Page 26 of Business vs. Pleasure

Ricardo fought back a laugh. “I don’t know. I might have to think about⁠—”

“Oh, fuck you.” August shoved him. “You’d do that job for free.”

“Like hell you will,” Heidi said. “I want my commission, damn it.”

Ricardo laughed. “Okay, okay. Yes, I’m in.”

“Of course you are,” Heidi said. “All right. I’ll send everything over via courier. Apparently Fuckknuckle McFuckhead is hosting a charity gala next weekend, and the ladies will be especially happy if the job is done there.”

“Ooh, you hear that?” August lit up. “That means we can bump our rating back up!”

“Yes, you can,” Heidi said. “So don’t fuck this one up.”

With that, the call ended. Ricardo tossed his phone aside and leaned back against the headboard, fingers laced together behind his head.

“Well,” he said. “Looks like we’re back in business. Again.”

CHAPTER 8

A solid week of downtime—not to mention traveling to Tucson—between The Job that Shall Not be Named and taking out the charity-thieving douchecanoe wrought miracles on August’s outlook on life. Admittedly, a lot of that positive spin came in the form of retail therapy’s steady dopamine drip, but happy was happy and expensive clothes were healthier than a ketamine addiction. Even the scorching Arizona sun couldn’t slow him down.

Best of all was Ricardo had flown in the same tailor who’d made August’s gorgeous, ruined suit. Or rather…

“It was going to be a birthday gift,” Ricardo said as the two of them stopped outside the luxury hotel where the tailor had met with them. “But I couldn’t bear having to listen to you complain about your precious suit any longer.” He raised his voice an octave as he went on. “Only fifty of those suits are made a year, Ricardo, hand-sewn by the master tailor himself, there's a waitlist fifteen years long and I'm not on it because I already had a fucking suit!"

A lesser man might have felt mocked, even belittled, but August was comfortable enough with his own personality that he could admit Ricardo was right. He was wholly prepared to make bitching about twill and silk his entire personality for the next month, but his husband had saved them both the trouble.

“Well, aren’t you just an everyman’s Nostradamus?” August purred as he wrapped his arms around Ricardo’s shoulders. “Thank you, baby.” He kissed him right there in the street, a little peck that turned into something longer and deeper when Ricardo didn’t shy away like he sometimes did when August was affectionate in public. “You going to scout the location?” he asked when they reluctantly separated.

“We’ve scouted as much as we can. I’m going to see a man about a gun.”

August laughed. “I love it when I can’t tell if you’re using innuendo or not!” He leaned in. “If you let anyone who isn’t me touch your gun, we’re going to have problems. This is supposed to be a subtle job, remember?”

“I’m subtle,” Ricardo said, completely deadpan. “This is my subtle face.”

August hid his face in Ricardo’s shoulder for a second as he got the worst of his sudden bout of giggles out. Decorum, damn it! It was hard not to let go a bit, though; it felt like they’d been serious for so long his face was going to stick that way, and unruffled wasn’t how August wanted to go through life.

Ricardo squeezed his hand, then stepped back. “Meet at the hotel?”

“I shouldn’t be more than a few hours,” August agreed. He had a little more than a suit fitting to attend to while he was out.

Reconnaissance was sometimes a job best done over drinks, after all.

There didn’t always have to be personal contact with the person who hired them on a job. In fact, most of the time it was better if there wasn’t any personal contact; that was what their handlers were for, after all. The more layers of plausible deniability between client and hitman, the better it was for both of them. But Mrs. Harrington Redham, III, who said she’d be damned if she gave up the name after everything she went through to keep it for so long, had specially requested a personal conversation with the people she’d hired to do the job.

Could it be a double-cross? Possibly, but in this case August didn’t see any need for it. She probably just wanted to make sure she was getting what she paid for—a swift resolution to a situation that had only gotten worse since the early days of her marriage.

And there she was, sitting at a little table in the corner of the bar where August had arranged to meet her, nice enough but far from packed that afternoon. She was wearing a vintage Chanel dress that reminded him of cotton candy, but the drink in front of her was straight whiskey.

August sat down at the table behind her, scooting his chair back until the legs gently bumped her. “Oh, excuse me,” he said, but didn’t turn around. He watched her in the reflective lens of his glasses, making sure she didn’t turn either. If she did, he was out of here.

She startled but didn’t move. “It’s all right,” she said after a moment.

“Thanks so much.” August waved down a waiter and ordered a Manhattan, and only after it arrived did he continue. “How are you holding up, Mrs. Redham?”

“Honestly?” Her laugh sounded a little forced. “I’m wound so tight I feel like I might burst apart.”

August hummed. “That’s totally normal when you’re on the verge of getting out of prison.”