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“All of them? Do we pay her enough for that?”
“If it was anyone else, I’d say yes. But I don’t want her stressed out.” He didn’t like how often her door had been knocked on in the short time they were together just before.
“Keep an eye on that,” Steele commanded. “She’s got a lot going on. She doesn’t need extra stress.”
“Her boy is good?”
“Sixteen going on forty. Seems like he tries to take care of her as much as she does him. Smart. Empathetic. Yeah, he’s a good kid. But he shouldn’t be putting up with shit from rich assholes at his school.”
“Do you want me to take care of that?”
“I’ve got some names, I’ll send them to you. You see what you can find out. All of this will likely be coming from their fathers.”
“Want to send a warning?” Grady asked.
“Yeah. A warning to begin with. More if necessary.”
“I’ll get onto that.” Nothing would give him more joy.
“We also need to do something about her upstairs neighbor. He’s been keeping her up late at night. I’ll send one of the guys around to give him a warning.”
Grady nodded. “So what are we going to do about Effie?”
About their feelings for her. About their need for her.
Steele frowned off into the distance.
“We both want her,” Grady said.
Still nothing.
“But she works for us and she’s not a one-night stand, Steele. I won’t risk hurting her. Or losing a damn good assistant.”
Steele turned to look down at him. “Pretty sure she’s Little. Definitely submissive. She needs help. Protecting. Guiding. She got dizzy when she stood up earlier.”
Alarm filled him. “What?”
“Says she gets low blood pressure and poor circulation from her back injury. Doesn’t take care of herself. Always smiling even when she doesn’t mean it.”
“I don’t know about that last part. She doesn’t smile all the time with us.”
“That’s a good thing.”
Grady was startled for a moment, but then he realized that Effie’s smiles weren’t always genuine. They were a mask.
“She hides her true thoughts,” he said.
“And only lets them out when she feels safe,” Steele added.
“Since when are you more insightful than me?” he complained.
Steele grinned. And Grady realized this was the deepest conversation they’d had in a long time. For the last year, it had felt like Steele was pulling away. Not on purpose. Not because he didn’t care. But because life had become a pit of nothing . . . and Grady understood that. He’d felt that for a long time.
But now Steele was coming back. He’d smiled more in the last few weeks than he had in the year before.
And that was because of Effie.
Grady could kiss her just because of that.
