I gently grasped her arm and drew her inside. “I need to know who these are from. What florist sent these?”
The woman pushed her glasses back up her nose. “Honey? Are you okay?” She looked at my face with a sympathetic wince.
“Yes,” I said. “Long story. Again, what florist?”
“Bev and Bern’s, over on Sixth.” She dug a cell phone from her pocket and pressed it to her ear. “Hey, Bev? It’s Mary. Just delivered those roses to Albertini, and she’s a little insistent that we know who sent them. There’s no card.” Mary looked at Anna, nodded, and then sighed. “Gotcha. Thanks.” She shoved the phone away.
I sighed. “Don’t tell me. The flowers were purchased over the internet with a credit card number and no real name.” Another prepaid card.
“Well, the name was Aiden Devlin,” Mary said. “At least, that’s what was typed into the online form. They have to type something, or it won’t go through. But I can’t guarantee these are really from a guy named Aiden Devlin.”
“I can guarantee they’re not,” Aiden said, striding out of my bedroom, his hair wet and his eyes a piercing blue.
Mary swallowed. “Wow.”
Yeah, he got that a lot. In his faded jeans and dark tee, he looked like a bad-boy from a television show. Except he was real, and right now he was emanating an angry tension that heated the entire room.
I handed the flowers back to Mary. “Deliver these to the hospital, would you?”
“Sure.” With one last and fairly long look at Aiden, head to toe, she turned and carefully picked her way back down my walkway.
I shut the door, my head ringing. “My new admirer is persistent.” Or my old one. Were the flowers from Jareth Davey? I turned to see Aiden silently looking at me. “Right?”
His chin slowly lowered. “What the fuck happened to your face?”
Violet gasped and dragged the dog onto the sofa.
Aiden read the room. His shoulders instantly relaxed and he calmed, although his eyes freaking blazed. “Sorry about the rough language.” He turned all his formidable charm on the teenager. “I’m Aiden.”
“Violet,” she whispered.
He moved toward the kitchen. “The guy who swears has to make breakfast. How about pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs with too much cheese?”
Violet slowly grinned. “Sounds great.”
“Good.” He looked toward me. “You can tell me what happened as I cook.”
Ah, crap.
Chapter 21
In my office, I stacked case files neatly on the right side of my desk, angling my head to look down the hallway. Violet and Bowser were in the normally vacant office to the left, while my cousin Pauley worked in the office across the hall from them. He’d taken one look at Violet and the animal, shut his door and hadn’t been seen since.
Pauley was a sixteen-year-old autistic genius and sometimes just didn’t want to deal with people.
The firm’s other employee, our receptionist and sometimes accountant, Oliver Duck, had made three trips to Violet’s temporary office in the last hour. Oliver was eighteen, dorky, and a sweetheart. He’d brought Violet coffee, more markers so she could work on the filing he’d found, and then water.
As he made his way to the office again, this time with a handful of colorful pens, I motioned him to keep walking in my direction.
He paused and then did so, moving inside my office.
“Door?” I asked.
He switched all of the pens to one hand and shut the door. His red hair had been combed back, and his freckles were standing at attention. “What’s up, boss?”
I’d never been great with subtlety. Since I wasn’t in court, I’d worn jeans with a white sweater under a navy-blue blazer, and I felt like a grownup, which wasn’t ever fun. “She’s pretty but underage, and you’re eighteen.” Although Violet was probably more mature and definitely had a stronger edge, the numbers were the numbers.
He shuffled his feet. “I was just bringing her pens.”
