“So, what? You want me to be the latest fodder for your man-whore of a colleague?”
“Absolutely not. This time, I’d take responsibility for all the training, and then either you could work from home or we’d find you an office far, far away from Judd. We can’t keep losing assistants. It causes chaos with the admin.”
“I see. So I’d have to spend time with you to start with, and that was what you meant by talking more?”
“Yes, and we might have to travel. I’m not always based in the UK, and I’m still hunting for this damn painting. Would you be able to leave your horse for a while?”
“A short while. Pinkey takes excellent care of him.” Bethany chewed on her bottom lip, thinking. “What about you, Alaric? Do you keep your clothes on around your colleagues?”
Was that a hint of disappointment in her voice?
“Business and pleasure are rarely a good mix.”
Alaric walked a fine line with Ravi. They had an agreement. Rules. One wobble with Bethany, and he’d lose his balance entirely.
“Oh. Tonight isn’t pleasure?”
“Tonight’s fun. Pleasure’s entirely different.”
Dammit, stop looking at her breasts.
“So it’s an either/or situation,” she murmured, so softly that Alaric barely heard her over the chatter from the table next to them. A bachelorette party, judging by the outfits and the number of empty wine glasses.
“I’ve been giving off the wrong signals, and for that, I apologise. I’m not in the market for a relationship or even a hook-up. And you…” He reached out and cupped her cheek. “Deserve a man who treats you like a queen. So the only thing on offer is a job, one I think you’d be good at. And the occasional bit of fun.”
Bethany turned away, trying to hide the way she wiped one eye as she did so. Alaric was in two minds whether to offer a handkerchief. The manners drilled into him dictated he should, but at the same time, he didn’t want to draw attention to her tears. Perhaps this was why he’d been attracted to Emmy? She didn’t cry. Although when she got pissed, she tended to head out the back of her house and unload her favourite Walther at one of the targets she had set up. Last time Alaric had been to Riverley, she’d pasted a photo of his former boss over the bullseye at the fifty-yard mark. There hadn’t been much left of the man by the end of the day.
Before Alaric made up his mind, Bethany pulled herself together with a smoothness that suggested she’d done it many times before. The perky smile, the way she folded her hands in her lap… Fake but polished.
“Can I take your order?” a waitress asked. Was there a special class waitstaff took to ensure they interrupted at precisely the wrong moment?
“Give us five minutes?”
“The kitchen’s about to close.”
Bethany’s expression didn’t change. “I’ll just have a margherita, thank you.”
“Pepperoni for me, plus a bottle of white.”
“Would you like any—”
“No.” Alaric forced himself to be polite. “No, thanks. Nothing else.”
The girl threw him a dirty look—so much for service with a smile—and flounced off.
Now, where were they?
“Could you tell me more about what the role would entail?” Bethany asked.
Great. She’d switched to job-interview mode. The perfect fucking candidate, emphasis on the perfect and the fucking. Or so Alaric imagined. Still, with no way he’d let himself find out for sure, he matched her smile with an equally phoney one of his own.
“The four of us are often difficult for clients to contact, partly because we travel a lot but mostly because when we’re working, we can’t stop to take phone calls. So you’d relay messages as and when our schedules allow. You’d also arrange transport and accommodation, plus carry out basic admin tasks—proofreading and formatting reports, printing and mailing hard-copy documents, and screening initial enquiries. And there would be an element of personal assistance—buying Rune’s birthday gifts, for example. Plus possibly feeding Judd’s cat and watering his plants while he’s away.”
“And the salary?”
“What were you on at the gallery?”
She named a figure so low it made Alaric wince.
“Hell, we were paying Barbara twice that, and you’d be worth the same.”
“You don’t even know if I can do the job yet.”
“Yes, I do. I’ve just spent most of the day with you, Bethany. You’ve got the right attributes, and anything else is just training.”
“And by attributes, you mean…?”
She glanced at her chest. Busted.
“I mean you have the right personality.”
“How much travel would be involved?”
“I’ll need to show you the ropes, which’ll take a few weeks, and depending on where the hunt for Emerald takes me, I could end up anywhere. Potentially, the others could help, but I don’t trust Judd not to eat you alive.”
A spark of jealousy flared in Alaric’s gut, and for the first time, he understood how Emmy’s husband had felt all those years ago. When he hadn’t taken Emmy for himself, but he hadn’t wanted anyone else to have her either. If only the current circumstances were different. If Sirius were five years older, if Alaric didn’t have an unstoppable compulsion to find Emerald, if he’d picked a place to settle and bought a house. But circumstances were what they were. Alaric had visited twenty-three countries in the last year, and the longest he’d spent in one place was three months. That had been Florida. He’d rented a villa so Rune could stay with him for Christmas, then got tangled up in Emmy’s latest mess—a sex trafficking ring masterminded by the Mafia’s favourite money launderer, both now thankfully defunct.
“So potentially a month or so of travel, and then I could work from London?” When Alaric nodded, Bethany continued, “And what does the company do? Sirius Consulting? That’s kind of vague.”
“Deliberately so. It’s a private intelligence agency. Basically, our clients pay us to find them information that might otherwise be difficult to obtain.”
“So you really are a private detective? Piers hired one to dig up dirt on me during our divorce, but there wasn’t any dirt to find. He seemed quite disappointed.”
“Yes and no. We cater to a different market—businesses, mainly. We advise on strategy if they want to enter new markets, analyse risks, and provide regulatory guidance. Plus we can assist with investigations—due diligence, fraud, asset tracing, and whistle-blower allegations.”
Translation: they evaluated whether corrupt officials or dodgy competitors were likely to sink a project before it got started, and if necessary, worked out which palms to grease. Plus they dug into all the sordid details of people’s lives and companies’ histories that they didn’t want to share, and sometimes, for variety, Sirius got to hunt down thieves.
In short, Judd and Alaric talked to people. A lot of people, many of whom would only deal face to face. Naz dug around electronically, and if they needed to get into somewhere tricky in the physical sense, that fell under Ravi’s remit.
Judd was the frontman. Former MI6, charismatic, and far too charming for his own good. Alaric, Naz, and Ravi worked in the shadows, and they made damn sure that when their activities crossed that blurry line between grey and black, they didn’t get caught.