The baser parts of me hear this as a sexual proposition—which it most certainly is not intended to be—and I swallow hard as I peek through my fingers. “You could start with not blackmailing me,” I suggest.
“Yeah, no, I’m still doing that,” she responds with a little pat of her hand against my back before she ends the contact altogether. “But it’sbecauseI want to help. I don’t think you understand how much I can do for you, Cal.”
The words bring a mental image that makes my cheeks go hotter and I suddenly feel very fortunate that I still have not fully uncovered my face.
“I think I’m starting to,” I manage.
“Good. So let me take care of customers and daily business stuff. Then you’ll be free to do more research on the goose and hopefully expedite the process of getting rid of it.”
I finally raise my head and look at her. “But you’re going to change things,” I say, and it strikes me that I sound like a whiny child.
“Yeah, probably. But change can be good sometimes.” She must read the doubt on my face, because she adds, “And I won’t do anything that can’t be changed back if you wind up hating it. I promise.” Annie folds one of her long legs beneath her as she shifts the way she’s sitting. “I know Virtu is important to you.”
“It is,” I confirm, though “important” feels like an incredible understatement. She can’t possibly understand what this place means to me. How can she, when Graham was the only one who knew the full story behind how I came to be here? Asfar as Harold was concerned, I simply walked in as a pimply fourteen-year-old and asked if they needed someone to do odd jobs. Even now, he has no idea the extent to which Graham changed my life by becoming my mentor and giving me a second home here at the shop. Annie might sense my strong affection for this business, but she can’t know how much of myself I owe to it.
“So I’ll help you, and in exchange you’ll try to trust me?” she says.
“I don’t exactly have a choice, do I?”
“You do not,” she confirms, looking utterly delighted by these circumstances.
I take a deep breath and sigh it out. “Okay,” I say. Maybe this won’t be so bad, after all; things already feel a bit lighter with this ridiculous secret off my chest.
Who knew being blackmailed by a beautiful, bright menace of a woman would feel so…freeing?
Annie holds out her hand—the bandaged right one first, then she switches it out for the uninjured left. It takes an awkward amount of time for me to realize she wants me to shake it, and when I finally do, the reversal from the usual right-to-right contact and the unexpected heat that transfers between our palms makes it feel like a completely alien gesture.
“A pleasure doing business with you,” she says. “Now, first thing’s first: let’s find our new colleague a much better hiding place.”
—
Despite her onlyhaving one usable hand, Annie insists on helping haul the goose from my apartment down to Virtu’s storage room, where she very reasonably pointed out thatthe quilt-covered display case will be much less conspicuous, tucked among furniture and paintings and crates filled with assorted objets d’art awaiting minor repairs and their future debuts on the sales floor, than in the corner of my living room. By the time we get it settled in its new location and reemerge into the showroom, the clock beside the counter chimes seven.
“I can walk you to Harold’s so you aren’t alone in the dark,” I offer.
“Nah, I’m fine,” she says, swooping a rainbow-plaid scarf around her neck. The yellow in it matches the mustard color of her wool peacoat. In a word association game, if someone said “Annie O’Neill,” I would immediately respond with “bright.” Because she is, in every sense of the word.
She must take the frustrated awe on my face as concern, because she adds, “Would it make you feel better if I text you when I get in?”
It would, actually, come to think of it.
Before I respond, Annie reaches for the pencil from behind my ear that I must have absently put there a minute ago as we passed the counter. Something about the movement, the feeling of the cool, thin metal separating the painted body from its eraser slowly brushing over the sensitive skin there as it slides through my hair, becomes direct competition for her meatball sub aria atop the counter in the category of Things I Did Not Know Would Turn Me On. Completely oblivious or indifferent to what she’s done to me, she tears off a corner of the top page of the legal pad and jots down her number on it.
“Uncle Harold gave me your number before he left. But here’s mine,” she says, holding it out to me. “In case I forget to text you. Which I probably will, to be honest. I’m bad aboutthat. So just…you can text me if you don’t hear anything. Or, um…whenever. If you want. About business.”
“About business,” I repeat.
“Because we’re temporary partners. In that.”
“In business.”
“Yes,” she says. “So, uh, thanks again for your assistance.” Annie holds up her bandaged hand. I’m relieved not to find any evidence of new blood there from her helping me carry the goose downstairs. “And I’m sorry about the blackmail,” she adds. “But I do really think it will be mutually beneficial.”
“Sure,” I say.
We exchange an awkward good night as I unlock the front door to let her out and relock it behind her. Then I press my back against it and let out a massive exhale through my mouth while pinching the bridge of my nose.
What a fucking day.
