“Hell, yeah, he is,” came the shockingly dangerous reply. “Just out of curiosity, where does Felix fuckface live?”
“No, Loki.” Suddenly exhausted with the whole mess, Alice shook her head in a hopeless kind of way, then stepped around him to trudge up the shallow concrete stairs to her building’s security door. “Just forget it, all right? It’s done. I’ll be mad at what he’s done later, but for right now all that matters is that I find a job, like yesterday.”
“That’s why I’m here.” In less than a heartbeat he was right behind her, as close as her shadow. “I found a job for you. You’re going to love it.”
She paused in the act of opening the door to glance up at him. “You found me a job?”
“Yep.”
“Where?”
“House Of Payne.”
The faint hope that had begun to glow in her chest fizzled, and with a sigh she turned her attention back to opening the door. “I couldn’t art my way out of a paper bag. Stick figures are beyond me. I mess up tic-tac-toe grids. Trust me, there isn’t a damn thing that a talentless Amazon like me could do at House Of Payne.”
“Wrong, and you’re not talentless by any stretch of the imagination.” He reached out and plucked the keys from her hand. “You’re perfect for this job. Come with me and see.”
She hesitated, torn between the shiny—if unbelievable—promise of a job, and the inherent mistrust of believing in something that appeared to be too good to be true.
Good things did happen to people, of course.
Just not to her.
Her entire life was proof of that.
But, damn it all, she needed a job.
Besides, why would this man lie to her?
Maybe because she’d put him on his ass about a minute after meeting him, her brain answered logically. Of just about anyone she knew, Loki Colgrave should have had an ax to grind when it came to her.
Though that had hardly been the case when he’d kissed her. He’d had something to grind with her, all right, but it sure as hell wasn’t an ax.
But still…
“Why?” Her eyes narrowed as she searched his rugged face, and she had the weirdest urge to trace the neatly maintained edge of his beard along his lean cheek. “Why would you look for a job for me? We’re strangers.”
“I want to get in your pants.” He lifted a powerful shoulder while his admission made her jaw drop so hard it was a miracle it didn’t dislocate. “But I can’t make any headway with you when you’re distracted by one financial shit storm after another, none of which is of your own making. Stress like that makes it impossible to seduce you all proper-like, so what the hell else am I supposed to do?”
“I…” She shook her head, trying to clear it. It didn’t help. He’d really just said what she thought he said. “Well. I’ve got to hand it to you. When you’re right, you’re right. Here I am, looking at the sexiest, most masculine man I’ve ever run across, but I’m so freaked out over being evicted, the last thing I’m thinking about is sex.” Though she was still thinking about caressing his cheek…
“See? A big lesson you need to learn about guys, Stems—we don’t need to be motivated by anything more than a stiff dick. So let’s get you a job, get you back on solid financial ground, and back into the mindset of wanting to be fucked.” With a happy grin, he pocketed her keys, headed down the shallow concrete steps leading to the parking lot, and stopped when he reached the Harley she’d been too preoccupied to notice. “Coming?”
With another sigh, Alice shrugged and headed back down the steps. “Why the hell not? Let’s go.”
Chapter Five
“The thing is, here at the House life can get crazy. That’s how it is when you collect the most brilliant—and therefore, the most unstable—tattoo artists this world has to offer, then put them under the same roof. One minute everything’s rosy. The next, it’s like a hurricane blew in, and there are tattered survivors staggering around, looking for solid ground that they can rely on.” Seated at her neat desk in an elegant office done up in tones of white and Tiffany blue, Scout Fournier seemed out of place, at least at first glance. But the meticulousness of her Rockabilly appearance matched the exacting perfection of her surroundings. The flowers in the rug’s pattern, the framed floral prints on the walls and the vase of fresh flowers on her desk echoed the flowers of her tattoos. Clearly, this was Scout’s personal space. “You know what that solid ground is? It’s the management side of the business. Management means Payne, Sunny and me. It also means security, like the team we independently contract from Private Security International. I’m just not sold on the idea that you, Alice Halliday, are capable of being solid-ground material. From my point of view, all I can see is a hurricane.”
“Considering how we met, I’m not surprised.” Alice kept her face studiously blank and her hands laced tightly together in her lap. She knew what she seemed like in the other woman’s eyes—a wild-eyed maniac who’d thought she could take down the biggest, baddest tattooist the House had on tap. It was a wonder the other woman had even agreed to speak with her. “If this job had anything to do with customer service or public relations, I would agree that a job like that would be a bad fit. I’m aware that I can be distant, even aloof. Diplomacy has never been one of my strong suits.”
“No kidding.”
“But this job isn’t about customer service, diplomacy or public relations,” Alice went on, keeping her temper in check. After all, being run through the mill was no less than she deserved after her deplorable loss of control. “It’s about catching shoplifters. Or better yet, discouraging shoplifting entirely by being a looming and obvious presence in the gift store you have onsite. I can loom with the best of them, and when you’re a woman and almost six feet tall, being obvious just sort of happens.”
Scout nodded, clearly agreeing with that last comment. “We also don’t want anyone injured or maimed.”
It nearly killed Alice to not snort. “That makes two of us.”
“Say you run across a sticky-fingered kid who pisses you off. Then, hypothetically speaking, you break the arm of this kid. The kid might have caused his or her injuries through their own boneheaded actions, but that would be for a court to decide. That means money would have to be spent on things we’ve never had to spend money on before. It also means bad publicity for the House, which is something I will never tolerate. How can you convince me you’re not a short-fused bomb waiting to go off?”
As a Halliday, that was a question she asked herself on a daily basis. “About an hour ago, I walked away from a man who stole antique Tiffany ruby and diamond earrings from me worth about fifteen thousand dollars, and I didn’t lay a finger on him. I did throw a couple accent pillows at the wall, but I didn’t touch him. How’s that for a stress test?”
Scout’s eyes widened. “Not bad. You didn’t even kick him in the balls?”
“Nope.”
“Honey, I would’ve at least kicked him in the balls. I mean, we’re talking Tiffany earrings here.”