The Girl with the Emerald Ring: A Romantic Thriller (Blackwood Security Book 12)

by Elise Noble

  He didn’t mention that “somehow” would involve calling Naz and asking him nicely if he’d mind tracking Bethany’s cell phone again. Or one of Emmy’s team if Naz had decided to take a nap. The guy went through fads like Alaric went through underwear. Last month, he’d been eating blueberries with every meal because a woman he met on the train told him he needed to detox. The month before that, he’d taken up roller skiing, then left all the kit in Judd’s basement when he went to visit his grandma in Georgia. Georgia the country, not Georgia the state. And this month? This month saw Naz extolling the benefits of polyphasic sleep, which basically meant he was kipping whenever anyone wanted him to do anything.

  Perhaps Alaric should get Naz to speak with Bethany? Exhaustion ringed her eyes, circling a resigned sadness that no make-up could hide. First she’d had a divorce to deal with, then Pemberton’s retaliation. And it was retaliation. Last night, he’d discovered one of his assistants had both sharp eyes and morals, so of course he’d wanted to get rid of her. What if she questioned things further, kept checking the stolen-art databases? There was no way the gallery would stand up to that kind of scrutiny. No, she’d had to go. She said she tripped over a cleaning caddy? Alaric would put money on the old bastard having moved it into Bethany’s path himself.

  “Thank you for doing this. I won’t need the parking space for long, I promise. Just until I can make other arrangements. I’ll update my CV again this evening, and—” Now what was wrong? She’d gone quite pale. “I can’t.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “Can’t update my CV. My laptop died two months ago, and I’ve just been using the one at the gallery. But I had to leave it behind.” Unexpectedly, she thumped the dashboard, then leaned her head against the steering wheel. Her breath steamed onto the windscreen, fuzzy little circles of despair that matched Alaric’s mind. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve got a laptop. Let’s drop the car off, then we can work on your résumé.” We? For fuck’s sake, McLain. “I’ll even buy you dinner.”

  It was official: his mouth was no longer connected to his brain, and the latter had ceased to function. In fact, the only parts of him that were still working were his tongue and his dick, which had clubbed together to toss difficulties into his path like confetti at a wedding.

  “Dinner?” Bethany asked.

  “We’ve got to eat, right?” Just. Stop. Talking. “What kind of food do you like?”

  “Anything I don’t have to cook myself.”

  Slowly, deliberately, Alaric forced one foot out of the car. What the hell was he doing? The last time he’d let his little head overrule his big one, he’d ended up with Emmy, and look how that had turned out. He’d ended up hurting both of them, not to mention making an enemy out of her husband. Marriage of convenience his ass. Deep down, he’d always known Black would claim Emmy in the end, but still he couldn’t stop himself from falling head over heels. Quite literally, he mused, remembering the number of times he’d fucked her in stilettos.

  Alaric’s gaze strayed towards the driver’s side footwell, sliding over a pair of smooth legs he had no business looking at. If he didn’t get a grip, he’d be forced to check himself into a damn monastery until he came to his senses. Honestly, he didn’t usually behave like a horny teenager. That was Judd’s job.

  Alaric made a mental note not to let him anywhere near Bethany.

  “Are we going now?” She turned listlessly in her seat.

  “Unless you want me to get pizza delivered to the parking lot.” He glanced out the door, taking in the tangle of brambles surrounding the potholed blacktop. Stray pieces of straw scudded past, tumbling in the stiff breeze that blew from the north, and a squirrel balanced on a wooden post, a rotting totem of a fence that had once separated the space from a bare paddock. Now white electric tape marked the boundary instead, and a small brown horse shook a frothy tangle of hair away from its eyes and stared hangdog at them from its makeshift prison. “The ambience isn’t much, and there’s a nosy diner at the next table, but the view’s nice.”

  “Really? I always thought it was a bit overgrown.” Ah, such innocence. She didn’t get the double entendre? “Pinkey’s always saying she’s going to cut it back, but then a horse goes lame or a water drinker malfunctions and floods the place or the roof of the tack room falls down, so she runs out of time. And Twiggy’s meant to be on a diet. He used to be in the paddock by the footpath, but people kept bringing him carrots.”

  “Somebody called that horse Twiggy?”

  He was a whisky barrel with a leg at each corner, about as far from a twig as it was possible to get. Walk him up a hill and he’d block out the sun.

  “Technically, he’s a pony rather than a horse, but…yes, I suppose there is a certain irony. His name’s actually Lord Ferdinand, but he escaped and got tangled in a blackberry patch. It took us an hour to cut him free and two more to pick the bits out of his hair. Pinkey called him Twiggy for a joke because it was either laugh or cry while we all got our hands cut to shreds, and it stuck.”

  Before his brain caught up, Alaric had reached out for one of Bethany’s hands, turning it over in his to examine the skin on both sides. At least he knew why her nails were chipped now—caring for her horse trumped manicures.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Checking for damage.”

  “Damage? From the blackberries?”

  “Plants can be vicious.”

  He’d found that out the day Emmy convinced him it would be fun to make a parachute jump. He’d only agreed because she promised he’d be strapped tightly to her the whole way down. The first thirty seconds of free fall had been terrifying, but once she pulled the chute, he’d actually begun to enjoy himself, aided in no small part by her legs wrapped around him and the filth she’d been shouting in his ear over the wind noise. Then thirty feet from the ground, a last-second gust had tossed them sideways into a briar patch. And it only added insult to injury when Black glided in like a steroid-addled ballerina, landing neatly in the field to their left.

  Emmy had been pissed, really pissed, mostly at herself but partly at the undergrowth. She’d cursed in at least six different languages as she hacked through the bushes with a machete. A fucking machete. To this day, Alaric didn’t know where she’d got it from. He’d covered the important bits with his hands when they landed, which meant he’d retained the ability to have children at least, but rather than going out for dinner, they’d spent the evening tweezing thorns out of each other’s asses.

  “Who says romance is dead?” Emmy had joked. Laugh or cry, right?

  Their romance might not yet have been dead at that point, but when Alaric looked back now, he understood there had been a tumour growing.

  Bethany pulled her hand away, gently rather than snatching. “It happened six months ago. The scratches don’t show anymore.”

  Why couldn’t he get involved with a woman who had a safe hobby for once? Not that he was involved with Bethany, exactly. He owed her, that was all. And he wasn’t about to make the mistake of suggesting she take up flower arranging.

  No, he was going to get away from the damn car and take her back to London where she belonged.

  “Are you still in London?” Ravi asked through the Honda’s speakers.

  “Just outside and going nowhere fast.” The M4 was backed up. Again. Bethany was right behind Alaric, and every so often, she leaned across to fiddle with the radio. Trying to find out what the delay was? Or just listening to music? Yesterday, he’d have pegged her as a classical fan, but she’d already surprised him once with her choice of hobby. Perhaps she liked hard rock?

  “Heading into town or out?”

  “Into town.”

  “Good—can you do me a favour?”

  “What kind of a favour?”

  “I ran out of time to buy Rune a birthday gift, and my flight doesn’t get in until late tonight.”

  Rune? Birthday? Alaric checked his watch just in case Ravi was wrong, or jo
king, or… Sure enough, it was May twelfth. Oh, sweet mother of fuck. How could he have forgotten?

  He managed a weak, “That’s tomorrow?”

  “You forgot your daughter’s birthday?”

  Alaric wasn’t Rune’s biological father, but that didn’t matter. It was his name on her fake birth certificate, which meant he had certain responsibilities, albeit shared with the other men of Sirius. If it weren’t for Rune, there would be no Sirius.

  “I’ll get a gift. Of course I’ll get a gift.” What was the time? Almost four o’clock. “Or maybe I could ask Barbara to pick something up.”

  “Uh… No.”

  “Why not? Running errands is literally part of her job.”

  At first, they’d done all the admin themselves—organised meetings, answered the phone, booked travel, typed up reports—but as they got busier, they’d missed calls, missed flights, and missed spelling errors. A shared PA had seemed like a worthwhile investment, although they’d been through four in the last year thanks to Judd.

  “Judd didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what?” Alaric asked through gritted teeth.

  “Barbara quit.”

  “What? When? I spoke to her yesterday afternoon, and she was fine.”

  “This morning.”

  “Say he didn’t…”

  Judd had managed to drive away every single one of Barbara’s predecessors, mostly by sleeping with them and then breaking their hearts, but occasionally by not sleeping with them and breaking their hearts. This time, Alaric, Ravi, and Naz had banned him from participating in the recruitment process entirely and hired a sixty-year-old spinster who hadn’t been genetically blessed in the looks department. Surely there wasn’t enough alcohol in the world for Judd to make a move on Barbara?

  Ravi snorted out a laugh. “No, he went one better this time. After he got back from Brazil, he forgot to reset his watch, so when he woke up jet-lagged at eleven a.m., he thought it was seven o’clock and went downstairs to make himself a coffee.”

  Alaric couldn’t hold back his groan. “He got dressed first, right? Threw on a robe or something? Underwear?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’ll speak to Barbara. Promise it’ll never happen again. Did she run screaming?”

  “No, she fainted and hit her head on the kitchen table. After Judd drove her to the emergency room, she made one of the nurses bring her a sheet of paper and a pen so she could write out her resignation letter. Judd said he’d pay her three months’ severance. Apparently, she needed eight stitches, and she’s moving to Sheffield to recuperate with her daughter.”

  “We need to get a proper office.” Using Judd’s spare living room wouldn’t work anymore, and they were making decent money now. “There must be enough in the budget. Judd can hire someone else to water his plants and feed his cat while he’s away, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to keep an assistant for longer than three months.”

  “There’s enough in the budget, but don’t you think an assistant would get lonely on her own? None of us would ever use an office. At least at Judd’s place, there are people to talk to.”

  That was a fair point. Judd had a constant stream of people going in and out of his Kensington townhouse. The cleaner was a regular fixture, and then there was his personal trainer, the decorators that always seemed to be working there, and an endless series of women. When Barbara wasn’t being treated to the sight of Judd’s bobbing cock, she’d spent half of her mornings organising cabs and occasionally providing a shoulder to cry on. Something else she hadn’t been happy about, and who could blame her? She’d signed up for typing and filing, not counselling.

  “So what do you suggest? We just carry on as we are?”

  “What about some sort of chastity device?”

  “Sirius is an intelligence agency, not a BDSM club.”

  The echo of a tannoy drowned out whatever retort Ravi made, and Alaric caught the words “gate” and “boarding.”

  “Is that your flight?”

  “Yeah, and it’s already late.” A woman said something to Ravi in the background. “What, I can’t take the water with me? But I just bought it at the kiosk right here.” More muttering. “Okay, okay, I’ll drink it. Alaric? You there?”

  “Still here.”

  “So, can you get a gift for Rune? I looked in duty-free, but I figured she’d get expelled if I brought her a bottle of Jack Daniels and a carton of cigarettes.”

  “I’ll find something.”

  “And we need a new assistant too. Could you call the agency?”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you’re the most diplomatic. Or do you want Judd to turn a job interview into a date again?”

  Alaric sighed. “No, I don’t.”

  “Then you’ll call?”

  “Yeah, I’ll call. See you tomorrow.”

  As Alaric hung up, he glanced in the mirror again. Maybe there was a better solution? Bethany was organised and she needed a job, but Alaric would be damned if he’d let Judd get his dick into her. The woman had been through enough already this month. Which meant he’d have to train her himself, then find her an office. Did he have the time? He’d kept his schedule light after the Emerald lead came in, so technically he did. The bigger problem? Alaric would have to keep his own hands off Bethany. Firstly, he didn’t shit where he ate, and Judd would never let him forget it if he scared off an assistant. Secondly, he didn’t need any emotional entanglements, not when he was focused on building up Sirius and finding Emerald. Trouble was, his hands seemed to have a mind of their own right now. Should he make the offer or not?

  CHAPTER 23 - BETHANY

  “I HATE TO ask this, but can we take a rain check on dinner?” Alaric said as I hurried towards him in Emmy’s parking garage. “I’ll still give you a ride home.”

  I’d spent the trip back from Chaucer psyching myself up to spend an evening with a man for the first time since my divorce, so to hear he’d changed his mind felt oddly disappointing. Not really surprising, but disappointing.

  At least he’d come through with the parking space, and that was the more important thing. A safe, brightly lit underground spot beside a rather nice Aston Martin, which left me more worried about accidentally scratching a supercar than about venturing into a deserted parking garage. And I hated skulking around London alone. Once, I’d tripped over a slumbering homeless man in the yard behind the gallery, and I’m not sure who was more startled—him or me. Certainly I’d dropped the leftover cupcake I’d been carrying.

  “Of course, it’s not a problem. I’m sure I’ve got something in the fridge at home.”

  “Tomorrow night instead?”

  Huh? Usually, asking for a rain check meant “I want to cancel, but more politely.” Alaric really did want to go out? That was unexpected.

  “I wish I could, but I can’t. Not tomorrow. I have a family thing.”

  “You don’t look too thrilled about that.”

  Oops, did I grimace? “My father’s birthday celebration. I’m sure I’ll survive.”

  “Aren’t parties meant to be fun?”

  “Not in my world, and especially not when my mother’s invited my ex-husband and his new fiancée.”

  “She’s done what?”

  “He’s a family friend.”

  “I was under the impression your divorce was acrimonious?”

  “It was. He…he cheated on me.”

  “Then how the hell is he still a family friend?”

  “Because…” Where did I start with explaining the Stafford-Lyons family dynamics? And more to the point, why was I waffling on about it with a virtual stranger? “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does, because you’re upset.”

  “Honestly, I’ll be fine. If I park my car along the road from my parents’ house, nobody’ll block me in and I can make an early exit once the brandy starts flowing.”

  “Sounds as if you’ve done that before.”

  An emba
rrassed giggle burst out of me. “I tried, except I made the mistake of parking on the drive. Then I couldn’t get out, and I had to hide in the tack room until everyone else went home.”

  “Why not decline the invite?”

  “You haven’t met my mother. I’d never hear the end of it. It’s bad enough that I went rogue and got a job, without skipping social functions too. I…” Stop chewing your lip, Beth. “I have to stay in my parents’ good books in case things get so bad financially that I can’t afford Chaucer’s livery. They have stables, but if I use them, I’ll be expected to play by their rules. Which means smiling politely when Mother tries to set me up with another moneyed worm more dickish than Piers and most likely stepping back into my role on the country club social committee. I can’t lose Chaucer. I won’t. Plus…”

  “Plus what?”

  “I guess there’s just a tiny part of me that wants to show everyone that I haven’t fallen apart the way they expected. They’re all going to be talking about me anyway, and if I don’t show my face, the gossip mill will go into overdrive. Bethany’s at home crying into her wine. Bethany’s checked herself into rehab. Ooh, what if she’s topped herself? When I missed Mother’s last party, someone started a rumour I’d had a nervous breakdown.” I took a deep breath. “I’ll be fine.” Who was I trying to convince? Alaric or myself? “Sorry for burdening you with my problems like that. I really should think before I speak.”

  I expected him to back away the way Piers had every time I got overly emotional, but he just smiled. And not a “there, there, go take a Valium” smile—no, this was almost…cunning?

  “How do you feel about a late dinner tonight?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I have an errand to run first.”

  “Uh, okay.” Dinner was back on?

  “Great. Can you do me a favour and make a reservation? Anywhere you like—I’m paying.”

  “I… I… Of course. What time?”

  Now it was his turn to look unsure. “Can you tell me where there might be stores open this evening? I’ve been to London plenty of times, but I tend to avoid shopping.”