Finally, I felt Will’s body loosen slightly. He pulled my hands from his shirt. “This one’s yours.”
He stepped aside and I imagined myself jumping into my most Buffy-esque fighting stance before doing some sort of dive roll into a helicopter kick that would disable my attacker.
In actuality, I was crunched myself into a chair pose and held my fisted hands close to my sides, protecting my breasts. The smell of fear, adrenaline and fate hung in the air.
And it smelled like bleu cheese.
“Steve?”
Steve, the Underworld Detection Agency’s resident troll and three-foot-tall stalker, grinned at me, baring all three of his snaggled yellow teeth.
“What the hell are you doing here? You almost got your ass kicked!”
“By him?” Steve motioned toward Will, who was doubled over, holding his gut, doing that silent, tears-down-the-face kind of laugh.
I wanted to slap him.
“What are you doing here?”
“Sophie needs Steve. Sophie is in danger, and Steve would never leave his Sophie in danger.” He looked disdainfully at Will. “A true gentleman would never leave his woman in danger.”
“I’m not your woman. And why do you have a bucket? Why—” Knowing—sickening, overwhelming knowing—crashed over me. “You’re wearing a uniform. A janitor’s uniform.”
“Steve is undercover. Steve knows that’s the best way to protect his woman.”
Will stopped laughing and gasping for air long enough to say, “Does he always refer to himself in the third?”
“Steve does,” said Steve.
“Okay, okay, wait. Both of you—wait. Steve?”
“Steve is filling in for the janitor on vacation.” He looked at his bucket and frowned. “Steve doesn’t like his job very much.” He flapped nonexistent eyelashes. “But anything for my Sophie.”
“Did you just start today?”
Steve nodded.
“So when you said Soph—I—was in danger, it was just general. You don’t have any pertinent information, do you?”
A slip of Steve’s forked black tongue washed across his bottom lip. “Steve always has pertinent information.”
Will straightened. “Share it, mate.”
Steve shot him a blood-curdling glare. “Steve only shares with his woman.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, hoping that would stop my new, suddenly pounding headache and the fact that my left eye was starting that twitching thing again. “Okay, Steve, what information do you have?”
He grabbed the wooden handle of the mop he had been slapping across the linoleum and pointed to the second floor with it. “Toilet’s clogged.”
I gaped. My eye twitched. “That’s your pertinent information?”
“Steve fixed the clog.”
Will blew out an annoyed sigh. “Fabulous. You’ve exorcised the crap out of the toilet.” He clapped. “Brilliant job, mate.”
“Steve, we don’t have time for this. Will and I need to—”
“Doesn’t Sophie want to know what clogged the toilet?”
I felt myself blanch. “Not especially.”
He poked his mop into his bucket and laboriously fished out a sopping wet sweater. “Not even if it was this?”
I took a step closer. “Is that a sweater?”
Will took a step closer. “From here?”
Steve flicked the sweater end of the mop in Will’s direction. “For Sophie’s eyes only.”
“Fine, Steve. It is a Mercy sweater,” I told Will over my shoulder. “Where did you get this?”
“Steve feels like he’s sharing a lot of information.”
“Of course. What do you want, Steve?”
Steve puckered up. “Little kiss?”
“Not if you pulled Jesus himself out of the toilet.”
Steve narrowed his eyes and started to sink the sweater again.
“Wait! Wait! I’ve got something even better. A kiss is so fast. It just comes and goes—”
“Not when Steve kisses.”
I let that roll off me and kept going. “This is way better.” I fished a tube of lip balm out of my pocket and held it in the palm of my hand. Steve poked his head forward, then tentatively came around his bucket, pulling my hand just under his nose.
“Lipstick?”
“Better.” I uncapped the balm and spread it across my lips. “Lip balm. I use it everyday. All the time. If you take this, it’s like your lips will be touching my lips all the time.”
Steve cocked his head.
“That’s awfully sexy. If the little man here doesn’t want it—” Will went to reach for my hand, but Steve rolled up on his tiptoes, yanked the balm from my hand, and squirreled backward with it tucked against his chest. He glared at Will. “Steve’s woman.” He uncapped the lip balm, rubbed it across his lips. I looked away as his eyes rolled backward and a little moan of pleasure emanated from his thin black lips.
“Where’d you get the sweater, Steve?”
“Someone tried to flush it down the toilet in the bathroom upstairs.” He rolled the balm over his bottom lip and closed his eyes. “Sweet kisses.”
“The upstairs bathroom? When?”
“Sweet, sweet, Sophie kisses.”