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One p.m., and it was time for a murder. Paulo was the wannabe victim, attempting to sing “Here Come the Girls” when he couldn’t hold a note. Except he replaced the “Girls” with “Boys,” an inaccuracy because our visitors were definitely men. Bradley led them inside, half a dozen admittedly handsome specimens, and I realised from the way they moved that Emmy had sent a selection of her Special Projects team to assemble flat-pack furniture. My head said “what a waste,” but my eyes were reasonably happy with the situation.
There were women as well, two of our new employees. Isabella was a Blackwood acquaintance with a love of handicrafts who’d been left in a fragile state after she was trafficked into the US. This would be her first job since the ordeal ended, and Emmy’s mother-in-law had offered to support her. I’d met the woman once before. The wheelchair had surprised me; the look in her eyes, not so much. Marisol was one of us.
Bradley ran past them with an iPad in his hand, tripped over a chair leg, and nearly ended up in Marisol’s lap. She shot out an arm and shoved him upright with a roll of her eyes.
“Thank you, my lovely,” he said. “Okay, guys and gals! I have the layout. We need shelving units here, here, and here…” He gestured like a flight attendant demonstrating the safety procedures. “And the tables go over there.”
“Where did you get those hotties?” Paulo whispered to him as six deadly operators began carrying boxes inside. “This is better than Christmas.”
Bradley gasped. “Nothing is better than Christmas. But Alex is my boss’s personal trainer, and he offered a bunch of gym rats fifty bucks each if they’d help out. And voila! Eye candy, and not the low-calorie version.”
“Are you folks going to help or just stare?” I asked.
Paulo’s mouth was still hanging open. “Can we take option two?”
“Aren’t you seeing that fellow from New York?”
“You’re right—I should send him pictures.”
Alex approached from behind. I didn’t need to turn and look to know it was him; I could tell from the rush of heat between my legs. This was a relatively new phenomenon for me, and apparently not a medical issue. I’d researched to check.
“Where should I put this unit, ma’am? It looks like a checkout counter.”
Ma’am? That was a nice touch.
“Right over there by the window. Here, let me give you a hand. I really appreciate your coming by to help.”
The corner of Alex’s lips twitched because he wasn’t accustomed to me wasting time on pleasantries. He’d better not get used to it. Darla’s personality was an unfortunate necessity, and whenever I spent too much time being fake-nice, I wanted to stick pins through my tongue.
“Makes a change from wrangling Emmy and Sky,” he said, too quietly for anyone else to hear.
“How is the bitch today?”
Another smirk. “Tired.”
“Good.”
“Soon, you’ll be tired too.”
“Also good.”
I found the assembly instructions in the box and scanned them. Seemed straightforward. A reasonably competent child could put this furniture together, or possibly a trained monkey. But Darla? No, she was going to struggle.
“Boy, there sure are a lot of parts here. We need to find these doohickeys first.”
“What doohickeys?” Alex leaned in close to read the booklet over my shoulder, and his hand landed on my ass. “Careful,” I warned under my breath.
“Irresistible,” he murmured back.
I stepped to the side. “That’s an interesting accent. Where are you from? No, wait, let me guess… Poland? I had a Polish neighbour once, and he used to make those little dumplings with the onion and potato.”
“I’m Russian.”
“Oh, boy. I hear it’s real cold there.”
“That depends on which part you go to. Northern Siberia has arctic temperatures, but Sochi’s climate is more like France, just windier.”
