Page 5 of Magnus
She froze like a deer in headlights before slowly turning, her terrified gaze on his hands rather than his face.
What the fuck…!
“I’m not carrying any sort of weapon,” he assured her.
The woman beside Angel’s mother gasped. “I would have already pressed the panic button to alert the police if you had.” She held up the cell phone in her hand.
The man standing in the background, obviously a security guard, had also taken a protective step forward.
Magnus would guess the woman was Allison Fairbody, the woman in charge of the nursery. “I assure you, I come in peace.” He held his hands up in surrender.
“Who do you work for?” Angel’s mother demanded as she walked back to the doorway, her chin tilted at a defiant angle as her eyes—yes, they were indeed that deep violet color—challenged his.
Something, much to Magnus’s surprise, his cock seemed to find incredibly arousing.
He was totally baffled by that initial blow to his chest, as much as by this physical reaction to her.
Yes, this woman was very beautiful, and her sexy curves were clearly outlined in her fitted clothing, but she had to be at least sixteen, possibly eighteen years, his junior. She was also a single mother. Which wasn’t exactly a turn-off, but Magnus had always avoided relationships that came with complications. Hell, he had always avoided relationships, full stop, and he rarely dated any woman for longer than a couple of weeks.
Was it possible his heart and his body were currently rethinking that decision?
“Let me guess, you’re some sleazy private detective who’s been hired to hunt down Angel and me, but more specifically, to take Angel,” she sneered.
The engorging of Magnus’s cock stuttered and then ceased altogether. Which, under the circumstances, was probably the best thing that could happen, for both their sakes. No matter what his reaction to her might have been, he was too damned old and jaded for such a beautiful young woman.
“I take offense at the word sleazy,” he bit out. “I’m not a private detective. Nor do I work for anyone else.” But he was very eager to know why this lovely young woman might have thought he was. Even more so as to why she’d thought he might have had a gun or some other weapon in his hand. “I did give Angel my private card rather than my business card, but I doubt it got as far as either of you…? That’s what I thought,” he muttered when they both looked blank.
“You mentioned Miss Francesca is one of the reasons for you coming here?” Allison prompted.
He removed two of his more formal business cards from the leather holder in his breast pocket, before handing one to each of the ladies. “As you can see, my name is Magnus Wynter, and I am one of the owners of Wynter Security. The others are my brothers and cousin.”
The guard in the hallway had obviously heard of either him or the company, the tension easing somewhat from his shoulders as he gave Magnus a respectful nod of acknowledgment.
“Sapphie Jones,” Angel’s mother supplied distractedly as she read his business card before putting it in the back pocket of her jeans. “Aren’t security companies also hired to look for missing people?”
“Are you missing?”
“Not to anyone who matters.”
“Hmm.” He mulled over that evasive answer. “Well, Wynter Security prefers to protect people, not expose them to danger,” he told her mildly.
She eyed him warily. “Why are you here, Mr. Wynter?”
“I—”
“You!” a voice accused.
Magnus looked up to see a very red-faced Miss Francesca marching furiously down the hallway toward them, looking no less a martinet than she had earlier today.
He instinctively stepped between her and the other two women. “I’m glad you’ve joined us, because it will save me having to look for you,” he added in a hard voice. “Now that you’re here, you can explain why Angel says you’re mean to her and why I personally saw you grip her arm so hard in the park earlier today that it’s sure to have left finger-shaped bruises.”
What the…!
Sapphie didn’t know which part of that statement to deal with first.
The fact that her daughter had told this man Francesca Fuller was mean to her.
Or that her daughter had been taken to the park, where she had then spoken to a complete stranger.
