Page 58 of Velvet Vaughn

“Sure. Sure.” Remi let three more blocks go by. “For the record, the walls upstairs are thinner than you’d think for a house that old.”

Leo winced. Damn it. He was too old to be embarrassed about having sex, yet here he was, feeling his face heat. “Your medium bucks don’t cover minding your own business?”

“Nope. That’s executive-level compensation.”

Well, clearly the only dignified response was to stare out the window, and Remi, to his credit, let him have it.

Pinnacle Sports Management occupied the top four floors of the glass tower on Forsyth, and Leo had walked through its lobby five days a week for six years without ever once feeling like a stranger in it.

He felt like one now.

The sensation followed him up the elevator and out into the forty-second-floor reception, where the morning ran as it always did. Phones trilled, the espresso machine hissed in the break alcove, and Marcy sat at her desk, lifting a hand in her usual half-wave without breaking her phone call. All of it familiar down to the carpet, and all of it tilted now, a room he’d known for years rebuilt overnight into a place where one of these smiling, hardworking, deeply ordinary people might be feeding photographs of his clients to a stranger.

He kept his expression easy. That was the job today. Walk in as if nothing had changed and let nobody see that everything had.

“Morning, Leo.” Dani Okafor caught him by the bullpen, ever-present tablet against her chest. “I heard you brought a date to the fundraiser, and she was spectacular. And that you two made googly eyes at each other all night.” She batted her eyes dramatically.

They had not been doing that. Had they? “You heard a lot for somebody who wasn’t there.”

“I have well-placed sources.” Dani’s gaze slid past him and snagged. “And who’s this?”

Leo stepped aside and brought Remi forward with a hand on his shoulder. “Remi Methany. He’s looking to break into the business. He’s going to shadow me for a couple of weeks and learn how the sausage gets made, so to speak. Remi, Dani Okafor, one of our sharpest contract negotiators and the reason half our rookies don’t sign terrible deals.”

Remi extended a hand and turned on something Leo hadn’t seen from him yet. It was an easy, unhurried warmth that transformed his face. “Heard the rookies would be lost without you. Now I see why.”

Dani, who ate flattery from athletes and executives for breakfast and spat out the bones, went briefly and very visibly pink. “Well, aren’t you a tall drink of water?” She recovered, but not fast enough. “Leo, where did you find him?”

“The United States military.”

“They should put him on the recruiting posters.”

It went like that down the length of the floor. Leo walked Remi through the bullpen, the analytics pod, and the corner offices, watching a subtle ripple follow them wherever they went. Priya from marketing abandoned a conversation mid-sentence. Two of the junior agents found sudden reasons to refill water glasses near wherever Remi happened to be standing. Steph from legal looked Remi up and down with frank appraisal and murmured something to her deskmate that made them both laugh.

Remi handled all of it with low-key charm, shaking hands, asking the right questions, remembering names. He was, Leo had to concede, alarmingly good at this. If Leo hadn’t watched the man clear a house with a weapon yesterday, he’d have believed the cover story.

Leo’s nonchalant performance cost him more than he let on. Every handshake meant looking an old colleague in the eye and wondering. Familiar jokes landed half a beat off because some back room of his brain was running everyone he’d ever trusted through a filter he hated having. By the time they reached his own office at the end of the row, the muscles in his cheeks had started to ache from holding the amiable smile in place.

He pushed the door open, took two steps inside, and stopped dead.

Remi nearly walked into the back of him. “What’s up?”

Leo didn’t answer right away. He stood motionless in the middle of his own office and looked at the spotless desk, the squared stacks of paper, and the chair tucked in just so. The hair on his arms came up.

“Somebody was in here.”

Remi moved past him and gave the room a slow, professional read. Nothing in his expression suggested he saw what Leo did. “It’s clean, Leo. Tidy. Nothing’s tipped over or broken, no drawers hanging open.” He glanced back. “What are you seeing that I’m not?”

“My letter opener.” Leo crossed to the desk and pointed, without touching, to a brass-handled blade lying parallel to the edge of the blotter. “It sits at an angle. Always. Forty-five degrees, handle toward the window, every single time I leave this room. It’s been that way since I started working here.”

Remi looked at the letter opener, then at Leo, plainly waiting for the rest.

“It’s a baseball thing.” Leo heard how ridiculous it sounded and admitted it anyway. “When I played, I never stepped on the chalk lines coming off the field. Not once since Little League, not even by accident. You don’t break a streak by tempting it.” He nodded at the desk. “So I leave one thing the same every time I walk out of this office. The opener at forty-five degrees. It’s a stupid little ritual. I’ve done it so long I don’t even think about it anymore.” He looked up. “And it’s squared off flat against the blotter. Somebody picked it up, put it back down, and didn’t know it was supposed to be crooked.”

Remi’s effortless charm packed itself away, and the operative surfaced. He no longer looked remotely like he was hoping to break into the agent business.

“Okay.” He kept his voice pitched low for the room and not the hallway. “I believe you. A guy who never once clipped a chalk line knows where he leaves his letter opener.” He scanned the office again, slower this time, reading it as a scene rather than a space. “Could it have been Marcy?”

“Maybe, but she doesn’t like to come in when I’m not here, so she usually tells me.”