“Please,” he said wryly, “don’t.” Clearly, he couldn’t take it.
“Fine. I promise to be consistently awful.” She smiled, really smiled. It was bright and lopsided and absolutely stunning. It only lasted for a second, but he saw the impression of it behind his eyelids the way he might see a firework that had gone out. Then she frowned and raised her fingers to her lips, as if she was confused by her own moment of happiness. Which, aside from anything else, was pretty fucking depressing. She looked at him, her eyes narrow and considering, like he was some kind of lab rat. “Alive,” she murmured under her breath. “Hm.”
His eyebrows rose. “Pardon?”
She cocked her head. “I think . . . I do believe I have a proposition for you.”
There was nothing seductive in her tone, but the words sent a twisted kick of something through his chest. He’d watched too many rubbish spy films where propositions always ended in blow jobs. “What’s up?”
“It’s rather a long story.” She bit her lip. “Actually, never mind the story; you don’t need to hear it. The short version is that I need to ride a motorbike.”
He’d have been less surprised if she’d gone with the blow job thing. Chloe Brown. Motorbike. Didn’t really compute. He wracked his brain for a passable response and finally came up with “Okay?”
She nodded. “And you, obviously, have a motorbike.”
“. . . Yeah, I do.”
“Would you like a free consultation? For your website?”
“. . . I might.”
“Then it’s settled.” She closed her eyes again. “I’ll give you one, and you’ll take me for a ride. Do you mind if we handle the details another time? As it turns out, I am rather tired.”
He opened his mouth to say something like “Now wait a fucking minute,” but all that came out was “Uh.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
That’s what she said. I’ll be in touch. Like she’d just interviewed him for the position of motorbike chauffeur and would let him know how he’d done in due time. Christ, she was so far up her own arse, it was a miracle she could see the sun.
“Good-bye,” she added.
He was stuck between telling her to piss off, remembering that she was a tenant, and wanting to die of laughter.
Then she cracked open one eyelid and said suspiciously, “You’re not one of those men, are you? Because you’d be surprised by how loud I can scream. Years of vocal training.”
Red stood. “Nope. No. Don’t worry. Going.”
“Thank you,” she murmured.
He went.
Ten minutes later, he was in his own living-room-slash-studio, watching Chloe “rest her eyes” through the window. She looked pretty fucking asleep to him, but that was none of his business. He just wanted to check that the cat hadn’t curled up on her face and suffocated her or something. Cats couldn’t be trusted, as Vikram was telling him through the phone.
“Nasty little buggers. They piss behind sofas, you know.”
Red ran a hand through his hair and turned away from the window. “If you say so. Look, it’s just until we find the owners. Woman from 1D grabbed the thing out of a tree, so she’s not about to chuck it over to the RSPCA.”
“Hm, 1D,” Vik mused. Red shouldn’t have mentioned specifics. Vik was too clever for his own good and had a fantastic memory. “Ain’t that the one you’re always moaning about?”
Red glared at thin air. “Always?”
“Always.”
“Nope.”
“Alisha!” Vik bellowed. “Red’s on about the rich bird from 1D again.”
In the distance, he heard Vik’s wife holler back, “Oh, he isn’t. Tell him to bloody shut up about her.”
“See?”
“Fuck off.”
Vik sighed dramatically. “There’s no shame in having a type, mate. The posh ones never did it for me, but—”
“Vik.”
“—your tastes leave a lot to be desired.”
“Vik.”
“One month, and the cat’s got to go,” Vikram said, smoothly changing the subject. Thank Christ. “And don’t let it out of the flat. If anyone sees it, there’ll be hell on earth.”
“That’s what I told her. I’m dropping some litter off in a bit.”
“Oh yeah? She can’t get it herself?”
Well, no, she probably couldn’t. “I’m the superintendent.”
“Right,” Vik snorted. “That’s exactly why.”
“Yep.”
“Not like you’re soft on her.”
Not bloody likely. “You know me. I’m soft on everyone.”
“True enough, mate. True enough.”
Red put the phone down. He spent the rest of the day avoiding his window.
Chapter Five
Chloe’s youngest sister played five different instruments, but her greatest asset was her voice. Eve Brown had, as Gigi would say with great significance, lungs. So when she burst into Chloe’s flat belting out “Defying Gravity” like Idina Menzel on Broadway, the cat reacted as if an earthquake had hit.
Chloe watched her placid companion fly into a state of major feline alarm. She’d learned since rescuing it a couple of days ago that this particular cat was not like most others; it lacked all grace and spatial awareness, as evidenced by its current path of evacuation. Streaking off in the direction of the bedroom, it managed to hit the sofa, the base of a standing lamp, and the door frame before making good its escape. Chloe had decided that this nervous clumsiness marked the two of them as a fated pair. She had also, in moments of exhaustion or panic, been known to bump into a door several times on her way through.
Eve bounded into the now cat-less living room and trilled, “We come bearing snacks!” Then, seeing Chloe’s wince, she removed one of her ever-present AirPods and stage-whispered, “Oh, sorry. Do you have a headache?”
“No.”
“She’s lying,” Dani said, appearing in the doorway with far too many shopping bags. She wore a fluffy gray hat to protect her shaved head from the cold. “I always know when you’re lying, Chlo. I’ve no idea why you bother. Tea?”
Chloe rolled her eyes and snuggled deep into the nest she’d made on the sofa. “Is it tea? Or is it one of your bush concoctions?”
Dani waggled her eyebrows menacingly and raised the shopping bags. “Don’t worry, darling. Evie baked devil’s food cake to make the medicine go down.”
Ten minutes later Chloe was indeed armed with a steaming mug of mysterious, spicy liquid and a fat slice of gooey chocolate cake. She shoved the latter into her mouth with shameless enthusiasm and let her eyes roll back, headache be damned. “This is divine.”
“I made it just for you,” Eve said, and patted Chloe’s knee like a concerned mother. It had been three days since the Grand Climb, and Chloe had been on the sofa throughout because her body was throwing a tantrum. Her sisters, being painfully nosy, had finally caught wind, and had therefore descended upon her to treat her like a baby. It was mildly irritating and simultaneously endearing, because it involved both pats and heavenly chocolate cake.
“Thank you. You’re a very good baker.”
“I’ll put that in the window of my cake shop one day,” Eve said brightly. “I am a good baker. My sister says so.”