“Great,” Nick said unenthusiastically.
The elevator doors hissed open. Shane stepped out and gestured to Raluca to accompany him. She went with him without a backward glance.
Nick briefly closed his eyes. He wasn’t looking forward to reporting the details of his fuckuppery. But he was looking forward to his conversation with Raluca even less.
Alpha wolves don’t whine, he told himself. You ran the gauntlet. This is just talking.
He hadn’t meant to speak to his wolf, but his wolf replied. If our mate says what you think she’s going to say, the gauntlet would be better.
Stop making it worse, Nick silently replied.
Protection, Inc. wasn’t very formal, which was exactly why Nick could stand to work there. More often than not, reports were made over lunch or coffee, or by calling Hal to give him a quick update. But Nick found Hal in his office, sitting behind his desk with his arms folded across his broad chest, radiating you really fucked up big-time.
Nick wanted to get the whole thing as over with as fast as he could. But Hal was good with details. Sometimes he could crack a case from a detail that the person who mentioned it hadn’t registered as relevant. So Nick told him everything that had happened since they’d last checked in, including the visits to the clothes shops and the “World’s Biggest” excursions, in case Raluca had been spotted at one of those.
He left out nothing but the sex thing, the mate thing, and the breaking of his heart thing. But Hal wouldn’t notice that he wasn’t reporting on the state of his feelings. Nick didn’t have feelings about clients beyond “He was cool” or “She was okay except for being a Mets fan.”
Hal only interrupted once, to say, “You took the princess to Big Bacon? We’re supposed to protect our clients from getting killed, not finish the job.”
Nick’s face burned. “It’s not that bad.”
He plunged back into his account before Hal could bring up however fucking many cases of food poisoning or chemical overdose Big Bacon was probably responsible for. Nick had told the truth when he’d claimed it was a landmark: a landmark of tackiness and horrible food, mysteriously staying in business even though nobody ever visited it more than once. Except for Nick, who had now gone twice.
When he finally stumbled to the end of his report, Hal gave him a look that made him feel like a teenager hauled to the principal’s office. “Let me get this straight. You and your client haven’t been getting along, you aggravated this by deliberately annoying her, she was poisoned under your guard, and you got your pocket picked without even noticing.”
“That’s what I fucking said, wasn’t it?” Nick snapped.
Hal banged his fist on the desk, making his papers jump. “Why?”
The aggressive gesture roused Nick’s alpha dominance. He slammed his own palms down on the desk. “Because I fucked up, okay? Raluca... I don’t know, something about her got to me. Distracted me. It won’t happen again.”
“How do you know?” It was a real question, not a rhetorical one. Hal leaned forward, his brow creased with both annoyance and concern. “I’m serious, Nick. I think I know how the poison got in her wine. There were waiters going back and forth, refreshing everyone’s glasses. One of them probably waited till you’d smelled her glass, then dropped the poison in just as you took a bite or drink of something with a strong enough odor to drown out the scent. But —”
“I know, that has to be it, but I was fucking watching for that! Whoever did that was one fast motherfucker. Fuck!” Nick’s hands clenched.
“Watch it!”
Nick relaxed his grip just in time, before he cracked Hal’s handmade desk. He’d already destroyed one of Hal’s precious desks. Hal would kill him if he trashed another.
Hal went on, “Honestly, Nick, it sounds like that assassin was good enough to slip the poison past any of us. Except for Shane, maybe, and that’s only if he went unseen instead of pretending to be a guest. But for you to be so distracted that you didn’t notice someone picking your pocket...”
“I know,” Nick replied. “Far as I know, there’s only one guy good enough to do that when I’m not distracted, and it wasn’t him. He’d be pretty fucking hard for me to miss.”
Hal nodded. “Yeah, you’d have spotted him. And he has no history with Raluca, and the attempt was on her, not you. Still...” Hal’s hazel gaze drifted into the distance, then refocused sharply. “It’s an interesting thought. I’ll look into it. See if I can track him down.”
“Don’t bother. It wasn’t him. He’s out of our lives and he can fucking stay there.”
Hal made a noncommittal shrug, then gave Nick his I’m the boss look. “You didn’t answer my question. How can you — and I — be sure that you won’t be distracted from keeping Raluca safe again?”
Nick almost choked on his next words, but he had to say it. He had no other choice. “Because...”
***
While Nick was in Hal’s office, he’d distantly registered the sounds of elevators, footsteps, and voices outside. He didn’t hear Shane’s footsteps, but no one ever did. But Catalina, who was capable of moving just as quietly, didn’t bother. Her laugh echoed as she left, presumably with Shane.
When Nick finally left the office, feeling like he’d swallowed poison, Ellie rose from the chair she’d been curled up in, leaving a paperback book on the arm and a medical kit on the floor. “Are you done?”
“Yeah. How’s Raluca?”