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He turned to his computer to see what he could find on her. Shit. Not a great credit score. Not awful, but still not great. They’d need to work on that.
Nothing came up about her back injury. Likely, he’d have to search deeper to find any information about that. Which he wasn’t prepared to do yet. Her former job had been running a small team at a grocery store. She’d lost it when they’d sold out to a big chain and that chain had closed them down.
Fuck. He hated that sort of shit.
And yeah, she did live in a crappy neighborhood. But it wasn’t the worst neighborhood.
Something else came up and he frowned, staring at an older image of her with her arm wrapped around a dark-haired kid. This had to be the boy Raul had mentioned when he took her home. He looked to be about thirteen but was already bigger than her. The article was from three years ago. And it was about a scholarship he’d won to some fancy school.
Was that her son? He didn’t really look like her, and they had different last names, but that didn’t mean anything. Okay, unexpected, but not a problem.
Grady shut down the search and got back to work. Tomorrow night would be soon enough to find out more about Ms. Effie Stephenson. Not that he needed to know everything for her to work for him.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to know more.
Which could be an issue.
9
Effie stood outside in the cold.
She’d managed to find her scarf. But her gloves had given up the will to live about two weeks ago and she didn’t want to put a hat on and ruin her hair. She’d spent time curling it into soft waves that fell down her back. Her hair was her best feature, if she did say so herself.
Which she never would. Because that seemed rude.
This morning when she woke up, she’d been a bit stiff but not really in any pain. And let’s face it, she was a thirty-five-year old, sleeping on a pull-out sofa. Being stiff in the mornings was to be expected.
It was five minutes to seven, and the sensible thing would have been to wait inside until she saw the car pull up. However, she didn’t want to give Grady any excuse to try to get inside her apartment. It actually looked better on the outside than it did on the inside. It was a big house that had been cut up into four one-bedroom apartments. She and Brooks lived on the bottom floor, which was good for her back. Going up and down stairs all the time wasn’t ideal. But the downside was that she could hear every time her neighbors moved around upstairs.
Including when they got overly enthusiastic in bed.
And considering the upstairs neighbor was a guy in his twenties, that happened a lot.
The car pulled up and this time, it was a longer car. The door opened as she moved toward it, and to her surprise, Steele got out.
He was dressed in a huge peacoat that must have been made for him. It fit him perfectly, and those broad shoulders didn’t dress in off-the-rack clothing.
He looked around, scowling at her.
Uh-oh.
Was he here to tell her that she was fired before she’d even started? She’d expected Grady, not him.
But she managed a big smile. “Good evening.”
“Not a fan of your neighborhood, Spitfire.”
Okay. So they weren’t doing pleasantries?
“It’s fine. Really. It looks worse than it is.”
He shot her a look that told her he thought that was pure bullshit. “Not a fan of you waiting out in the cold either.”
Right.
That made her feel surprisingly warm. Well, inside at least. She was still freaking cold.
“I’m good.”
