“Diana. Good morning. Your parcel arrived.”
Diana’s whole posture shifts. She leans forward and plants both palms flat on the walnut.
“Already? I thought it’d be next week.”
“It sounds special.” The receptionist slides a small black box across the desk.
“Amara, you have no idea.” Diana picks up the box and turns it over in her hands, inspecting the edges, smiling. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile like that.
Amara’s eyes flick past Diana’s shoulder and land on me. Then back to Diana with a question sitting in them plain as day.
“My bodyguard,” Diana says, not turning around. “Kai Romero.”
Amara gives me a polite nod, which I return.
Diana tucks the box under her arm and walks inside without another word, and I follow her down the burgundy corridor.
What if I’m having sex with all of them? What is that to you?
Nothing. It’s nothing to me.
I’m her bodyguard with a dead-end revenge plan and a raging hard-on for a woman who treats sex casually. My chest tightens at the thought.
Her office is the corner unit at the end of the hall. The door is solid wood, nothing glass about it, and that sets it apart from every other office on this floor. When it closes behind us, the rest of the building stops existing.
Two walls are floor-to-ceiling glass over the park nine stories down. Morning light pours in and catches the treetops, the joggers, the fountain throwing mist into the air. The other two walls are wallpapered in the same olive green as the door. The desk is clean. Big. A monitor, a leather portfolio, and a single pen lined up next to it.
She sets the black box dead center on the desk and shrugs out of her blazer, draping it over the back of her chair.
I take my position by the wall, next to the set of sofas around a low coffee table. Standard bodyguard placement. Close enough to respond, far enough to be furniture.
She sits. Powers her computer. Types for maybe thirty seconds. Then her eyes drift to the box, and she’s no longer pretending to work.
She picks it up. Opens it.
I can’t see what’s inside from where I’m standing, but I see her face. The smile comes back. She tilts the contents into the window light, studies them, closes the box, and stands.
She walks toward me. Heels silent on the carpet. She holds the box out between us.
“This is yours.”
I look at the box, then at her.
“What?”
“Open it.”
I take it because she’s close enough that refusing would require a conversation I’m not prepared for. The box is heavy for its size. I lift the lid.
A Rolex. Steel and black dial. I’ve seen these in magazine ads and on the wrists of men who own buildings.
“Is this fake?”
She laughs. Out loud. The question catches her off guard, and she doesn’t bother hiding it. “What do you think?”
I close the box. “I can’t accept this.”
“Yes you can.”
