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She didn’t feel that same warmth of welcome coming from Casper Kingston.
* * *
“What sort of name is Persy?” Casper derided as he continued to stare at the tall and stunningly beautiful redhead standing across the room.
“Persephone, who prefers to be called Persy, is one of the new employees we took on four months ago because of the increase in clients,” Sinclair explained pointedly, the reprimand still in his tone. “She returned this morning from three days’ leave to be informed she’s now head of your new security detail.”
Casper knew he was being rude, but he’d already guessed this woman’s reason for being here. She was a part of the ambush he’d referred to when he’d entered Sinclair’s office. The head of it, it now seemed.
Because the men in his family were presenting him with a fait accompli in the mistaken belief he wouldn’t react badly in front of four of their employees.
They were wrong.
He knew the three men in the room who weren’t part of his family, had worked with all of them in the past. He also remembered doing the usual security check on Persephone Jones five months ago, prior to her being offered a job with their family security company a month later. But he had never met her. Until now.
He went over in his mind what he knew about her. She lived in London and was aged twenty-four. She had spent five years in the military, one in Special Ops, before resigning almost a year ago for family reasons. Her records hadn’t said what those family reasons were, but Casper knew her only family was her father. She’d also never been married, so he could rule out a nasty divorce as being the reason. Perhaps the ending of a long-term relationship?
For whatever reason, Persephone Jones had left the military, then spent the next six months unemployed. No doubt dealing with that family reason before applying to Kingston Security for employment five months ago.
She had named Major Coleman, a man the Kingston family had worked with closely a couple of times in the past and an associate of Casper’s brother Max and his cousin Adam, as her main reference. The major had been her last commanding officer, and he had assured them Persephone Jones was more than suitable for being offered a job at Kingston Security, based on her performance when she was a member of his Special Ops team.
Casper had seen photographs of Persy, of course, but some had been black-and-white, and in others, she had been wearing unflattering army fatigues. None of them had revealed that, at six feet tall, she was only two inches shorter than Casper’s own height. Her shoulder-length hair was pulled back, possibly from habit after spending those years in the military, and secured in a no-nonsense ponytail at her crown. A style that didn’t detract from the deep red shade, shot through with gold, in the slightest. Her brow was smooth, indicating she was unperturbed by their current verbal exchange. Her eyes were the deep clear gold of fresh honey. She had a straight nose set between high cheekbones.
But her full and pouting lips completely dispelled her otherwise air of severity in a navy-blue tailored suit and plain pale blue cotton shirt.
Casper could easily imagine taking his time kissing and enjoying those pillowy lips. Or, even better, feeling them wrapped around his—
“Do you have a problem with a woman being assigned as lead on your security detail, Mr. Kingston?” those delicious lips now challenged.
“I don’t have a problem with women for any reason. What I do have a problem with is being assigned a security detail at all!” He gave his brothers and Adam another narrow-eyed glance. “Especially when I was brought here under the false pretense of meeting with a potential client.”
“That isn’t a false pretense,” Adam dismissed. “We just asked you to come into the office half an hour earlier than we’re expecting Morozov to arrive for his appointment.”
Casper gave a disgusted shake of his head. “Why are we even considering taking him on as a client? Every piece of information on him makes it obvious he’s a Russian oligarch who robbed his people blind and then left the country. He’s got more money stashed away in offshore bank accounts than he could possibly spend in a dozen lifetimes.”
“No one said we’re taking him on as a client,” Sinclair dismissed.
“Then why—”
“Casper, stop trying to distract us from the original subject,” Adam rasped.
Sinclair nodded in agreement. “If you recall—which I know you do—when we visited you in hospital after the accident, we discussed the fact that someone is obviously targeting you,” he reminded. “I accept that until the accident, it was only small stuff…puncturing your tires, scratches on the paintwork. Things you said you didn’t think were worth mentioning and were easily fixed.” The expression on Sinclair’s face told him his oldest brother didn’t agree with that decision. “But we all now know how quickly that situation escalated.”
“So much so, they almost succeeded in killing you,” Max reminded angrily.
Casper inwardly admitted that, at the time, he’d found the punctured tires and scratches nothing more than an irritation. The deliberate vandalism had always happened when he left his car outside a club or restaurant or a private residence in London if he was spending the night with someone, rather than parking the car in a secure car park. At the time, he had reasoned that it was London, and these things were bound to happen in a city.
The initial petty damage certainly hadn’t seemed worth mentioning to the rest of his family, and his mechanic and friend, Mike Somers, had always been able to fix the problem within hours.
He and Mike had been at university together, the hacker and the guy who hadn’t seen an engine he couldn’t fix or hotwire. The two of them had found the latter very useful on the morning they’d decided to move the porter’s car across the university quad and into the narrow archway, which was the only entrance into that part of the university.
The dean hadn’t been as amused, but he’d never managed to discover who was responsible, so the crime went unpunished.
After university Mike had taken his natural talent with engines and opened his own workshop and garage, where he now serviced only high-end cars such as Ferraris, Porsches, and Jaguars. His young sister Rachel acted as his receptionist. Hopefully, Casper’s Jaguar was on its way to that workshop right now.
Which didn’t in the least answer why Casper had been singled out by some faceless and nameless person to be the recipient of the initial petty destruction to his car. Or the more serious crime of a week ago.
But Max was right. The situation had escalated quickly. So much so the person responsible had almost succeeded in killing him.
