by Natalie Grey
She was going to have to out-con-artist the con artist.
“So…is there someone special in your life, then?” She gave him a look from under her lashes. “I don’t want to misread the signals you’ve been giving me.”
Something in Lawrence’s eyes flickered. “And you haven’t been. My life hasn’t always been conducive to a settled relationship. I am always seeking someone special, however—for whatever life brings.” He gave her a smile and kissed her hand again. “I will be right back. I have to settle the check.”
Shinigami leaned back in her chair and considered her options as he wandered away. She saw him go to the back, where the manager had gone.
A couple of minutes later she realized what must have happened. Lawrence hadn’t come back, but all the managers had.
Shit.
What is it? Barnabas asked.
Unless I’m wrong, Lawrence is on his way right now. Get that ship out of the dock!
Chapter Sixteen
“See, the thing is,” Aliana maneuvered her way around a corner, sweating as she tried to maintain her grip on a trunk of Lawrence’s clothes, “he was always so charming.”
“I know,” Ria said glumly. “And he is so good at stringing people along. I talked to the rest of the crew, and he’d been doing it to all of us. Everyone! Even John was in love with him by the end.”
Aliana gave a snort of laughter, then dropped her end of the trunk. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘by the end?’”
“Oh.” Ria let her end down carefully and stood up, rubbing her back. She sighed. “He…he fired almost everyone two weeks ago.”
“What?”
“Yeah, we hadn’t gotten a lot of jobs lately.” Ria hunched her shoulders. “Honestly, I think it was just too much work for him to keep finding them, you know? He wanted something easier.”
“He’s always looking for something easier,” Aliana said darkly. “So why didn’t he fire you?”
“He can’t keep the ship flying without me,” Ria explained. “He hasn’t spent any money on repairs, even the repairs we were saving for when you left, and it’s… It’s fixable, Aliana, it is, but I need parts to do it.”
Aliana groaned and tipped her head back against the wall. “Did he spend all the money, do you think, or was he just hoarding it?”
“I think he spent it all.” Ria patted the top of the trunk meaningfully. “Sorry,” she added.
“No, it’s not…it’s not your fault. It’s just, why do awful people get to screw up, and nothing you can do will undo what they did, you know?” Aliana gave the trunk an annoyed look. “And this is all worthless junk, too. Well, setting it on fire will help me feel better about it, at least.”
“Feel better about what?” Barnabas asked, coming around the corner.
Aliana blinked at him. She hadn’t heard him approach. She shrugged. “Lawrence cleaned out all the accounts, because of course he did, and now there’s no money for all the repairs he didn’t do.” She shook her head. “We’ll make it work. There’s always a way to trade labor or something for advance money, you know? And once we’ve gotten the ship purring like a kitten again, we’ll be back to building up those reserves.”
“Oh,” Barnabas said neutrally. “We found the accounts he switched out of your name. There’s still quite a lot of money in there.”
“There is?” Aliana felt her heart leap. “Oh, thank God. That’s amazing. Can you…can you get them back?”
“Banking systems are a bit complicated, but we did manage to transfer the money to new accounts.” He gave her a smile. “I’ll get that,” he added. He picked up the giant trunk with relative ease and carried it off on his own.
The two women stared after him.
“Aliana,” Ria said.
“Huh?”
“Those accounts were empty. I’d bet anything.”
Aliana looked at her. Deep down, she knew that Ria was right. Lawrence was terrible with money—or, rather, he was very good at spending other people’s money. There was no way her carefully-accumulated nest egg was still there.
Which meant that Barnabas had either given her money Lawrence stole, or…
She bit her lip. “I’ll pay it all back.” It was really the only thing she could do.
“Are you sure he’s going to be okay with that?” Ria asked doubtfully. “He did it as a gift.”
“Yes, but it’s too big a gift,” Aliana replied firmly. “He’s already helping me get the ship back. I’ll just tell him I appreciate it, but—”
“I don’t think he’d give you money he couldn’t afford to spend,” Ria added. “And I bet you that if you ask him about it, he’ll swear he doesn’t know what you’re talking about. Aliana, who is this guy?”
“I told you who he was.”
“Yeah, I know, but…who is he?” Ria shook her head. “I mean, how do you know him? Why’s he doing all of this for you?”
“He doesn’t like injustice.” Aliana marched back into the captain’s quarters and loaded her arms with Lawrence’s clothes. “So he’s righting a wrong he saw. And my uncle asked him to look after me.” She rolled her eyes. When Barnabas had said that, she’d wanted to sink through the floor.
Based on how successfully he was embarrassing her, Carter was going to make a spectacular father.
“Uh-huh.” Ria didn’t sound convinced, but she grabbed an armful of clothes as well and followed Aliana into the hall. “That sounds like it—because your uncle asked.”
Aliana was about to tell her that if she kept giving sass, she could kiss her year-end bonus goodbye when they rounded the corner and ran smack into Lawrence.
“What. The hell. Are you doing.” His eyes were burning. “You sent some stupid—actor—to distract me, and it nearly worked. You looked so hurt when I walked away, but you were just setting me up, weren’t you?”
Aliana stared at him wordlessly. Her heart was going double-time now.
She had to think. She had to get him off this ship—
“Get off my ship,” Lawrence told her.
“It’s my ship,” Aliana retorted. She wasn’t sure where the confidence came from. Maybe she was pretending to be as self-assured as Barnabas. Whatever it was, she wasn’t the slightest bit worried. She looked at Lawrence and wondered why she’d ever been afraid of him.
“It’s not your ship,” Lawrence spat, leaning close with a cruel smile. “You just left it out there for someone to take, and I took it.”
“And I,” Aliana said, “took it back.”
He gave her a long look, then he pushed the side of his coat back and pulled out one of his pistols.
Ria gave a tiny strangled noise, and he shot her a hard look. “I know you helped her. Don’t you dare try to run!”
Aliana blinked and then, overcome with some sort of reckless certainty, tipped her armful of clothes forward. He reached out automatically to take them and she took the gun out of his hands, dropping the magazine and throwing it over her shoulder whimsically.
“This ship,” she said simply, “is in my name. You pulled some technically legal shenanigans in order to steal something that wasn’t yours. Now you can try to prove the ship was ‘yours,’ but I’m going to tell you right now that you won’t have much luck.”
He stared at her, his arms full of clothes. “What?” he managed finally.
“She means,” Ria said, “that you’ve screwed over so many people that when she says you stole her ship and changed the registration illegally and a bunch of other people come forward to tell the judge what you stole of theirs, no one’s going to doubt her. Because you did steal it. You married her so you could steal it.”
“Yeah, thank you, Ria; that’s enough now.” Her pride was taking a beating from this. Aliana looked at Lawrence. “So that’s where we stand. You thought you could just keep conning people and they’d all run away with their tails between their legs, and you know what? I did.” She smiled. “And now I’m back. So you get off my ship.”
H
e almost growled at her, he looked so angry. “I should have you arrested. I could shoot you for trespassing, you know.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” Barnabas murmured nearby. When all of them jerked around, he gave everyone a careless smile. He was leaning against one wall, arms crossed. “I think you’d find that was a very bad plan.”
“Oh, yeah?” Lawrence asked. “And why is that? You think you’re someone special in that suit?”
As tempting as it was to let the two men posture at one another, Aliana was done letting other people deal with her mess.
“Hey.” She grabbed Lawrence by the shoulder and swung him around. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re on a ship registered in my name and you’re pulling guns on my crew. Get. Off. My. Ship.”
His chest was rising and falling quickly, and she could see the pulse beating far too quickly at his throat. He was furious, but he also didn’t know what to do. She’d never stood up to him like this before.
She wondered if this was the first time he’d seen someone again after he’d screwed them over.
Aliana had a thought. “And by the way, don’t try to find someone else and screw them over.”
Ria and Barnabas tilted their heads to the side almost identically.
“You don’t get to do that anymore,” Aliana said. “You like to make up stories and con your way into people’s confidence. If you’d put half of that effort into building your own company you’d have a few ships of your own by now, but you’re lazy, and you’re cruel. Stop doing that. If you do that again, I’ll find out, and I’ll make sure you give back everything you stole. Make you work off all of the debts you’ve ever acquired. So consider this your one chance. And get off my ship.”
He gaped at her for a moment, then looked at the others with a little laugh. Aliana could see him getting ready to play off the whole incident: look how crazy she is, overreacting like this.
But when he saw the looks on their faces, he didn’t even try. His mouth compressed to a thin, angry line and he turned and strode off, dropping shirts as he went.
It wasn’t the most dignified exit, especially when he ran into the woman with the black hair. He stopped in his tracks for a moment, and she gave him an ironic two-finger salute before strutting up to Aliana and shaking her hand.
“You told him off good. I’m…Shannon.” She gave Barnabas a look Aliana couldn’t interpret.
“Hello,” Aliana said nervously. This woman was incredibly beautiful, and something about her just screamed “don’t fuck with me.” “Thank you very much for helping me.” She looked around. “Thank you all.”
“Well, I, at least, owed you.” Ria gave a shrug. “Don’t know why the rest of them are here,” she added meaningfully, “but I’ll be doing a proper inventory, and I’ll get back to you about the parts we need, boss.”
“Sounds good,” Aliana replied. She felt almost giddy as Ria walked away, and then she looked at Barnabas with a sigh. “Okay, okay, I know, he had a gun. It was stupid to just tell him off and throw him out, but—”
“You seemed like you had it under control,” Barnabas explained simply. “I would have intervened if I had thought it was necessary, but I didn’t.” He hesitated for a moment. “How do you feel?”
“On top of the world!” Aliana burst out. “I told him off! I did! And he’s not going to be a good person overnight, I know that, and maybe he won’t ever be, but I told him off and I didn’t let him intimidate me and I meant it—I’ll make him own up to what he did if he’s a jerk again.”
Barnabas was giving her an almost quizzical smile. “I know. I know you will. Ah…” He cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his head for a moment before smoothing his hair and adjusting his cuffs. “Well, if everything seems to be good here, we’ll head out. Tafa. Shannon.”
“Oh. Right.” Aliana nodded. “Thank you. So much.”
He had been walking away, but he turned to give her a smile. He nodded once and headed off, stopping only when Aliana ran after him.
“Wait!”
He turned. “Yes?”
“I just, uh—” She wanted to hug him. She settled for sticking out her hand, but when he reached out to put his in it, still smiling bemusedly, she threw caution to the winds and wrapped her arms around him. He went rigid in surprise for a moment, then the dark-haired woman hissed at him and he hugged Aliana back. She sensed that he wasn’t used to being hugged.
“Sorry,” she said, flustered. “’Thank you’ didn’t seem like enough. Not that hugging you is enough, but, uh—you know.” Stop talking, you’re not making any sense. She sensed she was blushing. She gave him another nod, then turned and jogged away before she could say anything even more stupid.
Today had been a very unexpected day.
Chapter Seventeen
Barnabas was still smiling when he made his way into the conference room of the Shinigami a few minutes later. He was so pleased by the general state of life, in fact, that it took him a few moments to notice that no one else was talking.
He looked up. Everyone was staring at him.
“What?”
Shinigami swiveled back and forth in her chair. She seemed secretly delighted by something, although Barnabas could not say what it might be.
“How ya doin’?” she asked.
“Is that the thing from that show? Friends?”
“No, that’s ‘how you doin’?’ Totally different.”
“Are you sure?” Barnabas asked dubiously. He waved a hand. “I’m doing fine, thank you. Very well, in fact.” Everyone seemed to find this hilarious. “What? What is so funny?”
“Oh, nothing.” Shinigami smiled. “It’s just nice to see you so relaxed. In such a good mood.”
“I…thank you.” Barnabas stared at her with the growing feeling that this might be a trap of some sort. He sat back in his chair, looking around the room.
“We did some good work today,” Gar piped up after a moment. Everyone stifled another laugh.
“What is with you?” Barnabas asked, exasperated. “Gar is right—we did do good work.”
“You know who did good work…” Shinigami prompted.
“Yes, yes.” Barnabas rolled his eyes. “I know. You had to deal with the douche. You did very good work.”
“Oh, no, I wasn’t referring to myself, although you’re right, I did do fantastic work there. Well, kind of. He spooked and ran back to the ship. Apparently, I’m not a natural at making men think they’re interesting.”
“Gabrielle is of the opinion that it’s quite easy,” Barnabas mentioned. “You might want to ask her for pointers. Actually, I regret suggesting that; you’re dangerous enough as it is.”
“Anyway,” Shinigami said, “I was talking about Aliana. She did some good work today.”
“Oh! Yes.” Barnabas sat forward, resting his forearms on the table. He nodded decisively. “I thought she showed great personal growth. You know, she ran away when she heard Carter speaking about her, and one could see how much she wanted to buckle and allow others to clean up the mess with Lawrence, but when the chips were down, she really— Why is everyone laughing?”
Gar was doubled over, one hand on his stomach, while Tafa stifled her glee behind both hands. Gilwar’s tentacles were a swirl of dizzying motion, and Shinigami was shaking her head in mock protest as she giggled.
“Someone,” Barnabas growled dangerously, “had better explain what’s going on.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Shinigami gasped out. “Just that no one’s won the bet yet.”
“Don’t tell him about the bet!” Tafa exclaimed. “That throws it.”
“I have to agree,” Gilwar cut in.
“What bet?” Barnabas demanded.
“How long it would take in this meeting before you actually brought up the reason for it,” Shinigami explained. She gave him a look that said she was going to burst out laughing again at any second. “It’s been a long time for you, and you’re still… Oh, what shoul
d we call it?” She studied the ceiling in an elaborate act, tapping her mouth with one finger. Then she sat up and looked him dead in the eyes. “Smitten.”
Barnabas blinked at her.
Everyone held their breath.
“I beg your pardon?” Barnabas asked finally.
Gar got the look of someone fearing his imminent death, but Shinigami had no such qualms. She grinned impishly.
“Oh, look, you’ve reverted to excessive politeness. I think we hit home.”
“No, I—” Barnabas shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, my God,” Shinigami exclaimed. “He’s serious.”
“It’s quite common for people to be blind to these things in their own case,” Gilwar weighed in. “Both parties, actually.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, man.” Shinigami rested her head on the table for a moment. “It’s like this, dude. You got it bad. Aliana’s got it bad. You two got it bad. Do you see where I’m going with this?”
“No. I absolutely do not—oh.” Barnabas gave her a look. “No. No. No.” He considered. “No,” he added one more time for good measure.
“A strong rebuttal.”
“No. This is ridiculous.” Barnabas looked around the room. “You cannot possibly agree with her? Wait, do you?”
Every one of them nodded.
“No!” Barnabas said. “That is entirely—no. We stopped to help her because Carter asked us to look out for her.”
“Mmhmm,” Tafa murmured.
“Of course,” Gilwar chimed in. Both of them sounded completely unconvinced.
“So, whenever you want to be just, you know, polite to someone, you help them steal a ship, hack databases to change registration, give them money for new parts for their ship, and then smile like an absolute loon for about half an hour because they hugged you?” Shinigami asked. “That’s all because you’re so happy that you were able to do a favor for…Carter?”
