2. Thorn
Chapter two
Thorn
M y last name might be Thorn—sort of/chosen—but usually, it’s not apt. I’m the strong, solid, quiet type, not the hot-flaming asshole variety.
Then again, opening with that kind of abrupt assholery didn’t exactly guarantee me a receptive audience.
I know I should do better. I should try . Alas, my people skills are zero—and it doesn’t matter what scale that zero is on because zero is always zero—and my patience is particularly shot to all shit and gone after a world-famous feline nearly got lifted on my watch.
I’m the head of the place. Not this place, but the place. I’m the one at the top. My name is the one at risk. Not that anyone would recognize me because office persona gets a hell of a good disguise—we’re talking fake mustache and all—but it’s still my name nonetheless. I’ve worked too hard to see it all go up in a bag of flaming litterbox turds.
Ephemeral Blemberfell—and believe me, I have quite the experience with terrible names, so I’m not going to go there—stares at me like I’m something that got dropped under the couch and sat there brewing for weeks without the benefit of having any preservatives. A lab dish of disgusting hair, fungus, mold, and maybe even a few miscellaneous lost teeth.
I don’t mind in the least. I’m used to people disliking me. At least in the field. When I’m working nine to five, most wouldn’t dare.
“What exactly is your name?” she asks flatly. Her face can’t hide that she’s seething.
Right. Again, I shouldn’t have jumped straight to the banana peels comparisons. “Thorn Stone.”
Her brows cross, my brows cross. Hers lift. Mine lift. She stares me down, and I stare right back. “That sounds made up,” she huffs.
Says her, with her own wild name, but then, she has me there. It is made up. Damien Strokewood just doesn’t have the same…professional ring to it. I had to pick something with an ounce more sense when I started my own company and reinvented myself. No one is going to hire you to do a job if they think you’re too busy…stroking wood. Thorn Stone is a solid name, and it matches my current persona just fine.
“Well, Mr. Thorn Stone, what can I do for you? Other than make you into a banana milkshake, which I would really like to do, considering the convention is pretty much over, and everyone else is packing up. But here I am, stuck waiting for the cops or you or freaking someone to come and pump me for information.”
She fists her hands on her hips and I have to say, she’s not horrible looking. At all. That’s actually the nicest thought I’ve had about anyone for a very long time. I’m one of those few people who is never attracted to anyone based on sight. I’m more of a get-to-know-someone-first kind of person, but the majority of people usually make you wish you hadn’t, so my get-to-know-someone-first basis is quite…nonexistent.
Ephemeral matches her name. She’s tiny. Spritely. Like, as in a sprite—the woodsy little fairy being. But her hair screams galaxy night. It’s jet black with pink, purple, and blue stripes, most of which are concentrated in the slash of bangs that hang flat across her forehead, framing a pair of striking green eyes with insanely long, thick lashes. She’s not wearing a woodsy outfit to match her spritely name either. Just a wild dress with cat zombies all over it, striped tights, and ridiculous platform shoes.
I have no idea how her clothes haven’t spontaneously gone into combustion mode from the amount of friction they’re generating by clashing so badly. More importantly, I have no clue how this tiny little lady ran across the entire arena in those huge platform shoes, chasing down that prick who stole her cat. I would be hard-pressed to take a single step in those monstrosities.
“I’d like to offer you my services for free.”
Her eyes widen. She looks me up and down, and her lips part. I suddenly realized how that just came out.
“Not those services.” Christ. “My security services. I’m in charge of the company working this event and a lot more besides.” I run a big place, and I run it right—the tightest of ships. I’m the owner, and I provide services to many of the most elite people in the country. And I’ve expanded over the years, amalgamating with a few companies and growing toward the lovely point of going international. There’s actually a big soupy pot of security business on the stove right now in the form of a very important merger.
I can’t have this cockup of a catnab blackening my reputation, especially when I took charge of this event at the request of one of my clients.
This tiny little slip of a woman with her wild hair and bright clothes rolls her eyes right in my face. “Thanks, but I’m good.” She looks like she’d rather lick a puddle of melted ice cream out of the dirt—ants and dust and grime and all.
“It’s not optional. It’s going to happen. You need security, and that’s a fact. I’m honestly surprised this is the first attempt. Your cat is world-famous. She’s an internet sensation. Her videos are everywhere, and she’s worth a lot of money.”
“I’m not rich,” she throws back testily.
“I didn’t say you were,” I tell her. She glares at me, but it’s going to take a lot more than dirty looks to deter me. A lot more , meaning nothing or anything. “You need a bodyguard. A catguard. And you need one now. Before this gets out there and someone tries again. Unless you have a tracking device implanted in your cat, then I suggest you take my help. I’m offering it free of charge for the remainder of the show season.”
That’s three months. The cost of a private job like that would be astronomical. Even though I own the company and I’m running it, I still work harder than anyone. In the office, on the ground, in the field. Paperwork or action: I want to be everywhere, doing everything.
Alright, so there’s a slight chance I have some control issues.
“No.” She shakes her head. “I can’t take your services free of charge or otherwise.”
“Then you’re being very foolish. Imagine your heartache if you lost your cat today.”
She’s already pale, with beautiful creamy skin and cinnamon flake freckles, but now she goes so white that I’m worried she’s going to pass out. My worry abates when color comes back to her cheeks in a storm of righteous indignation pink. I swear, someone should name their paint swatch after her. It wouldn’t be the most absurd name I’d ever read.
“That’s not fair!” She looks like she’s being tortured. Slowly. And wrecked.
Something foreign and confusing inside me twinges. I’m just trying to make her get real. I’m not here to hurt her. It’s the sense of it that matters. The worst-case scenario was almost her reality. She needs a dose of sense, even if it’s a lethal one.
It might not be fair, but the world seldom is. “There are a lot of people out there, bad or otherwise. A lot. You need to be more careful,” I advise.
“This is our life,” she bristles, indicating the incredibly strange cat cave/cage thing that resembles a grade-five science fair project. “I’m not going to let this scare me away. I’m not going to bow out of doing shows or anything else.”
“The celebrity needs her fans.”
“That’s not how this is. I don’t market my cat out like that. She’s not here as some kind of celebrity or internet sensation. She’s here because she’s real, and she’s touched so many hearts and lives. It’s not a fame thing. It’s a love thing.”
“How very sweet. I’m shedding a tear here.”
“Yeah, you look like a real bleeding heart.”
I thought she was nothing but a wilted rose with a bleeding heart herself, but she’s proving that bleeding heart flowers are toxic. Which, I think, they truly are.
“You wouldn’t shed a tear over anything,” she adds.
“I would.”
“Really? Name it.”
“No, you’re right, there’s nothing.”
She doesn’t appreciate my dry humor. “You’re so cold, you know that? Cold and more than slightly creepy.”
“Unemotional and intimidating are two great things in a bodyguard. I have one thing you don’t.”
“What’s that?”
A good working brain? Christ, no. That’s too mean by far. Ability to reason and look at a situation as a whole instead of just in bits and pieces? I’m taking too long trying to force that to come out not completely offensive.
“Wow,” she snaps. “Good talk. Thank you so much for the compliments. Does Amanda work for you?”
“Yes.” I saw them talking together, and Amanda escorted Ephemeral back to her booth.
“I want her then.”
Big surprise. I didn’t see that coming. “The offer is me or no one.” I’m not trusting my company name and my whole future to anyone else. Today might have been a team mistake, but when you’re the one at the top, all successes and failures are on you.
“No thanks.”
“You’re being obtuse and ridiculous. You live in a fantasy world.” That’s my nice talk for I fucked up here today, and I need to make this right. Why are you being so difficult about letting me?
“Believe me, if you knew me, you’d hardly call my life a fantasy,” she retorts sharply.
“I spent the past ten minutes looking you up. I know Peach Lips is all you have.”
A shudder rolls through her, and I get that strange stabbing in my stomach region again. “You truly have no heart.”
It might appear that way sometimes, but it’s not true. I just can’t relate to people. They don’t appreciate me unless I’m doing what I do best, which is taking care of their shit or their lives by putting mine on the line instead.
Heart isn’t what one needs to do this job. A will of steel and iron is far more apt. “Heart is a metaphor for skill and intuition and the ability to go to extreme lengths to succeed. In that case, I have plenty of it. In spades.”
Her expression grows icy, and it’s all I’d like to give you an arrow straight to the head. Yeah, well, she can get in line.
“I maintain that you’re deluding yourself. And deluding yourself is a good way to get hurt. Even your cat’s name is part of your fantasy. Have you never stopped to consider how inappropriate that name actually is?” It sounds like something that…well…would be better suited for a certain kind of industry.
Her mouth drops in a holy cats, you did not just go there rounded O of shock and rage. “She’s called Peach Lips because she likes her peach catnip best, and she gets it stuck all over her mouth. It’s so freaking cute. You’d know that if you truly looked me up.”
“I know why you named her that because I did look you up—and in a more thorough way than anyone else would have the ability to do unless they’re trying to cause you real harm or are truly nefarious, and I’m not ruling any of that out. But my opinion of the name stands.”
Her nose scrunches, causing exactly four freckles to leap and twist. “Yeah, still a hard pass.” She looks like she wants to flip me off, but she’s too polite. Instead, she does it with that nose wrinkle, like I’m some foul algae brew, and she’s so not in her bog witch era. “Even more so now. I didn’t like your vibe, and that was before you even opened your mouth. At the very beginning. Before any of this happened. You’re a skulker. A hulker. It’s clear you should stick to the shadows instead of trying to engage in open communication with anyone. It’s not working for you.”
I can see I’m not going to get anywhere at the moment. The cops are going to come, but I’ll send Amanda to fill out the incident report for our company as well. Ephemeral can go back to living in her forest—okay, her bus—and pretend nothing bad is ever going to happen.
I snap out a business card. I’m sure she’ll cave after she thinks it through. “Call if you change your mind.”
“Unless you’re going to let me have Amanda, I won’t change anything,” she says, though she does glance at the card before shoving it back at me.
I set it down on her table, turn around, and walk away.
For some reason, walking away is harder to do than I thought it would be.
It’s not because Ephemeral, with her strange name and her huge green eyes and her sadness clinging to her like fairy dust to her wilted wings and all, looks vulnerable, shaken, and depleted now that the fight is bleeding out of her.
Walking away is only difficult because I can’t stand not getting my way when it comes to my work. I’m not a selfish prick or one of those unspeakable nepo babies. I’ve had nothing handed to me, and that’s what makes me insufferable. I’ve worked for a living. I scraped and fought and clawed and all that good stuff. I’ve sacrificed everything to get here. I’m not going back to the bottom, and I’m not going down with this smudge shitting all over my hopes and dreams.
I’m not a bully.
It might chap my ass goddamn near raw, but I’ve learned that patience is often far better than persisting at the moment. Persistence in the long run, however, is gold.
So persistence it will be. I’m not letting this go.
She’ll see sense and come around when the emotional toll of the day wears off. When she does, I won’t even be an I told you so asshole about it.
I can be nice.
And okay, whatever, it’s my redemption on the line.