Chapter 3
Vera. Vera. Vera. My brain is on loop. Meanwhile, she’s holding it like it’s hiding a live animal.
Say something!
That’s what a normal man would do here. Too bad that’s not me.
She turns the box around and gives it a little shake. Frowns up at me.
“What is it?” she asks in her direct, clear voice.
Don’t explain it. Skull’s voice rings in my head, and now I know why he said it and I don’t like knowing.
“It’s yours,” I say again.
Which isn’t an answer. She knows it isn’t an answer. I watch her decide that I am either a criminal or a lunatic.
She’s not wrong on either count.
She speaks slowly. “You want to try again? Take your time. I’ve got all day, apparently.”
And that’s where it goes to hell.
Because that sharp voice, coming out of that woman, does something to me. It’s dry as a bone and quick as a whip, and she’s standing there in a dress that fits her like a glove. Six feet of her, all of it, is gorgeous.
I have spent my entire life holding back around fragile women.
My body is looking at this woman and going finally, like a dog that’s been waiting at a door for years.
So my face does nothing. That’s what it does when I don’t know what to do with it. Nothing. Zero. A wall.
She’s trying her best to read my stone wall and reads it wrong. Her chin comes up another quarter inch and the light goes out behind her eyes like a shop closing for the night.
Fuck. My chest wants to fold over on itself.
“Right,” she clips in a bright, pleasant tone.
But I hear the sad root of her voice.
“You know what, this is my fault. I bid on the wrong clipboard at an auction and now you’re stuck out here on a Sunday, so I’m going to save us both the trouble. You’re free. Go. Truly. I’ll tell them you were magnificent.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about.
“You placed a bid?” I ask.
“On the clipboard. At the auction.” She stops and blinks at me. “You have no idea what I’m talking about.”
“No,” I grunt.
“Oh, thank God, so it’s not just me having a stroke,” she says as she looks at the box, at me, and at the box again.
Not a gift at all. Dirty money from a dirtier MC enforcer.
Then those pretty eyes lock on me, sharp-gazed. “But why are you here?”
That’s when a shape rises over the lip of the bluff behind her.
It comes up out of the tree line at the head of the trail, and for about half a second, with the sun behind it, it does not read as a person. It reads as a pile of luggage having a seizure.
Then it gets closer and it resolves into a small woman with a camera bag on one shoulder, a stepladder under her arm, a light stand in her fist like a spear, and a coffee cup clamped in her teeth.
She gets to the top of the trail, stops and hauls the coffee out of her mouth and shouts, “The light down there is not the best?—”
Then the photographer sees me and whatever else she was going to say dies a hard death. Every single thing about her stops at once.
Shit. I know her.
Everybody who was in that park the day Skull met Katie last year knows her.
Behind me, quietly, Vera says, “Oh, thank God, there’s a photographer.”
“Oh my God,” Anna says with her mouth doing a fish impression. “OH MY GOD.”
My body takes a step back. I don’t decide to move. It just happens.
“You’re one of them,” the photographer says as her whole face goes off like a flashbulb. “You’re a King. Skull sent you. YOU. I said please, for the love of God, do not send me another one like you, and he said, and I quote, I’ve got a guy.”
“Anna,” I gruffly say.
“I asked does he have a neck.”
“Anna.”
She looks me over. All of me, top to bottom, professionally, the way a butcher looks at a side of beef.
“You’re bigger than Skull is,” she says, delighted.
“Anna,” I growl.
“Do you have a neck? I genuinely can’t tell. It’s fine either way, I can work with it, I’ve shot linebackers.”
“Anna. I’m not the guy.”
“You are standing in my parking lot, at my golden hour, on the day of my shoot, holding a present.” She says it like she’s caught me.
She’s got a finger up. “Do you know how many men show up on time? Zero. The number is zero. Last month a man texted me from the toll booth to say he’d reconsidered his life.”
“Skull sent me to make a drop.”
“Uh huh.”
I grow, “That’s all this is.”
“Uh huh,” she replies and the woman already got a light meter out.
Where the hell was she keeping that thing?
“And the bow is precious!” she squeals.
I don’t have an answer for the bow. That’s the thing I’ll think about later, lying awake. There was a bow on it, and I looked right at it, and I got on my bike anyway, because Skull said cover and I said fine.
Fine. Fucking fine. Twenty years of walking into rooms nobody else would walk into, and I ignored a two foot piece of gold ribbon.
Behind me, very quietly, the woman in the green dress says, “I’m sorry. But what in the heck is happening?”
Anna turns and she sees her again. The flashbulb expression goes off again.
“You!” She drops the ladder so hard it bounces.
“You’re Vera. Oh my God, I am so sorry. My assistant quit on me in a Wendy’s parking lot, my car threw a rod on Tuesday, I am driving my sister’s minivan.”
She’s walking while she says all of this, moving straight at us, and there’s a camera in her hand. Damn, I never saw her get it out of the bag.
“I know I never called you back, and I am going to make it up to you starting right this second. Because look at you. LOOK at you. Oh, you gorgeous creature. In that dress. You’re going to break the internet.”
Shit on a stick. This is fucked up beyond words.
“Anna,” I say through gritted teeth. “I’m not the guy.”
“Closer,” Anna says.
And she puts one hand flat on my back and shoves.