Page 15 of Diamond In The Rough

4

TIIA

LIKELY STORY

Several weeks later

“Tiia! Where are you?”

I whip my head up from my desk, my neck wrenching from the speed, and lock eyes with too-loud, too-exuberant Jazzy as she clip-clops her way across wide tile flooring. Her shirt is still too short, and her heels, unnecessarily tall considering it’s the middle of a workday. But she creates quite the vision of flash and color in an otherwise elegant space.

She runs, so her thin legs and bony knees are a display within themselves, and her handbag swings in the breeze—or, well, it would, if a breeze could exist inside a building.

“Tiia!”

I set down my pen and press a finger to my lips. “Shh!” Then I look left, to Jakeline’s office, and right, to a client who wanders through the gallery.

The latter has headphones in their ears and hears nothing except whatever track they’ve chosen on their phone. But Jakeline’s pointed brow comes up. Her shrewd, no-nonsense, eagle eyes drilling into the side of my face promise I’m about to get my ass handed to me.

Gritting my teeth in a kind of silent apology, I push up from my desk and wave Jazzy closer, but shoot her a shut the hell up glare that has her bright red lips slapping closed.

Though, her feet continue galloping.

When Jaz arrives at my desk in the center of Jakeline Colby’s Antiques, her perfume hits me first. Then her minty breath as she pants from exertion.

“What the hell are you doing?” I whisper-hiss. “You trying to get me fired?”

“They’re in the paper!” she wheezes out, as though she’s just competed in a hundred-meter sprint. Reaching into her oversized purse with talon-like nails, she drags her hand out again and slams a newspaper—not the Cannon Daily, the city’s most influential publication—to my desk. “Felix Malone. Front page, baby.”

“Uh…” I spy the headline, though I try really hard not to. “Okay.” I press the tip of my finger to the very center of Felix’s forehead in the photograph, and push the newspaper away. “I don’t care.”

“You totally care! We were inside that club, Tiia! You were literally talking to him.”

“I was talking to his brother.” And that… was close enough. “It’s been weeks, Jaz. I’m not stalking the guy via the newspapers.”

“You should!” She grabs the paper and unfolds it with a threatening tear, slamming it back to my desk with a noisy flourish that has Jakeline’s eyes once more burning into my temple. “‘Felix Malone and Christabelle Cannon to be wed!’ And this isn’t even in the Cannon paper, which means the story was scooped.”

“Or…” I fold and set it back down gently, though I’ll be damned if I don’t catch a familiar face just inches from Felix’s. That of the middle brother, Micah Malone himself. “Sounds to me like, unless Cannon Daily announces it themselves, then everyone else is lying.”

“A reasonable assumption, except—” She snatches up the paper again, so we become embroiled in the world’s oddest game of tug-of-war. “Page three says cakes are being sampled and NDAs are being signed.”

I roll my eyes and take the paper back. But instead of setting it on my desk, I drop it into the wastebasket and sit back in my chair. “If NDAs were being signed, then they wouldn’t be announced in the newspaper. Which means you…” I show my friend a pleasant smile, “have been hoodwinked. They’re a powerful family, Jaz, and not new to the world they operate within. So if they’re getting married, they know how to do it quietly. If they wanted to be loud,” I raise my hand when she opens her mouth to argue, “then Cannon would make it front page news. This wouldn’t be the first time they needed a bakery, or a florist, or a pretty dress. They’ve conducted business discreetly for decades, so I find it difficult to believe they’re making headlines now over a slice of cake. Besides,” I cross my legs and fix my dress on my thighs, the soft, floaty fabric a preference Jakeline made clear after my first time turning up to work in denim cutoffs and a tank top. “Your fascination with this family is next-level. It’s like how the British ‘royal watch’, except you m—” I clear my throat after the m sound—m for mafia, “watch. But you’re not gonna marry any of them, so it’s time you move on.”

“You’re being unkind.” She lifts her chin and broadens her shoulders, mock-offended. “If I wanted to marry one, I could.”

“Oh? Felix is banging Cannon,” I drawl. “Micah’s NDAs are ironclad, it seems, because we hear nothing about the women he’s dated. Archer is married. Tim… well, he’s a bit like Micah, I guess. Exceptionally private. And Cato is just a kid. I’m not sure that family’s gonna work out for you.”

“It could,” she gripes. “I got us into their club, didn’t I? And seats at the bar.”

“We literally walked into the club. It’s not like there’s a VIP list keeping people out. And we sat at the all-access bar, where you flirted with the bartender—not with a Malone.”

“Because you were talking to the Malone! Girl code says you had claim and I had to walk my ass the other way.”

“I have claim to nothing. Micah got in my way that night, in the club you insisted on going to. Some dude outside was being obnoxious, I was trying to move fast and get out of the street, and Micah just so happened to be there. We talked for all of thirty seconds, then I was gone.”

“He’s hot, though, right?” She plops her size-four ass on my desk, nudging my water bottle to the side and pushing my computer screen askew. Her movement sends a second wave of perfume wafting into my lungs. “There’s no way I wanna date Felix, because he’s the boss, and honestly, word on the street is the boss’ lovers rarely survive the night. Honestly, Felix scares the bejeezus out of me. And the other three aren’t even in the city. But Micah…” She purrs. Purrs! “If you try to say he wasn’t sexy, then I’ll call you a big fat liar.”

“I have no interest in Micah Malone.” I settle back and link my fingers in my lap. “Even if he is… aesthetically pleasing.”

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