She was the only woman in the world who got away with that shite.
Amanda slapped her palms on either side of her laptop. “What is going on?”
“Nothing, cailín,” Betty called out in English. “We’re just having a chat about the weather.”
“Uh-huh, the weather my ass,” Amanda muttered. “Connor, before you go, can I ask you something?”
My second in command swiveled in his chair, eyeing the wife of one of Boston’s most powerful men as if she were going to drop a grenade on his lap. “Yes?”
“Where can I find a dog to adopt?” Amanda drummed her fingers on the desk.
“Um, the pound?” Connor threw me a look as if to say“Is she serious?”
“Mrs. Messina, I don’t pay you to solve the pest control problem.”
Amanda’s body jerked back as if I’d stuck her. That ruby red mouth, painted a deep crimson, pressed into a thin line. Without a word, she turned to her screen and kept typing.
The foreman’s voice crackled through the walkie-talkie on my desk. There was a problem with a flatbed of supplies that spilt. I couldn’t catch a fecking break. Snatching the thing, I jerkedmy chin at Connor. We didn’t make it ten feet from the portable office before Betty’s shrill whistle stopped us in our tracks.
“I don’t know what’s come over ya, lad, but quit being such a fucking prick,” she growled, ambling down the steps as if she were an Olympic champion. “That poor girl’s daddy is being incarcerated today.”
My mind scrambled to process the information. I knew Archy Loring was going to prison for the rest of his life. It just slipped my mind that today was lockup. “Good. Fecker deserved much worse.”
Why Amanda’s husband hadn’t plucked Loring off the street and made him squeal as he was chopped into itty bitty pieces, I didn’t know.
“Be that as it may—” Betty planted her hands on her hips. Those chicken-thin arms waggled in the air. “You were nothing but an arse to her. Go back and apologize.”
Connor coughed, trying hard to hide his smirk.
I glowered at him, but that only made him laugh harder.
“I’m busy,” I snapped. “They’re ruining good piping.”
“He can handle that.” Betty jerked her thumb at Connor. “You need to be thinking of alliances, lad. Her husband is the same people as your wife’s. Don’t shite where you sleep.”
Fucking hell. “Connor?”
“Yes, boss?”
“Fix this shite.”
“On it.” Connor jogged away, his laughter caught on the breeze, lifting to the heavens.
“If you ever scold me like that again—”
“Oh, pipe down.” Betty scowled and began to amble up the steps to the portable. “I used to wipe your arse, boy.”
“Betty, I mean it.”
She rounded on me, those blue eyes, like a cloudless summer day, bore into me. “Then don’t be doing any more stupid shite that needs scolding.”
If only it was that easy.
I followed her back into the portable. “Amanda, I’m sorry.”
She dashed her hands on her face before she rounded on me.Good saints above!Had she been crying? Vincenzo was going to kick my ass.
“It’s fine.” My lawyer waved her hand. “I’m just…out of sorts today.”
