“Of course she knows who you are,” Diana insisted. “That’s what’s so cool about it. You’re royalty. You exist on a different plane than all those show biz people. You’re elegant.”
She was trying her hardest to convince me and since Diana was usually a pretty damn undemanding friend, I couldn’t help but agree. “Fine,” I said. “I will try my hardest to come. But this is exactly the kind of crap my mother would die to know about so if I can’t ditch the asshole than I can’t come.”
Diana pumped a fist. “Yes! I knew you’d cave. And don’t even worry about Flynn. Just use some of your feminine charm.”
I scoffed. “Whatever that’s supposed to mean. He’s not even my type.”
She paused. “You’re not serious, right? That man out there is a Grade A, grass-fed beefcake. He’s everybody’s type.”
“No, he’s not,” I said. “He’s an asshole.”
“Five bucks says you bang before your family gets here,” Diana mumbled under her breath.
I slapped her shoulder. “Don’t even say that. There’s no way.”
“I don’t know…” Diana said, teasing me now. “High emotions? Check. Sexual tension? Check. A big sexy bodyguard tasked with protecting your life at all costs? Check. This is practically out of the ‘We’re Going to Fuck’ handbook.”
“You’re wrong,” I insisted. “Sure, OK, I’ll admit he’s attractive. But I don’t fall for assholes. And Alex Flynn is the world’s biggest one.”
“You’re right about that. Who could forget the Cooper Marson fiasco? But,” she said out of the side of her mouth, “insisting that it’s not going to happen? Double check.” She laughed. “I’m not sure you’ll make it to Friday, actually.”
I rolled my eyes. “Shut up. Again, not going to happen.” To distract her, I picked up the television remote and turned it on. I immediately groaned as the news broadcast showed a picture of my mother waving from the steps leading up to my family’s private jet.
“The royal family of Athea has announced publicly today that they will bring the Royal Crown of Athea with them on their state visit to New York where Queen Amelia Harmont will speak before the UN. The Crown of Athea is one of the world’s most infamous headpieces.”
The picture changed to a shot of the Crown. It was a beautiful piece. Despite my issues with my family, I could admit that. It was made of a spiderweb of intersecting silver bands sprinkled delicately with a host of rainbow jewels, each with a story of its own. There was the St. Mark Ruby, smuggled out of Venice by the daughter of a persecuted nobleman in the fifteenth century; the Sapphire of the Nile, said to have been worn as a ring by Cleopatra herself; the Parisian’s Surrender, a diamond given as a final offering of friendship from France in the eighteenth century; and, of course, Athea’s Own, the centerpiece jewel, a massive emerald found in our own gem mines three hundred or so years ago. It was beautiful on the television, but the screen had no way of capturing the ethereal beauty the crown had to the naked eye. When I was much younger, I frequently begged my father to take me to the vault below the palace to stare at its glory for as long as he’d let me.
In the twenty-one years I’d been alive, the Crown had rarely left its spot in the vault. The only time it was brought out was for important state affairs - christenings and knightings, significant televised speeches and landmark hearings. When those occasions pop up, the Crown is brought out under armed guard and carried in its own private car to wherever its destination. Once it sat atop my grandmother’s silver-white hair, she’s followed at all times by two guards in addition to her own personal guard. These men were in charge of protecting the Crown should the unexpected happen. When this was explained to me by my dad when I was a child, I always pictured the stern-faced, military men charging my grandmother and whipping it off her head, one sprinting away with it tucked under one arm like an American football, the other ahead of him, bowling over the respectable guests of my parents’ events with a single outstretched arm to clear the path. The thought still made me giggle.
“I still can’t believe they’re bringing the Crown to New York,” Diana said, voicing my thoughts. “Doesn’t that just seemed like an invitation to every thief in the city to descend on your house?”
“Only the dumb ones,” I said. “Knowing my mother, that crown is going to be on a lockdown that will rival how she kept ahold of me in high school.”
I switched the channel, annoyed at the coverage my family was receiving. Why couldn’t they just stay in Athea where they belonged?
* * *
Diana and I watched a few episodes of a crappy reality show, neither one of us taking it very seriously. After a few hours, I checked my watch. It was close to seven. Time for dinner and maybe a movie back at the house. I told Diana that I was going to go and she walked me to the door.
“Talk to you tomorrow,” I said, giving her a quick hug.
“Only if you’re not busy doing anything,” she said coyly.
I looked at her, confused.
“Like Flynn,” she said, then laughed at the disgust on my face. She sobered and put one of her hands on each of my shoulders. “Cora. The world of men is made up of assholes and idiots. As someone dating an idiot, I would kill for an asshole. Oh, wait. That’s not what- well, you know what I mean. You don’t need to like him. Just have sex with him so I can live vicariously through you.”
I brushed her hands off my shoulders. “Thanks for that highly comforting advice. I’ll get right on it.”
I escaped into the hall before Diana could harass me further and immediately tripped over Alex Flynn’s leg. He was sitting against the wall, napping, and jerked awake when I stumbled over him.
“Oh, that’s real professional,” I said.
He shrugged and pulled himself up off the floor to tower over me. “It’s boring out here. Where next, Princess?”
I gritted my teeth and ignored him, turning and walking towards the elevator. I didn’t care what Diana said. If I had to choose between idiots and assholes, than I’d be celibate. Flynn might have eyes to make a girl swoon, but his whole shtick just made me want him as far away as possible.
Which is exactly what I’d be arranging when I got back to the manor.
CHAPTER SIX
Alex
In my defense, I hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the hallway. I’d tried to be professional at first, standing straight-backed in front of the door and looking intimidating, if not for the deterrence of any passing-by thug than for my own bored amusement at playing pretend.
It got old quick, another reminder that I’d never had the patience for a normal job. I worked them when I was young - busing tables, washing dishes, anything I could get away with being dreadfully underage. The crap pay, shit hours, and asshole customers were more than enough to make my more profitable talents infinitely more appealing. Now that I thought about it, maybe I shouldn’t be giving the Princess such a hard time about not waiting tables when I’d rather shoot myself in the face than smile for the public again.
Such introspective thoughts quickly ran down avenues I was fine not exploring, so to pass the time I thought about my plan for stealing the Crown. It was rudimentary, but promising, and the thought of plucking the treasure off the red velvet cushion I assumed it would be on made my fingers itch. But for some reason, my mind kept straying from the Crown and onto the girl on the other side of the door. She hated me and the thought made me smile and my cock twitch.
I could tell she was attracted to me. That wasn’t a surprise; I’d seen my face in a mirror. Usually that meant I never had to work too hard for sex, but I’d admit it had been a little longer than I’d like. There had been a few faceless locals back in San Juan, a backpacker or two as well, but I had been as meaningless to them as they had been to me, a mutual agreement on pleasure with a “thank you and goodbye” the next day. They’d all known what they were looking for when it came to me. As for Cora… Well, she seemed like she hadn’t decided yet whether she wanted to fire me
or fuck me. Not that she’d admit the latter option to herself. I knew which one I wanted. The thought of her lithe body pressed against mine, my fingers tangled in that dark hair as she panted with desire…
I mentally slapped myself, tried to conjure that image of the Crown back into my mind. That is what you’re here for. Come on, you’re not going to marry this girl. Don’t throw away the score of a lifetime just because you want to fuck.
But still, even as visions of jewels and prestige (and, of course, getting one over on Midas) danced before my eyes, they seemed cold and hard and unfeeling, eliciting no quickening of pulse, no thump of my heart as the image of Cora’s scowling face in the subway had done before.
Her face was the last thing I’d seen before it all faded away, and, when I felt someone trip over my leg, my eyes popped open to that same scowling face looking down at me with absolutely zero amusement in her eyes. I stood up quickly, thankful I didn’t have an erection, and followed her out of the building.
She didn’t speak to me the entire way back. I thought about trying to goad a response out of her a couple times on the subway, but the outright hostility on her face when she’d left Diana’s and the purposeful directness of her walk made me think she was going to tattle on me to Mom. Mom here meaning Jackie, the boss. In fact, the only time she’d even slightly acknowledged my presence was when I’d stood to let an older woman with a shopping bag take my seat. Her eyes had briefly followed me as I stood to lounge against the pole in front of her, but they’d quickly snapped away when I tried to return her gaze.
A mounting anxiety followed me as we entered the house, passing by an uncommunicative Scott. Was I about to get fired on my first day? Why the hell couldn’t I keep my big mouth shut? Or at least refrain from literally falling asleep on the job.
Cora strode back toward the office, but when I made to follow her, she turned and held up a hand. “No,” she said. “You can wait out here.”
I knew better than to object, but I’d be damned if I let any worry or shame creep onto my face. I smirked and gave a short bow before turning and heading back into the hall outside the coat room.
I was screwed. No way in hell Jackie didn’t just hire the next guy in the pile and send me packing. This would highly complicate the mission as not only would “the fired, negligent employee” be first on the list of suspects, but it would make it a whole lot more complicated to scope out the place without getting recognized. I had to admit though, the complexities with the job weren’t the worst part about getting let go. I was starting to really enjoy torturing Cora. I wasn’t ready for that to end after only a few hours together.
I paced the carpet, trying to think of an angle for when Jackie called me in there. Eyes on my feet and thinking hard, I didn’t notice Scott until I almost walked directly into him.
“Watch yourself,” he said.
I stepped back, annoyed that in this high pressure situation I had to deal with this asshole.
“Shouldn’t you be out in your little castle?” I asked. “Or are you making rounds to rattle the locks and look under beds.”
His face didn’t flinch. “I read that you’re a pro,” he said.
“Sure,” I said, not exactly sure where he was going with that.
“I run a security company,” he said. “I’ve worked with most of the agencies in the city. Which one were you with?”
A loaded question. If he read my file than he already knew. “I’m independent,” I said.
“And yet you’ve apparently worked for some pretty choice clients,” he said, crossing his arms over a swollen chest.
“What can I say?” I asked. “I’m good at my job.”
“Very good.”
The subtext: too good. Maybe I had gone a little overboard on the application. Then again, it might not have stood out otherwise. And besides, Scott couldn’t exactly prove anything. He hadn’t found a crack in my story or he would have said so. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t keep digging though.
To combat further questioning, I went on the offensive. “Why didn’t they choose you?” I asked.
His already narrowed eyes disappeared from his face. “What do you mean?” he asked slowly.
“I mean, you’ve been here a minute, right? You know the Princess, the manor, the other security. Why’d they hire me on?” I smirked.
He didn’t respond, but there was a shift in his face and I could feel the irritation radiate off him in waves. I knew I shouldn’t - Scott was already on my case without provoking him further - but I was on edge thinking about what Cora could be saying about me in the office, so I continued to poke.
“Guess for all that time you spend in the gym, you can’t help slowing down a bit. Don’t worry. Happens to all of us eventually. There’s no shame in it. You still have a job anyway. Of course it’s just sitting around for hours in a box, but we need someone to watch the security cameras just in case the ninjas attack.”
His jaw clenched and his eyes hardened, but still he didn’t make a move at me. “I’m forty,” he finally growled. Then he turned around and left the way he’d come.
I felt my entire body relax. Damn, he’s intense. And I didn’t think his scrutiny was going to fade just because I could answer some basic questions about job application.
Oh well, add it to the list of problems. If Cora’s conversation with Jackie went the way she wanted it too, I might not even have to worry about Scott at all.
Speaking of which, I heard the office door shut and a few minutes later, Cora came out looking pissed. I smiled slightly. Looks like I’d be staying a little longer after all.
“What’d she say?” I asked.
“None of your business,” she snapped, walking past me. I followed her down the hall until we came out in the entrance hall, a massive two-story room with a spiraling staircase leading up to the second floor.
She paused near the base of the staircase and looked back at me, realizing I was following her. “Are you going to follow me around the house or am I free to roam?” she asked, voice dripping with sarcasm.
“You do you,” I said, stretching and yawning. The nap had made me a bit tired and I was ready to lie down. I was looking forward to plopping down on one of those big fluffy beds that lurked somewhere in the manor. “But you gotta show me where you sleep.”
“Why?” she asked, suspicious.
“Relax, Princess. I’m not going to be standing over you while you snooze. Unless you’d like that,” I added as an afterthought, flashing a grin.
Her cheeks reddened, but her face hardened. “If I wake up to you even listening at my door, I don’t care what my mother wants. I’ll shoot you in the face.”
Good God she was cute when she got angry. I tried to stay serious though, just so she didn’t decide shooting me was a good idea regardless of my position to her sleeping. “Fair enough. But it is part of my job to be around at night, so I guess I’ll take the bedroom next to yours.”
She debated fighting this - I could see it in her eyes - but then she sighed and said, “Fine. Follow me.”
Surprisingly, she didn’t go up the stairs, instead going around and behind the curve.
“Hidden passage?” I asked.
“Servant’s lift,” Cora replied. “It was built hidden so the original owners didn’t have to see them coming and going.”
“Of course,” I said. “Good Help should materialize at the Master’s thought.”
Cora laughed, and by the look on her face, it surprised both of us. She quickly put on a look of indifference and pulled open the grate blocking the entrance.
“Is this thing safe?” I asked as the elevator gave slightly under my weight.
“It was put in about a hundred years ago,” she said, “but it hasn’t failed so far.”
“That’s encouraging,” I muttered.
She pulled the grate back across and pressed the button for the top floor. We rose slowly and I watched the brick walls of the shaft inch by as we stood shoulder to sh
oulder. She smelled expensive, like the entrance to Tiffany’s. It triggered a Pavlovian excitement in me, the same feeling I used to get before a big heist.
She glanced at me in the elevator with narrowed eyes as if she could read my thoughts. I wondered how I smelled. Hopefully not like the rug in Diana’s hallway.
At last, the elevator settled us at the top floor. The doors peeled open to reveal a small living room, a bit shabby, but neat. The walls were wooden and the rafters of the roof stretched overhead. It was so unlike the rest of the house, it felt at first like we’d traveled to a different building instead of just going upstairs. It took me a moment to understand, but when it clicked I felt a rush of irritation overtake me.
“This is the servants’ quarters, isn’t it?” I asked, turning to her.
“It was, yes,” she said, walking into the room and putting her purse down on the couch.
“So you’re sticking me up here?” I asked.
“You said you needed to be close by,” she said flatly. “This is where I live.”
Well, that was unexpected. I struggled to come up with a scenario in which I would purposefully choose to live in the worst rooms of a mansion and drew a blank.
“Why?”
“The house is excessive. It’s too big, all the rooms are. I don’t feel like walking a mile between my bed and the kitchen just to get something to eat.”
Well, when she put it that way… I could see how the servants’ quarters would have an appeal. They seemed like a small apartment and, once I got used to the change, were far from unpleasant. I walked across the living room and peeked in through a doorway to look at the kitchen. Out the window, the towers of Midtown rose up around the manor. It was a nice view of the city and the street below, angled on the side of the house that didn’t have hoards of tourists.
“So do we have to share a room?” I asked.
She made a small distasteful noise. “No, there are two bedrooms. Both were made for multiple people, so you’ll have quite a bit of space. The bathroom’s that door,” she said, pointing to a closed door off the living room. She clapped her hands together briskly. “I have work to do, so I’m going into my room. I’m not leaving the house tonight so please don’t just hang around outside my door. Do whatever you want, just leave me alone.”
The Professional Page 6
