by JL Simpson
Solomon glanced at her. “Problem?”
Her face heated. “Nope. Fine. Nothing wrong.”
He chuckled.
There was no way he had any idea what she'd been thinking, so why did she suddenly feel guilty? The man was way too cocky. “Didn't you ever watch “Upstairs Downstairs? The hired help don't laugh at their betters.”
“Did you not watch “Downton Abbey? I seem to recall one of the ladies of the house found the Irish chauffeur irresistible.”
“That's because some women are suckers for a man in a uniform.”
“I've worn a uniform.”
“Oh, would you dress up for me?” Daisy batted her eyelids.
“What?”
She placed her hand on his thigh and squeezed. “You know you'd look fabulous in fancy dress.”
“Are you sexually harassing the chauffeur?”
Daisy sat back and laughed. “Only if wearing a chicken suit gets you hot and bothered.”
“A chicken suit?”
“Hey, this is my fantasy. Don't spoil it.”
“If you want a man in a chicken suit, you'll be needing to talk to Doughnut.”
“Paul doesn't need to dress up as cockerel for me.”
“And I'll be saving my cock for someone who appreciates it.”
“Trust you to lower the tone.”
“You started it, Princess, by fantasizing about me.”
“I was doing no such thing. I'm a very happily married woman.”
“Sure you are. Fantasize away, darlin', because that's as close as you'll ever get.”
“Are you a one-woman man all of a sudden?”
He turned the car into the market square and pulled into an empty parking space in the middle of the road. “We'll have to walk from here.”
It didn't escape Daisy's notice that he hadn't answered the question. Interesting. No time to ponder what that meant, she had work to do. Alone. Daisy opened the car door. “We? There is no we. You can wait here for me, Liffey.”
Solomon shoved his door open. “I don't think so.”
“Go and have a coffee, or polish your hubcaps. I only need you to drive. I can handle everything else on my own.”
“Well, then, you won't mind if I tag along and take a look around the museum.”
Daisy climbed out of the car and flicked her hair over her shoulders. “Whatever. Catch you later.”
She sprinted between a car and a truck and made it safely to the pavement. Now what? If she took the time to tug her phone from her pocket and check which direction she should head in, Solomon would catch up to her. There was a fifty-fifty chance she'd find the museum if she guessed. She turned right and squeezed between a group of young women cooing over a display in a shop window and a guy pushing a pram like it was a battering ram.
A bus pulled to a stop and she quickly found herself caught in a heaving mass of elderly tourists. The group shuffled in the direction she was headed, but at half the speed she'd been walking. A wiggle, some gentle nudging and a few apologies later, she broke free of the pack. She glanced over her shoulder to check where Solomon was and slammed into something solid. Warm and solid. She turned to face front and was met with a dark gray shirt. As she lifted her head, she caught sight of a square jaw covered in a couple of days’ worth of dark stubble, full pink lips turned up in amusement, a long nose with a bump where it had been broken, and a pair of cool blue eyes. Solomon! He must have skirted around the edge of the throng to get ahead of her.
He smiled. “You're going the wrong way, Princess.”
Daisy tossed her hair over her shoulder. “I knew that. I wanted to get a coffee to take with me.”
“Of course you did, darlin'.”
“How about you get the coffee, and I'll meet you back here in, say, an hour?”
“How about we don't get coffee and I show you the way to the museum before it shuts?”
“Why would it shut?”
“It's still working on winter time and—” he examined the exquisite time piece on his wrist, “—in winter they close in less than half-an-hour.”
Daisy turned around and set off back toward the elderly tourists, who appeared to have multiplied since she had escaped the throng. Solomon grabbed her hand and dragged her across the street. She jogged to keep up as they weaved between the traffic and headed away from the main shopping area. People moved aside to let them pass. Maybe he could double as her bodyguard as well as her chauffeur.
*
Solomon rounded the last corner and slowed as the museum came into sight. He'd been once before when he was on a case. Some people found the weirdest places to have a sexual liaison. He'd have liked to have spent more time looking at the exhibits but his quarry hadn't stayed long. Apparently the hapless bus driver was a three minute man. The affair had fizzled out, but not before Solomon had enough evidence to help the wife divorce the poor bugger. Last he'd heard, she'd shacked up with a man ten years her junior and had no complaints about her new beau's staying power.
“You can wait out here.”
Solomon frowned. “I don't think so, Princess.”
Daisy sighed. “Fine. But keep out of it. This is my investigation.”
“I'm unlikely to have anything to offer, seeing as you've yet to tell me anything about the case.”
“Didn't Liam tell you?”
He shrugged. “The only thing I know is that he was in need of an heir hunter. Which is why I sent him to you.”
Daisy smiled. “So you did.”
“And yet I've had no thanks for it.”
“We did lunch, didn't we?”
“Lunch that I paid for.”
“You got my riveting company.”
“I got your company, but I'd not call it riveting.”
“What would you call it then?”
Solomon grinned. Daisy shook her head and stepped through the door into the museum. “I don't want to know.”
She turned and slapped a hand over his mouth. “And before you decide to tell me regardless, I think it best I remind you that I am the only person you know who can contact Belinda.”
She had a point. Whether he liked it or not, he needed to keep her on his side.
He followed behind Daisy as she sashayed toward the front desk, flipping the top two buttons of her shirt undone. The poor bastard behind the counter had no idea what he was about to face. Daisy angry was magnificent. Daisy drunk was funny. Daisy on a mission to flirt was dynamite. Dynamite Solomon hated. There were far more subtle ways to get people to divulge information. If he were her husband, he'd spank her for the way she led men on. If she was his wife, he had a feeling she just might enjoy it. Maybe that was why Paul put up with her antics. Maybe Daisy liked to be punished. Although she seemed genuinely pissed off when Solomon handcuffed her to the sink in Paul's absence.
*
Daisy smiled at the disheveled young man behind the steel and dark timber counter. His face flushed deep red, highlighting some blond bum fluff on his chin, and leftover scars on his cheeks from teenage acne. The poor guy looked like he'd had a bad day. His blue tie was decorated with a splotch of what appeared to be tomato sauce. His shirt could use an iron and his pants hanging low on his hips were badly in need of a belt.
The man's Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. His gaze shifted from Daisy to Solomon and back again. “Can I help?”
With a flutter of eyelashes she'd carefully curled and highlighted with maximum-body mascara earlier that day, Daisy leaned closer. She modulated her voice to sound soft and breathless. “I hope so.”
Solomon snorted as the young man turned a deeper shade of red. “Just ask the lad the question.”
Daisy glared at Solomon before turning back to her target. Solomon was supposed to be leaving the talking to her. She knew what she was doing. No man could hold back information under her concerted attack. They were puppets on a string when she got the big guns out, and right now the young guy behind the counter was glancing down her sh
irt, apparently agog at her red silk clad big guns. “I'm wondering if a friend of mine has been in recently.”
He wiped the palms of his hands down the front of his shirt and lifted his gaze to Daisy's face. “Lots of people come in.”
“I've got a picture.” Daisy pulled the black and white photo of Tomas Jenks out of the envelope she had stashed in her handbag. She flipped it onto the counter. “So sorry, I didn't get your name?”
“Greg,” the young man mumbled.
“So, Greg, have you ever seen this man before?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and then pulled them out, crossing and uncrossing his arms before leaning on the counter and peering at the photo. “Nope.”
Daisy pushed the photo closer to him with her index finger. “Positive? He's been to the museum before.”
A door slammed and Daisy glanced in the direction of the corridor where the noise had come from. Greg did the same before shoving the photo back at Daisy. The color drained from his face, turning his cheeks from deep red to porcelain white.
Heavy footfalls sounded in the corridor. Daisy watched as a heavy-set middle-aged woman appeared. Her hair was a freak of nature. No one on earth had hair that shade of purple. Even worse, it clashed with the green of her shirt, and the red cardigan wasn't doing much to improve things. The woman was in desperate need of a makeover. Not that Daisy would be offering. She didn't have the time, and from the scowl that had turned the woman's eyebrows into a unibrow beneath the deep groves in her forehead, she doubted any comment about her ensemble would be well-received.
“Greg! Have you cashed up?”
“Mum. I was just. I'll just.”
Daisy glanced from mother to son. Now she knew they were related, she could see the resemblance.
The woman arrived at the counter. Her name tag said Linda. Daisy wondered why Greg didn't have a name tag.
Linda lifted her head and looked down her nose at Daisy. “We're closing.”
“We're not here to visit the museum.”
Linda snorted. “Good, because we're closing, now.”
“Greg was just helping me with something.”
“Oh, I bet he was.” Linda stared at Greg. “You do know she’s old enough to be your mother, right? It's disgusting.”
Daisy snatched the photo off the counter and glared at Linda. Bloody cheek. She was nowhere near old enough to be Greg's mother. If he was old enough to work then he was way older than Sherman. Although Sherman only had a couple of years of high school left. “How old are you, Greg?”
“Um.”
Linda nudged him. “Tell her. Go on.”
“Nearly eighteen.”
Crap. He was seventeen. She did the sums in her head. At a push she could be his mother.
Linda glared at Greg. “How many times do I have to tell you to behave? You’re just like your father. He could never keep it in his pants.”
Greg stared at the counter. His face still flushed with embarrassment. As a mother Daisy could never imagine being so cruel to her own child. Life was hard enough for teenage boys without being humiliated in front of strangers. “I was just asking him some questions.”
“The only answer he has for the likes of you is no.”
Daisy pushed the photo toward Linda. “Have you seen this man?”
“Another of your conquests?” She looked at the picture and then up at Daisy. “Bit old for your taste, isn't he?”
“What?” Daisy took a step toward Linda.
Solomon grabbed her shoulder and turned her to face him. He raised an eyebrow and without a word, tugged the photo out of Daisy's hand. She had no idea what he was planning to do, but she very much doubted Linda would tell him anything.
Solomon's eyes were smoldering sex as he turned his baby blues on Linda. If he gave Daisy shit for flirting, he was going to get it right between the eyes. Talk about pot and kettle.
“You'll have to forgive my client, she's beside herself with worry. Her grandpa escaped the home again. That's the third time this month. The last time they found him he was fondling melons in Tesco with his pajama trousers on his head to stop the alien signals.” He flinched and glared at Daisy as he took a step to the left to avoid another pinch to his thigh. “Thank heavens he was still wearing his underpants. The poor man has a condition that runs rife through Daisy's family. She's usually very polite, but waiting for the results of the tests to see if she is similarly affected has her a little on edge.”
Linda glanced at Daisy and snorted. “She doesn't need to wait for the results. Women like her should be locked up.”
Daisy ground her teeth and clenched her fists. One swing and she could take her. Linda might have six inches and twenty or thirty pounds on her but the element of surprise was on Daisy's side. Linda would be on the floor before she ever saw it coming and then she'd knee Solomon in the nuts for suggesting she was mentally unhinged. Solomon put his hand on Daisy's shoulder. “Did you not say something about getting a coffee?”
“What?” Daisy frowned at Solomon.
He grabbed her arm and began to propel her toward the exit as he whispered, “Wait for me at the coffee shop around the corner.”
Daisy whispered back, “Why, what are you going to do?”
“Just go and wait for me and then you'll find out.”
“You don't even know what I want to know.”
“Right now finding out anything from that woman will be a bleedin' miracle.”
The glass exit doors slid open and Solomon all but shoved her out into the crisp afternoon air. A blast of cold wind whistled around her as the doors slid shut. She should go back in and ask the questions. Solomon had been so busy catching her up with his life, they hadn't even discussed her case over lunch. Not that she wanted to share the details with him. This was her job and she didn't need him muscling in on the action.
She peered through the glass door. Solomon was leaning on the counter and Linda was smiling the kind of stupid goofy smile women had when Solomon was charming the pants off them. Daisy didn't get it. He wasn't charming; he was annoying. So he had a toned body and killer good looks but they came with an overbearing personality and superior air that got right up her nose.
A shiver worked its way up her spine as the cold crept under her thin jacket. She'd dressed for a business meeting, not to be scurrying around the countryside in the late afternoon. What little heat had been in the sun had faded, along with the light. A fat drop of rain landed on her cheek. She could stand on the museum forecourt and get soaked, or she could find the coffee shop and leave Solomon to it. Linda was still smiling. Maybe his Irish charm would do the trick.
Chapter Six
Daisy slumped lower in her seat. Her initial euphoria about getting a new case was waning fast. Drinking at lunchtime always made her feel like an afternoon nap, not that it was afternoon anymore. Paul would be wondering where she was. She'd call him if her phone wasn't flat. Solomon would probably lend her his phone if she asked. Not that she planned to ask him anything. The useless git had wasted her whole day. His discussion with Linda had been a complete waste of time.
The git in question slowed the Aston Martin to take a sharp left-hand bend. If she was behind the wheel she would have kept her foot down and enjoyed the adrenalin rush as she fought to keep the car on the road, but not Mr. Stick-Up-His-Arse. At the speed they were traveling, it would be bedtime before she collected her car.
When she sighed loudly, Solomon glanced at her. “Problem?”
“Could you drive a little faster? I need to get home before breakfast.”
His mouth kicked up at the corners. “So, at last you've broken your silence. Does this mean you've stopped sulking?”
“I'm not sulking. Children sulk. Do I look like a child to you?”
The car slowed to a snail's pace as Solomon shifted his focus from the road to Daisy. His gaze started at her knees and crawled upward, pausing at her chest before finally reaching her face. She refused to look away, even when his
expression turned warm and seductive.
“See something you like?”
He chuckled and turned his attention to the road as he hit the accelerator. “You're definitely not a child, I'll give you that. Will you not forgive me for whatever you think I've done?”
“Why do you care? It's not like we ever see each other.”
“Are we not friends?”
“You’re friends with Paul. Besides, what we are is irrelevant. This is my case and I don't need you to butt in.”
“My butting in has been helpful, has it not? Linda is going to call if your missing man shows up.”
Daisy could feel her blood pressure rising as she growled in frustration. “He won't show up, he's dead. I wanted to know why he had been to the museum so many times and yet, according to Linda, he's never visited. How is that helpful?”
“As she works most days it means either she's lying, or your dead man was careful to avoid meeting her. Is that not useful information?”
He had a point. Not that Daisy would ever admit it. She remembered her confrontation with Linda and snorted. “I can understand why he'd sneak in and out of the place. I have no desire to see that woman ever again. Poor Greg. His life must be hell.”
“Her reaction was a little extreme but then discovering your child is growing up and showing an interest in the opposite sex might be difficult to cope with. Did you not have something similar with Sherman?”
“Sherman's fifteen, and not in the least bit interested in the opposite sex.”
“So that wasn't Sherman I saw in the precinct after school on Friday with his tongue down some young girl's throat.”
Daisy stared at him. “You saw him doing what?”
“Did Paul not talk to Sherman about sex after he had that topless girl in his room? I'm sure he knows what he's doing.”
“He said he stayed back late to play football.”
“He promised me he'd tell you both if I kept quiet. If it's any comfort to you, there were no balls involved, as far as I could tell.”
