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“I’m not upset. It’s just that… people haven’t been very kind recently.”
“I can imagine.” Colby placed her briefcase neatly—in a slot obviously for that exact purpose—next to the shoe rack in the entrance hall, and kicked up her heels one at a time to unbuckle and peel off her neat black and white Mary Jane pumps. The shoes also very tidily went into an empty spot on the shoe rack.
Without the heels she was a good four inches shorter than Iris. Probably only barely scraping in at five-foot-one.
“Have you settled in yet?” she asked Iris, as she padded past her on stockinged feet.
“I’m unpacking now. I only arrived about an hour ago. Chance dropped me off, but I wasn’t expecting either of you back for hours.”
“I have a migraine coming on,” Colby murmured, heading toward the kitchen. “Nothing I can do to stop it really.”
“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry.”
“I sometimes get them when I have my period. Like women don’t suffer enough, right? I need a cup of chamomile tea, some ibuprofen, my heated beanbag, and a dark room.”
“Of course. Why don’t you get changed, and I’ll sort out the tea and beanbag?” Iris offered, happy to be of some use to the woman who was being so kind despite the shock of finding an unexpected intruder in her home.
“Do you mind terribly?” Colby asked, looking pale and strained. “The beanbag is in my knitting basket in the living room. You’ll find the tea in the cupboard above the kettle.”
“Not at all.”
The other woman gave Iris a weak smile “Thank you so much. I’m going to be useless soon. I’ve been seeing bright spots for half an hour already, which is why I left the office. I didn’t sleep well last night. That’s usually a sign of an imminent migraine for me, but it’s such a vague symptom staying home felt like overkill, especially considering how rarely I get migraines.”
“How long does it usually last?”
“It varies, but my average is seven hours. I try to sleep through it, but that doesn’t always help.”
“You go on up to bed. I’ll be there shortly with your tea and beanbag.”
“We’ll talk later, okay?” Colby muttered apologetically, her words slurring ever so slightly. She stumbled a little as she turned and headed toward the staircase.
Colby and Chance’s bedrooms were upstairs. Chance had taken Iris on a quick tour of the place when they’d first arrived. The two larger upstairs bedrooms shared a Jack and Jill bathroom, which now seemed odd to Iris since they clearly weren’t a couple and neither appeared to be using the smaller downstairs bathroom. Which had to mean they shared the one upstairs. It was an intimate arrangement for two people who barely communicated enough for one to convey to the other that he’d invited a guest to stay at their house.
Oh well. It felt rude to speculate when these two strangers had been so kind to her already.
She got busy with the tea and the beanbag and took the items upstairs less than ten minutes later. Iris found Colby curled up in a king-sized four-poster bed—one of those romantic ones with a gauzy canopy. The bed dominated the medium-sized room, and the rest of the oversized pieces of furniture looked stuffed in, with barely any room for movement between them.
“Colby?” Iris whispered, as she stepped into the darkened room. “I have your tea. I’ll leave it on the bedside table, okay?”
She did so and placed the beanbag on the bed beside the small huddled figure. Colby gave a pained little grunt of acknowledgement and Iris tiptoed out of the room and shut the door carefully behind her.
“I need to speak with Iris,” Trystan told Chance one morning, four days after his unscheduled meeting with Bee and Quinny. The close-protection officer slanted a narrow-eyed look at Trystan in response to the comment, but his face remained inscrutable while he waited for Trystan to continue. “She’s not taking my calls and her mailbox is full.”
“She probably blocked or deleted your number,” Chance said with a noncommittal shrug. For some reason—despite the guy’s poker face—Trystan had the feeling the big blond bastard relished pointing that out. And he hated that the man was likely correct in that assumption.
“Yes. That’s highly probable. But be that as it may, I still need to have a conversation with her, and I want you to make that happen.”
“How?” Chance asked. He was perched on a barstool in the kitchen, doing a crossword puzzle with a pen, which he lowered to the page of his puzzle book as his gaze intensified on Trystan’s face.
“I don’t fucking know,” Trystan responded, frustration creeping into his voice. “That’s the type of shit you guys do, right?”
“Kidnapping?”
“What? No… what the fuck? Of course not, I meant facilitate safe meetings between parties.”
“I don’t think she’d be amenable to a meeting with you right now, sir. Kidnapping would be the only way to get her in the same room with you. Also, we’re not a dating or matchmaking service. We don’t facilitate meetings between couples.”
Trystan gritted his teeth. Had this guy always been such a smug, arrogant prick? Why was he only noticing it now? Not that Trystan generally minded people speaking their minds around him. He wasn’t one of those assholes who needed to be surrounded by sycophants and yes-men, but he wasn’t used to his bodyguards sounding off with such enthusiasm either.
