Protection for Hire

by Camy Tang

  Actually, it fell a bit slowly, but it still fell on her.

  “Oops,” a male voice said from several feet away. The OWA employee.

  “Tessa!” her mother shouted, sounding either concerned or embarrassed. Or both.

  She lay sprawled on the floor at eye level with a pair of sneakers running toward her, probably those of the OWA employee/belayer.

  How strange, the sack of potatoes smelled incredibly sexy — male musk, sage soap, and a thread of cologne that screamed money.

  “Are you okay? I’m so sorry.” The muffled voice had a slight drawl that tingled down her spine.

  The OWA employee attached to the Nikes in front of her nose pulled the potatoes off of her, and she sat up and turned to look.

  She couldn’t believe she’d thought he was a sack of potatoes.

  He was lean, but wide, and chiseled shoulders burst out of the tank top he wore. From the way his long legs were folded up under him, he would be even taller than she was.

  But why in the world were his blue-green eyes looking at her as if she were a ghost? And not the see-through, squinty, I’m-not-quite-sure-I-see-something-there type of ghost look, but the Oh-my-gosh-it’s-the-dead-nun-who-hurled-herself-off-the-balcony-after-her-illicit-lover-plunged-to-his-death type of look.

  “Tessa Lancaster?” The hesitant young voice tore Tessa’s attention from golden-brown curls, high cheekbones, and a Roman nose to a twenty-something woman in the coveted uniform of an OWA staff worker. The girl’s face registered confusion and wariness.

  “That’s me.” Tessa tried to spring to her feet with the eagerness of a future OWA employee, but nearly kissed the ground again when her knee buckled.

  “Uh … we’re ready for your interview.”

  Perfect timing.

  He’d seen a ghost.

  As the tall, slim figure walked away from him, Charles Britton blinked rapidly to make sure it was really Tessa Lancaster. Was she out of prison already? It had been so long. He almost hadn’t recognized her — rather than the sleek all-black she’d worn to the courtroom, today she was dressed in a white button-down shirt and dark gray pencil skirt, and her hair, which he’d previously seen falling halfway down her back, had been twisted up into a professional-looking French knot, from which straight brown strands were already escaping.

  Probably due to him nearly flattening her into the ground.

  “Eddie!” he roared, turning toward his brother. “You were supposed to be holding that rope-thing.”

  “The climbing rope,” Eddie corrected him absently, his gaze riveted to Tessa’s disappearing figure. “She was cute.”

  “I’m sure she’d like the phone number of the guy who dropped his brother on her head.”

  That finally got Eddie’s attention away from Tessa. “Sorry about that. I was talking to this girl …” He glanced around. “Hmm. She’s gone. She was cute too. Although not as cute as your landing pad.”

  “So if you’d been holding my climbing rope when I was out on a real rock face, I’d have left my brains over the mountainside?”

  Eddie grinned. “Only if there was a cute climber like her to distract me from my belaying duties.”

  “Tessa Lancaster is not cute. She causes a man more trouble than two girlfriends.”

  “Hey, you know her?”

  Charles should have kept his fat mouth shut. “I saw her in court once.”

  “She was your client?”

  “No.” But a shot of alarm made his blood fizzle. Now that he worked for Pleiter & Woodhouse, would Tessa’s mob boss uncle hire Charles’s law firm to defend mafia clients? No, Teruo Ota had his own fleet of well-greased lawyers, and even if he did hire Charles’s firm, Charles wasn’t partner — yet — so it’d be unlikely that he’d be asked to take on a case involving such a high-profile client. And especially not Teruo Ota’s jailbird niece.

  Charles started unhooking himself from the climbing apparatus. “Help me get this stuff off.”

  Eddie started helping him. “So how do you know her? And can you introduce me?”

  “No, I can’t. She doesn’t know who I am.”

  Eddie’s hands stilled as he unhooked yet another strap. “She doesn’t? So how do you know who she is?”

  “Because she’s the niece of the Japanese mafia boss in San Francisco.”

  “Whoa.” Eddie’s eyes became like Mama’s antique blue china saucers.

  “I know she’s cute, but now you see why I said she was trouble?”

  Eddie paused, giving him a searching look. “You think she’s cute.”

  “So do you.”

  “You never think girls are cute.”

  Charles glared at his brother. “I assure you, I like girls.”

  Eddie rolled his eyes. “That’s not what I meant. You would never allow yourself to notice a woman connected to a criminal family.” He gave an evil grin. “Until now.”

  “Just get me out of this harness,” Charles said. “I can’t believe you dropped me.”

  “Technically, you fell. And I, with my lightning reflexes, put friction on the rope to slow you down for the last few feet.”

  “Why didn’t you slow me down the first few feet? Your only job was to prevent me from hitting the ground.”

  “What can I say? I’m a babe magnet.” Eddie struck a pose.

  “I saw only one girl, and she ran away from you.”

  “Don’t forget Tessa. And she walked away only because you landed on her and not me.”

  In that brief moment Charles had looked into her face, she’d seemed different from when he last saw her. Then, she’d been hard, with a dark, dangerous air to her. Today, she’d seemed … lighter.

  No, it was probably the fact she’d been stunned by having all 200 pounds of him try to pulverize her into dust, tempered only by the rope going taut at the last second to soften the blow.

  “Does this mean you’re not going climbing with me next month at Mount Shasta?” Eddie asked.

  “Are you trying to kill me so you can get all the inheritance money?”

  “There won’t be any. Mama will make sure to blaze through the last penny on her deathbed.”

  Actually, Charles had just done her accounting last night, and unless Mama bought a couple private islands, she was in good shape for a couple lifetimes. “Did Mama call you?”

  “Yeah. Uh … did she tell you anything about coming to live with us?”

  “What?”

  “It’s apparently a sudden decision.”

  “I thought she had just moved in with Aunt Coco. That Aunty Coco was looking forward to having her stay with them for a few months.” After Mama and Daddy divorced several years ago, Mama had been very well off with her settlement and the trust fund set up by Mama’s father, General Durand. She found that if she didn’t have to pay for the taxes and upkeep of her house, she would be able to live nearly exactly as she had before Daddy cheated on her and left her. Also, as she got into cooking, it was more fun for her to cook for others. So she sold her plantation home and began living with relatives for several months at a time.

  Eddie coughed. “I think the reason it’s such a sudden decision is because of Aunt Coco.”

  “Oh. Is it because of Mama’s cooking?”

  “I got my own earful. You’ll get yours when Mama calls you.”

  Charles sighed. “Aunt Coco likes to stretch a dollar into six. I told Mama that I thought Aunt Coco invited Mama to stay with her because she thought she’d be getting a free chef.”

  “Well, I didn’t tell Mama, but I think the relatives purposely didn’t tell Aunt Coco about Mama’s cooking,” Eddie said.

  And Mama’s love of excess pepper, unusual combos like beef and guava, and her new favorite spice, turmeric. All mixed together.

  “She was a great cook when we were growing up,” Charles said. “I just don’t like these new exotic recipes she’s been trying the past few years. But I can’t exactly say no when she cooks for me.”

  “You could
sue the Food Network for existing.”

  “It would be fine if she watched Paula Deen. The problems happen when she watches Iron Chef — once she tried to recreate some octopus pudding dessert she saw on the show.”

  “Blech.” Eddie made a face, then slapped Charles on the back. “And Mama’s staying with you again. Good luck.”

  “If she serves sushi gumbo, I’m forcing you to come over for dinner.”

  “Hmm, now if Tessa made me sushi gumbo …”

  “You’re a moron,” Charles said.

  However, inwardly he couldn’t blame his brother. He’d been mesmerized during that short moment he’d met her eyes — dark brown with flecks of green, framed by long dark lashes. And her mouth had been soft and full and pink.

  He gave himself a firm mental shake. She was yakuza, for goodness’ sake, and he knew exactly what she’d done because he’d been a law clerk at her trial. And he was thinking she was cute?

  Actually, he’d thought back then that she was cute too — until he’d researched all the unsolved assaults and murders her cousin Ichiro had been involved in, and since she’d been part of his gang, he knew she had been involved in most of those as well, even if it wasn’t proven.

  So when she’d pled out for manslaughter rather than murder, he’d advised the judge to extend her sentence beyond the maximum, and the judge had done it, giving her seven years instead of five.

  Ironic that now, as a defense lawyer, he had defended a few corporate criminals.

  Why was Tessa Lancaster applying for a job at OWA when she could just go back to working for her uncle? Had something happened between them?

  Charles had no doubt that eventually she would go back to hanging out with her cousin Ichiro again. He had escaped conviction a couple times already. Tessa probably would too, unless she messed up again like she did with Laura Starling’s murder.

  Regardless, he’d probably never see her again.

  Chapter 4

  The living room couch was like a torture rack from the Spanish Inquisition. And probably just as old.

  When they’d been younger, Tessa and Alicia had loved sleeping on the living room couch. Twenty years ago, the springs had already been sagging and swaying, and it had been a dark-blue corduroy cloud. Plus, sleeping in the living room had been reserved for sleepover parties and Christmas Eve, both happy-pink-fizzy-skies events.

  But the arrival last night of Alicia with a pale and shaking Paisley had relegated Tessa to the couch so Paisley could be bundled up in her aunt’s bed. So, not such a happy-pink-fizzy-sky event.

  What had caused Alicia to leave her house in the middle of the night to bunk at Mom’s house? After putting Paisley to bed in Tessa’s room, Alicia had holed up in Mom’s bedroom until Tessa finally went to sleep on the couch, concerned but too tired to stay up.

  She spared a fleeting thought for the dangers of her niece in her bedroom. When Tessa had still been living with her mom in her teens, she’d accumulated a highly illegal weapons collection that had been hidden in various places in her room. Because of her toys, she had also fortified the room so that G.I. Joe couldn’t get in.

  She’d taken her weapons with her when she moved to her condo in her early twenties, and then after she got out of prison, they were all (tearfully) sold because of her parole. But Tessa didn’t quite trust herself to have remembered all the hiding places in her bedroom. Alicia would eat her alive if her daughter found a forgotten wushu chain whip or something.

  She twisted to try to ease the ache in her back and would have rolled off the couch if she hadn’t thrust her hand out to plant into the olive-green shag carpet. She pushed her body back over the edge of the faded blue corduroy cushions.

  She sat up and swung her legs down, intending to stand up, except: (a) the couch which had seemed so large when she was eight was in reality only eleven inches from the floor, and it was like trying to stand up after sitting in a kindergarten chair, and (b) since she’d grown a few feet since she last slept here, her feet had dangled over the edge uncovered all night and were now numb with cold.

  She managed to hobble to the bathroom, then to the kitchen. Faint noise from her room — Paisley was up. What time was it? She glanced at the clock — seven-ish. She opened the fridge, grabbing a carton of yogurt. She opened it and yelped.

  Mom had apparently been trying to conduct a science experiment. The entire inside was coated with greenish dark gray fuzz. She thought a section of it might have reached out to her with a spiny tendril before she slammed the lid back on.

  She opened the cabinet door under the sink, but the garbage can sitting there was already full, so she pulled it out. May as well empty it.

  “Morning, Aunt Tessa,” Paisley said from the doorway of the kitchen. She yawned and scratched at her wild blonde-streaked brown curls. “What’s for breakfast?”

  Not yogurt, that was for sure. “Did you want me to make you some eggs and toast?”

  “Naw, I can just get cereal.” Paisley opened the fridge.

  And promptly burst into tears.

  Alicia chose that exact moment to walk into the kitchen. She took one look at her crying daughter and turned to Tessa, who looked innocent of all wrongdoing while peeking into the garbage bin like a trash lady.

  “What did you do?” Alicia demanded.

  Tessa actually took one-billionth of a second to consider a calm, mature answer. But of course her temper sprinted past and won the race. “I friended her on Facebook. What do you think I did? Nothing.”

  “That is not nothing.” Alicia thrust a hand toward her daughter, whose face was buried in her hands with tears running between her fingers.

  “I was only trying to save her from more emotional trauma in the form of thousand-year-old yogurt.” Tessa gestured to the carton of yogurt sitting on top of the full garbage can.

  “It’s not her fault, Mom,” Paisley said in between hiccoughs. She reached into the fridge and gingerly handed her mom a can of whipped cream.

  Alicia made a disgusted noise. “I could kill your father.”

  Now Tessa was completely confused. “Over whipped cream?”

  Paisley covered her mouth with her hand and squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Look what you’ve done!” Alicia yelled at Tessa.

  “Considering the wealth of information you gave me last night, you’re lucky I didn’t offer it to her with her morning pancakes. I have no idea what’s going on.”

  Alicia pressed her lips together and didn’t answer. Neither did she apologize for unfairly accusing Tessa of wrongdoing or even explaining what exactly Tessa had done wrong.

  “So are you going to tell me why we’re instituting a Redi-Whip ban?” Tessa asked.

  “You want to wait for my daughter to leave the room first, O Sensitive One?”

  “Oh, I’ll tell her.” Paisley sniffed and swiped at her eyes, which were still red, but the rest of her was quickly returning to normal. While Tessa had often been tempted to hang her niece off a tall building for her smart mouth, for once she was glad for the resilience of youth.

  “I was at Adele’s house doing homework —”

  “Did you get it done?” Alicia said.

  “Mooooooom, I’m telling a story here. And yes. Can you stop being a mom for a second?”

  “Well, you can’t fire your mom, so deal with it,” Alicia said.

  Ah, the huggy-huggy kissy-kissy bond of a mother and teenage daughter.

  “I came home,” Paisley said. “I knew Mom was with you guys at OWA so I just let myself in. Oh, how did your interview go, Aunt Tessa?”

  “Badly. Continue.”

  “I went into the kitchen for something to eat because Adele’s family only eats vegetarian and while some of it’s good, yesterday her mom served this weird brownish-blackish baba-something that tasted like the underside of a rock.”

  “Baba ghanoush,” Alicia said. “It’s eggplant …”

  Paisley sent her an exasperated look.

  “Okay, ok
ay, tell your story.”

  “So I walk into the kitchen, and what do I see?” Dramatic pause.

  Was Tessa supposed to say something? “Uh … what?”

  “My father, naked.”

  “Ew!” Even if Tessa had liked Duane, the thought of a daughter seeing her daddy in the buff was too horrible to contemplate.

  “With his girlfriend, naked.”

  “What?”

  In an aside to Tessa, Alicia said, “They weren’t doing anything … you know.”

  “What do you mean?” Paisley protested. “Of course they were doing something. They were covered in whipped cream.”

  “That’s a tragic waste of whipped cream,” Tessa said.

  “See, Mom? I’m not the only one who thinks that.”

  “You’re not helping,” Alicia told Tessa.

  “So I screamed,” Paisley said. “And his girlfriend screamed. And Dad screamed too.”

  Tessa could believe Duane screamed, all right. The pansy had called Tessa the night Alicia found him in his office with his girlfriend, crying and begging Tessa for protection from his Michael-Myers-crazy wife. “His stripper girlfriend should be used to performing.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t the stripper,” Paisley said airily. “He dumped her the week Mom found them together. Dad’s had three girlfriends since. This one’s a flight attendant.”

  The man needed to be neutered. “Why was he at your house?” Tessa asked.

  Alicia took up the story. “After I put Paisley to bed, I called him to tell him I had to tranquilize his only child. He explained that he lost his condo.”

  “How’d he lose it? The man makes six figures.”

  “Because he also bought a Ferrari, a houseboat, a vacation home in Cancun, and a diamond tiara for the whipped-cream girl.”

  “Which she was wearing,” Paisley added.

  “I thought he couldn’t buy anything. Isn’t that how divorce works in California?”

  “Not for the money he makes after the official separation.”

  “He doesn’t make that much. Did he buy all that on credit?”

  “And reneged on the condo. He’s homeless. Since the house is still in his name, he decided to move in.”