle. Yeah, what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her.
She didn't know about the tattoos I had to cover birthmarks. She didn't know about the time I pierced my eyebrow to give myself a different look because dad said I needed to mix it up. She didn't know anything about me. What she saw was a clean cut, perky little publicist. Which was fine, because that's what I needed her to see. "I've got this tattoo I've been trying to locate and identify. Word is you might be able to help."
“I could take a look at it and see if we may have done something like it. But we generally don't like to copy."
"It's not for me. I'm just looking for a person who has it."
She frowned. "We take confidentiality seriously, you know, just like a doctor."
While this was one of the nicer tattoo parlors I'd ever seen in my life, who was she kidding? This was no doctor's office. "Yeah, just like a doctor except not. There's no confidentiality required. Unless someone came in here with an NDA for the design or a copyright form, which is highly unlikely. If you can just tell me if you did the tattoo, and if so, if the person has been in lately, that would be helpful."
She pursed her lips as if she didn't want to help me, but then she went to the computer, so that was promising. "Yeah sure, show me what you want."
I pulled out my phone and pulled up the picture of the dagger. "I'm just trying to find out who originally designed it, or if you know anyone whose had that tattoo done lately. It's really important." I left out that this was a wild goose chase.
She frowned and stared at it. "I don't see it in our database. You sure it's from here?"
I scrunched my nose. "No. But a friend told me you might recognize the artist’s work."
Her brows furrowed even more. "I can't seem to find anything that matches it exactly. Do you know the date?"
I shook my head. "No, I'm sorry. I have no information."
The girl shrugged. "Wish I could help you. If you can give me something to help narrow it down a little further, that'd be great. It might help me figure out whose tattoo it is. In the meantime, what I can do is have Tate make a copy of that photo and have the other people who aren't on duty right now have a look around. Does that work?"
I sighed. "Yeah, it does. Cheers."
I was chasing at windmills. There was nothing here.
It was a hunch. No big deal. You’re not him.
But could I let it go?
I left the parlor with a niggling sense of unease. I was missing something.
No. You aren’t. Let it go.
I pushed out and made my way back to the main road to catch my Uber. Then I felt it. The eyes on me.
I was losing my mind. I had to be. Is it worse to be paranoid or to be right? There were more pedestrians out now than there were earlier. There were none I recognized, but I couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching.
Heart thumping, I ducked into the nearest pub and prayed to God there would be a way out the back.
Roone…
“We lost her, you twat.”
“What are you talking about? You think it was my fault we lost her? I thought you were the intelligence expert.” I searched the Slug and Lettuce pub again, looking for a hint of her, but she wasn’t there. Either she’d doubled back, or we’d lost her. How the hell was she able to give us the slip? She was almost as good as Lucas.
No one was that good, but she could give her brother a run for his money.
“Listen double O zero, I wasn’t the one who was a little overzealous about tailing my girlfriend. When was the last time you brushed up on your covert surveillance techniques?”
“Well, fuck me. I’ve got my very own Money Minus.”
Ariel smirked. “Oh, I get it a take on Moneypenny with a dig. You’ve been waiting to use that line for a long time, haven’t you?”
I nodded, pretty pleased with myself. “Yeah. I’ve been hanging on to that one for a while.”
“Well stop joking around. We have to find your girlfriend.”
I rolled my eyes. “Stop calling her that.”
“Well, when you jeopardize a discreet tail, just because some guy checked your girlfriend’s ass out, then I’ve got to give you shit.”
“She’s not my girlfriend. In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t even like her.”
“Oh, I noticed. Everybody notices how much you two dislike each other. I think you forgot that you’re supposed to be getting close to her.”
“Well,” I shrugged, “she likes to fight with me.”
“Is that the basis of all your relationships? I thought I was the crazy one. How is it that I’m the straight guy in this partnership?”
I couldn’t help it, my gaze flickered over her body. “I promise, you are not the guy in this partnership.”
She stuck out her boobs even more, making me laugh. “I know right? Pretty damn fabulous.”
I groa
ned. “Seriously?”
She snort-laughed. “You should see your face right now. And if you’re done dicking around, we need to double back and see if we can find little Miss Houdini. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she made us and gave us the slip.”
“When the Blake Security guys gave us the low down, they were very specific that her father had tried to train her over the years. We don’t know how successful he was.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
We were just pushing out the doors of the pub, when Ariel’s phone rang. She sighed and grinned up at me. “Bingo!”
My brows lifted when I saw it was Jessa. “Hey Jessa, what’s up?” Ariel said cheerily.
She was silent for a moment and then nodded. “Yeah, I was just out grabbing a bite to eat. Do you want me to stop by your flat when I get back? Everything okay?”
Jessa said something, and Ariel smiled. “Fantastic. I will bring the wine.”
Ariel’s lips tipped into another smirk. “Looks like I have a date with your girlfriend.”
“She is not my—" Ariel’s fit of laughter made me want to throttle her. “Okay, so Jessa wants to hang out?”
She nodded. “Yup. Sounds like she’s upset about something, so I’m guessing she definitely saw you.”
“Or you…”
Ariel shrugged. “She saw one of us, or thinks she saw something. Something that was enough to make her spooked. So I’ll go over there and reassure her that everything is just a coincidence, and then we’ll keep a tighter eye on her. I’d hate to have to call in reinforcements. In the meantime, you figure out a way to find that charm you seem to have lost. Because this whole plan relies on you getting extra close to the princess. And right now, you are so far away from that. On a scale from one to never going to get it, you are nowhere near where you need to be.”
I didn’t tell her just how close I’d already been to the princess. I groaned. “Oh my God, are you always this cheesy?”
She grinned. “Yep. I’m always this awesome.”
I rolled my eyes. “You better get home.”
“Don’t miss me too much.”
Nothing to worry about there. “I won’t miss you.”
She grinned. “Oh right, you’ll be thinking about Jessa. Roone and Jessa, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N…”
Her voice trailed as I walked away. Sebastian had partnered me with a twelve- year-old. I wasn’t entirely sure that this wasn’t a punishment of some kind.
20
Roone…
I shifted in the passenger seat of the car as we watched Jessa. The days when she had client meetings were the worst. We needed to rely on eyes in the building, cameras, and that was it. And given her job, she could pretty much interact with just about anyone. Although, once her work for Meet Cute swung into full action, it would be a little bit easier. There would be more meetings with Ariel.
“You look uncomfortable, Roone.”
“Did you have to pick a mini cooper?”
Ariel grinned. “I’ve always wanted one.”
“Why couldn’t you drive one on the island? Why did you torture me with this one?”
“It’s not my fault you’re too tall. I think it’s surprisingly roomy.”
I groaned and shifted again. “You know, one of these days, I’ll pay you back. I’m six foot three.”
“Ah, quit your whining.”
I rolled my eyes. “For your information, it’s called whinging, love.”
She mimicked ‘whinging’ with a high pitch to her voice and tapped away at her laptop. “Keep your eye on the girl, would you?”
That wasn’t hard. It was almost impossible to draw my eyes away from her. The seat she picked was right at the window, which was not the safest if someone was trying to kill her, but it allowed me to see what was going on in the apartment. And the bug we had placed in her purse allowed me to hear most of what was happening. Most of it was boring planning stuff. Although, Evan Millston was starting to get on my bloody nerves. He was almost too accommodating to her. He was probing too much into who the app had paired her with. Yeah, well, they’ll all find out soon enough.
“Listen, can you do me a favor? Take first shift on Jessa tomorrow. There’s something I need to do.”
Ariel raised her brow. “You have another girlfriend that you needed to see?”
I swallowed hard and turned my attention back to Jessa. Ariel was too shrewd sometimes. The last thing I wanted was for her to see any emotion in my eyes. “I want to go place some flowers on my mother’s grave. Tomorrow is the anniversary of her death.”
The ensuing silence in the car was thick and penetrating, and I could feel it winding around me like a boa constrictor threatening to squeeze the life out of me. But then Ariel said something that surprised me.
“Yep, sure thing. Take the whole day. I know her schedule. I can manage it. I’ll call in the freelancers if I need to. And I know this great Irish pub. I’ll have the freelancers on Jessa tonight, and you and I can get a drink.”
I turned to face her, a question on my brow. “Why?”
She shook her head, refusing to look at me. “Because one good thing my father taught me was that when you’re saying I miss you and celebrating someone’s life, you pour a good Irish whiskey. These things are important.”
I didn’t know what to say. But before the thread of emotion choked me, I cleared my throat and muttered a quick thanks. Before we started this assignment, I thought Ariel was a loose cannon. A little too slack with the rules. A little too wild. But, in that moment, I realized she was probably the partner I needed.
Roone…
The blaring ring woke me out of a dead sleep. I smacked the alarm clock several times before I realized it was my stupid phone.
"Someone had better be dying."
"No, not dying. But we got a ping on Evan's background check."
Ariel. Fuck, that girl never slept.
"What did you get?"
"Well, there was a restraining order filed against him. Two actually."
Okay that did it. I sat up, rubbing sleep out of my eyes and scratching my jaw. "What? How did we miss it?"
"Well technically, we didn't. When you told me about your little powwow with him, I ran a deeper check. Just to see. There had been two restraining orders filed against him by the same girl over the course of three years. She would file and then remove it. So I think maybe you and I need to go have a talk with her."
"Yeah, let's go today. After your appointment."
And then it occurred to me that I wasn't going anywhere. “Wait, change of plan, actually. I’ll be with Jessa first shift after all. She emailed me. We’ve got a meeting for the LL hotels account first thing this morning. I’ll need to go to go see my mum after.”
“No problem. I’ll rearrange the schedule for coverage on Jessa when she’s back at the office. You do what you need to do. I’ll run this lead.”
“You know we wouldn’t have to do all this if she just knew what we were doing.”
She sighed. “But it’s fun playing Tetris with her guard rotation, and you know we can’t tell her, so get used to it.”
"Whatever.” It had been worth a shot. “Be careful yeah? I don't exactly feel comfortable with you going by yourself. If this girl is terrified of Evan, she could be pretty desperate. Or worse, she might tell him you came to talk to her. Watch your back."
"I'm not an idiot. I'm also not the princess who needs saving. And you can't be in two places at once, so which is it gonna be?"
"Okay, sorry. Forgive me for caring about my partner." I said.
She paused. "Aw, you realize that's the first time you've called me your partner?"
I groaned. "Don't go getting all sappy on me."
"No sap here, I promise. You’re starting to grow on me too, like fungus.”
I had to laugh at that. “Be careful, yeah?"
"All right. Keep in touch. I'll let you know what I find."
21
Je
ssa…
I still hadn’t shaken the feeling from last night. I kept trying to tell myself I had imagined it. But my brain refused to let it go.
One minute entertaining my father’s delusions, and I was living in fear again. Nope. Not today. I rolled my shoulders.
Roone’s gaze was screwed on me. “You all right, princess?”
“Yep, fine.”
“You’re not pissed or something are you?”
I glared at him. “What? Who would be drunk for a morning meeting? I barely even had a glass of wine last night.”
He shrugged. “You’re just a little green around the gills. That’s why I’m asking.”
“Well, I’m fine.” I didn’t know what the hell to do with a sweet Roone.
Madison was unavailable, so our LL planning meeting for the restaurant event was with her assistant, Ryder Jakes.
There was no doubt about it. Ryder was an asshole. He’d always been an asshole, would always be an asshole. The last meeting I’d had with him, he’d spent staring at my tits and asked me if they were real. He was a first-class, public-school wanker. But I could handle him.
“Ryder, at present the guest list is three hundred. We’ll need to slim down the list if we want to hold it at the restaurant.”
Ryder wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed at the best of times. “Can’t we just change the venue?”
I blinked at him. Roone came to the rescue. “Well, Madison was clear that she wanted to host it at the restaurant because the chef will have a venue in the New York hotel, so it makes sense.”
“Let’s put a pin in it until Madison can just—” He checked his phone. “Oh, Madison is on her way, so she can answer your questions.”
I checked my watch. “We only have twenty minutes, Ryder.”
He shrugged. God, what a waste of time today. We should have rescheduled.
While we waited, Ryder thought a fun game of question and answer was in order. "So come on, you’ve got to tell me where the hip parties are, Jessa. You would know."