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She studied the red glass in her hand. The fake diamonds glinted in the light.
Was Ezra right? Was she worse than the men they were targeting?
She never would’ve let anything blow back on him. Until last night, he’d had plausible deniability. He’d done nothing wrong. He worked with a paying customer. Yeah, that’s all she was supposed to be.
Her eyelids started to droop, so she set the topper down to finish drying before tackling the other side.
A quick nap and she could get back at it. She couldn’t let the team down. She set an alarm for an hour on her phone, folded her arms on the workbench, and lay her head down.
Sleep fell over her quickly, but dreams of Ezra plagued her.
In that light, sleepy dream, she was entranced by his gentle smile, the roped muscles of his forearms, the bulk of his chest. She reached for his talented hands to pull him close.
The loud blaring of the alarm jolted her awake, pulling her from Ezra once again. With her eyes still mostly closed, she reached out to turn off the horrible ringing.
In her fumbling, a nagging thought poked the back of her mind. But she continued to stretch out her arm.
Then suddenly she was wide awake and conscious of the fact that she’d bumped the topper. Everything moved in slow motion. She saw it doing a wobbly roll off the edge of the table but she couldn’t grab it.
She practically leaped onto the workbench to catch it, but she didn’t move fast enough. As she lay sprawled over the table, fake diamonds scattered under her, digging into her skin, the topper fell to the floor and broke.
London stared at it for a full minute unable to comprehend what she’d done.
Then she scrambled off the table and around to the other side. She carefully lifted pieces.
“Shit. This thing is cursed.” She mentally berated herself for not securing the topper better, for not just going up to bed, and for screwing up everything with Ezra.
After setting all the pieces back on the table, she made a fresh pot of coffee. “No sleep for the wicked. Karma is a bitch.”
She spent hours gluing the topper back together, but every time she had a good portion together, another piece fell off. She couldn’t figure out if the glue wasn’t working or if the damn thing was really cursed.
By three am, she gave up. She had tiny cuts all over her fingers from the glass, but the glue was at least keeping them from bleeding everywhere. Nothing was working. She was a total failure. She let the team down, not to mention all the people who would’ve been helped by the sale of this thing.
She snapped a picture of the pile of glass and sent a text to Nikki and Audrey. I failed.
Then she opened a new bottle of wine, sat on the couch, and cried.
“What kindof fucked up mess is this?”
London popped one eye open to find Nikki staring down at her. “What are you doing here?”
“Had a feeling you were a mess.”
London sat up and ran a hand over her face. “How did you get in here?”
Nikki shot her a disbelieving look. “Thief, remember?”
The bell rang and Nikki answered the door.
“How bad is it?” Audrey asked.
“Pretty bad.” Nikki pointed at her. “Please tell me I never looked like that.”
“Thanks, guys.” London rolled her eyes, but the movement hurt too much, so she closed them again and lay back down.
She heard her friends moving around but couldn’t muster enough care to look to see what they were doing. Then she smelled coffee. Her stomach growled but the brew smelled good.
Cool fingers brushed her hair away from her face. “Go take a shower. You’ll feel a little better,” Audrey said.
