5. Maisie
5
MAISIE
I have a meeting first thing Monday morning with the Blackwood triplets and my dad, and I am aiming for invisibility. Two of the Blackwoods—but not my boss, I’d know—and my dad are in the conference room when I walk in.
Taking a seat, I pray. Sometimes they just get on with business and I take notes and it’s?—
“What happened to your face, Miss Matthews?” one of the Blackwoods says.
I wince. So much for hoping no one would notice.
“Nothing!” I tip my head down. It’s a black eye. Not as bad as the bruise on my bottom, but rather more difficult to hide at work.
“That isn’t nothing!” my dad explodes. “Tell me immediately!”
I already have a reputation in Morden for being clumsy—no one has forgotten my cupcake disaster on my first day—and there’s no way I’m telling anyone that I was trying to dance on a table, and fell off. Not even a proper table, either. A coffee table.
I have my pride.
“Shark attack,” I reply, looking up.
There’s a shocked silence, then one of the Blackwood brothers bursts into laughter.
“Vito, that isn’t funny.” Rafe Blackwood rolls his eyes. “Was the shark a biped?”
“Pretty sure sharks are fish.” I try to stare him down, but he’s a mafia boss, and I’m really not.
“So, this was a diving incident,” Vito drawls. “It is an impressive shiner.”
“Should have seen the other guy.” The coffee table looks even stupider with those foam corner things than I do with a black eye. Revenge was sweet.
“The shark? I’ll nip down to the aquarium,” Vito says.
“Was it your boyfriend?” asks Rafe pointedly.
“No!” I’m falling over my own tongue to get that denial out. My dad will go nuts if he thinks I’m dating. I’m blushing, which doesn’t help. Because this was all started by my thinking about how much I adore my boss—who doesn’t know I exist—and being determined not to be a tragic case.
Great job on that one.
“She doesn’t have a boyfriend,” Dad growls. “Or if she does, he’s twice as dead now.”
“Twice as dead? Is this like the ‘shark attack’?” Vito grins like he’s enjoying this. “We’re not playing by the laws of physics anymore.”
Oh god.
“I mean that she’s the mafia princess of Mitcham, and when she marries it will be because I have arranged it. Any man who touches her before then is dead. And anyone who hurts my daughter is dead as well. Twice dead.” My dad says this as though it’s totally logical, then turns to me.
“I’ll let the shark know,” I say brightly.
“So what did this shark look like?” Vito is leaning back in his chair, evidently enjoying this. “Grey? Purple? Blue?”
“Brown, actually.” I think I’m now implying I was hit by a table. Or that a table is my boyfriend. Who would be twice dead, if he existed.
I’m so screwed.
Bracing his forearms on the table, my dad pins me with a look that is as ugly and violent as it is protective. “Who hurt you?” He enunciates each word like they’re bullets.
“It was...” A table. And a book.
And not in the emotional way books usually hurt people.
They all regard me expectantly.
I cannot say I slipped dancing on a table, on my own. That is too pathetic, even by my standards. My dad will order me home to Mitcham and to stop working here if he thinks my apartment isn’t safe. This was a mistake.
I should have thrown a sickie.
“Nothing,” I say. “Really.”
“Was it a bear?” Vito asks, absolutely straight.
Rafe snorts with laughter.
“Bears are brown,” Vito points out.
I think of the table. “Basically, yes.”
Dad’s brows are so low he’ll have to surgically remove them from his legs. I search my mind. What can I say? That isn’t too silly, and is plausible.
“I, uh, fell.”
There’s silence.
“On the stairs.” There are no stairs in my apartment. It’s all on one level . But thankfully no one thinks of this. “It was a stupid accident.”
Dad’s expression goes worried. “I really think you should go to the hospital?—”
My boss sweeps in through the open door, totally at home in the steel and glass, as though he’s made of it. His eyes flash as bright-blue as the sky outside.
My heart skips.
Severino Blackwood is so gorgeous, it’s almost unreal. He’s like a force of nature that you can’t ignore, and he’s different to his brothers in a way that’s obvious to me. Tiny details, like the amount of grey at his temples and the lines around his eyes. His hair is cut differently, and he tends to wear a pale grey suit where his brothers favour charcoal or dark-blue.
He stops abruptly and looks me up and down. A very grumpy wonder of the world.
“A hospital visit, and no more dancing on tables, Miss Matthews,” he orders brusquely. “And you lot, stop harassing my staff.”
He glowers at his two identical brothers and my dad, and they all accept Mr Blackwood like he’s a gloomy cloud of a father figure shutting up bickering children.
He starts the meeting, but there’s white noise buzzing around me, thick as soup.
I’m floating above my body as I take a seat at the boardroom table and automatically begin to take notes. I keep my head down, but the shock keeps echoing through me.
Dancing on a table .
How did Mr Blackwood know that?
I replay the conversation again, and no. No, I’m sure. I didn’t let on about falling off the table. I said stairs. And sharks. And other silly things, but I am one hundred per cent certain that I didn’t tell anyone I hurt myself dancing on a table.
So how did he know?
“Miss Matthews?” Mr Blackwood’s curt tone breaks through my disbelief.
My head snaps up, and I’m lost in my boss’ blue eyes. Again.
“Could I trouble you to write down that address for us, Miss Matthews?” he drawls. “I wouldn’t want to disturb your daydreaming, but perhaps you could do your job, please.”
It’s hardly the worst thing he’s ever said to me. Mr Blackwood is notoriously grumpy.
“This address?” I reel off the one they mentioned, and my boss’ eyes narrow.
His brothers laugh, but I hold Mr Blackwood’s gaze.
“Oh, she just owned you, Sev,” my dad says.
But I’m watching my boss. There’s something inexplicably proud in his expression. Like he’s impressed.
“Very good, Miss Matthews.”
Tension sizzles between us for one second, then two, as Vito speaks, and I really am not listening this time. I’m looking into Sev Blackwood’s face and the only thought in my head, is how ? How did he know?
He growls at me regularly, and I’ve always assumed he didn’t like me, and that my crush was totally one-sided. But I’m wondering now. I live in a property owned by Mr Blackwood, and I have since I started working here.
There’s only one way my boss could know I hurt myself dancing on a table, since I don’t look like the kind of girl who does that. If he saw it happen.