Page 51 of Hard Luck (Blackstone House)

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I figured you’d overreact, and I lost my good earplugs.”

“Your good earplugs are in the armoury, exactly where you left them. And how can I overreact when this ismomentous? Bella hasn’t dated since she suicided he-whose-name-shall-not-be-spoken, and now she’s done it twice.”

“Three times,” Dice said from the doorway. “And I don’t think you can use ‘suicide’ as a verb.”

For fuck’s sake.Marcel was a stiletto blade in my damn side. “That’s it, I’m taking back the panna cotta.”

He snatched up the bag before I could grab it and ran out of the room. “You can’t! It’s mine.”

Fuck these crutches. On any other day, I’d have caught up and dumped him in the pool, and he was taking advantage. I sank onto a stool at the counter, and the crutches hit the floor.

“You okay?” Dice asked. “He should know better than to mention Bastian.”

“Want me to talk to him?” Dusk offered. “Or gag him?”

“I don’t know.”

Dusk squeezed my hand. “Think about it—the offer’s there.”

“I meant I don’t know if I’m okay.”

“That’s a trickier problem, and if you can’t answer the question, you’re definitely not okay. This is about Cole?”

It was supposed to be a one-night stand. Emotion should never have entered the equation. Now I had to pack all those feelings away again, but they kept popping up at inopportune moments, like hiccups or Middle Eastern terrorists.

Never lose your heart to a man, Mom had always told me—they messed with your sanity. Yes, she’d loved Dad, but her life would have been easier if he hadn’t walked into it, no doubt about that. Okay, so I wouldn’t exist, but right now, I was thinking that might not be such a terrible thing.

After all, I’d screwed up twice. First Bastian, and now Cole. Although only four people had died this time around, so maybe my judgment was improving?

“This is about men being bad news,” I said.

Dusk raised an eyebrow. “Such bad news that you haven’t slept here for the past nine nights?”

“I’m concerned for his safety.”

“We have cameras covering the perimeter of his property, and Ari found a great surveillance spot nearby. If it was just a matter of safety, you’d stay there at night instead of in Cole’s bed. Or hang out in the surveillance van.”

Why did she have to be so logical? “I hate sleeping in the surveillance van.”

“And you clearly like sleeping with Cole.”

“He’s nice,” I admitted. “Too nice, which is concerning. But Echo background-checked him, and if someone sent him in as the male equivalent of a honey trap, then he deserves an Oscar.”

Looking back, there had been red flags with Bastian. He’d pursued me—flowers, chocolates, the whole nine yards. We’d fallen into a relationship, and I hadn’t worried about background checks because he worked at the fucking Pentagon. I mean, weren’t they supposed to take care of that stuff? As our relationship progressed, we’d had the inevitable disagreements, and he’d always been the one to capitulate.Always.To the point that it got frustrating, and I’d start stupid fights just to see if he’d find a backbone. But on the whole, life with Bastian had been easy, and that was probably why I’d said yes when he got down on one knee in front of his whole family. Because having a partner in life took some of the weight off my shoulders.

Now I understood why he’d been so easy to live with. His handlers had told him to keep me onside at all costs.

“Isn’t Cole moving back to San Gallicano in like, three days?” Dice asked.

“The trip in three days is a temporary work thing, but he’s planning to move back permanently once the situation at the Galaxy is resolved.”

“So won’t the ‘he’s too nice’ issue go away?”

Logic dictated that it should. If this were a regular fling, we’d have a clean break when Cole took his trip to the Caribbean. By the time he returned, my cast would be a distant memory, and I’d be back to gallivanting around the world, quietly solving small problems before they became big ones.

But this wasn’t a regular fling. There were still four dead guys in the morgue, Lucy McCall’s arm was in a cast as she dealt with an injury much worse than mine, and Jimmy was waiting in the wings with his Bitcoin demand.

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