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Harrison stared daggers at me for a moment longer, then muttered a curse and walked out of the room. The front door slammed hard enough to shake the whole condo.
“Sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, you should not have,” Archer said coldly. “You don’t need to be briefed on every single aspect of our contract here, Trish. You are here to take care of our daughter.”
I folded my hands in front of my lap and meekly said, “Sorry.”
Archer sighed, then turned to Jordy. “Everyone is overreacting to what happened today. Whoever that was, he probably wasn’t a real threat. Just a civilian.”
“A civilian who jumped from the roof into an apartment window on the other side of an eighty-foot drop?” Jordy replied. “I’m with Harrison on this one.”
“We did our job,” Archer insisted. “We identified a threat, then scared them away. We don’t need to dwell on it to any further degree. The head of security thinks we did a good job.”
“Yeah, well, I hold myself to higher standards than whoever is writing us a check,” Jordy muttered. “I’m going to get started on dinner.”
After he was gone, I started to retreat upstairs to check on Kaylee. But Archer grabbed my arm to stop me.
“Forgive me for being harsh, but I am quite serious about what I said,” he told me. His blue eyes were as cold as ice. “You are here to do a job. That job does not require you to know every single piece of information aboutourjob. I hope I will not have to tell you this again.”
“I understand,” I said.
Kaylee and I played Minecraft in her room for an hour. She seemed unaware that an argument had taken place downstairs, and was more concerned with harvesting enough gold ore to make a special pickaxe in the game. When it was time to eat, everyone sat down except Harrison.
“Where’s daddy?” Kaylee asked.
“He’s out running some errands,” Jordy said smoothly. “If you eat all your vegetables, you can have some special Norwegian chocolate I brought home for you.”
Kaylee squealed excitedly and forgot all about Harrison’s absence.
The mood was tense after dinner. Archer found a cricket match between Pakistan and Australia on TV, and spent most of the match trying to explain the rules of the game to Kaylee. Jordy watched Netflix on his laptop with his headphones on. I wasn’t sure how to navigate the environment after the argument they’d had, so I excused myself up to my room to listen to a podcast.
I was journaling about the day when I heard someone come up the steps. I expected it to be Jordy, but it was Harrison’s huge frame that walked past in the hall. He slowed down, then stepped back until he was in the doorway. His presence made me uncomfortable, especially after the way he had snapped at me today, so I pretended like I didn’t know he was there and kept scribbling in my notebook.
After a long silence, he said, “I was a dick earlier. Sorry.” And then he walked away without waiting for a response. As soon as I heard his door close down the hall, I let out a deep breath that I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
That was weird. I never would have expected Harrison to apologize to anyone, let alone me.
Kaylee’s bedtime routine put me in a better mood. After her bath, Jordy took over and read her a bedtime story. Not sure what else to do, I said goodnight to everyone and went to bed early.
But I quickly found myself unable to sleep. I was tired, but the time difference was still playing havoc with my internal clock. I tossed and turned for two hours before finally crawling out of bed. I had heard that a warm glass of milk helped people sleep, so I went downstairs to try that. I tip-toed across the living room in the dark before motion on the couch made me jump.
“Shit-fuck!” I blurted out.
Jordy sat up on the couch. “Damn, Trish. Didn’t know you could curse like a sailor. Good thing Kaylee’s not around.”
My pulse was pounding in my temple, so I took a deep breath to relax myself. “I’m usually good about censoring myself. You scared me half to death! What are you doing down here?”
He flicked on the lamp next to the couch. “Was gonna ask you the same thing.”
“I’m still jet-lagged. Can’t sleep. I was going to get a glass of warm milk.”
“Got some sleeping pills, if you need one,” he replied.
I started to decline, then stopped myself. “Actually, yeah. I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”
He rose from the couch wearing only a pair of tight boxer-briefs that hugged his muscular thighs. He disappeared into the kitchen, then returned with a pill and a glass of water.
“Don’t worry, it’s not strong,” he said. “But it’ll help.”
