Page 193 of The Black Trilogy

“Maybe. It would be even more pleasant if you’d take me home and pick up one of your oh-so-willing lady friends. Then I could go back to sleep.”

I had another five o’clock start tomorrow, and I was still behind on shut-eye. Jackie might have offered to do my shift, but I had no intention of taking her up on it.

“That’s not why I’m here tonight.”

“Ah yes, your mysterious proposition. Well, what is it then? Spit it out.”

“All in good time. We’ll eat first.”

How could he be so infuriatingly patient about the whole thing?

Giovanni brought the food, and it seemed as though Black had ordered the entire menu. Probably he did. I started eating, piling my plate high, and every dish tasted really, really good. So good, in fact, that I forgot to act annoyed and just savoured each delicious morsel. The wine slid down nicely, too, and I drank several glasses. Probably I should have mentioned that I was underage, but I didn’t want to risk that little snippet of information getting back to Jimmy.

Besides, I’d been drinking since the age of twelve, albeit mostly beer and cheap cider rather than undoubtedly expensive grape products. This made a nice change.

The waistband of my trousers dug into my stomach as Giovanni returned to clear away the plates. Stuffed, I leaned back in my chair and tried to burp discreetly.

“Are you ready for dessert, or do you want to wait a few minutes?”

Dessert? There was more? If it was as good as the rest of the food then I wanted it, even if it meant staying in Black’s company for a bit longer so I had enough room to eat it. In truth, he wasn’t a bad dinner companion.

Conversation so far had stayed on safe topics—sports, London, Virginia where he was from, the weather, things like that. He seemed to know a lot about everything and conversing with him sure beat the monosyllabic grunts of half the guys I hung out with. It was a shock to realise I was enjoying dinner, despite my best efforts to the contrary.

Dessert arrived, or should I say desserts. Giovanni served up eight different ones, and Black and I both tried all of them, except I snarfed down four times more than he did.

Hey, I figured it might be years before I got food that posh again, so I wanted to make the most of it.

Black ordered another bottle of wine and poured me a glass. Then he topped up his own water. He was driving, so he’d only drunk one glass of red before he switched.

His face grew serious. This must be the important bit, I thought somewhat groggily, and through my alcohol-induced fuzz, I realised I had an issue.

Because although I didn’t know what he was planning to ask me, I felt remarkably mellow. Far from my usual “uptight with a hint of crazy,” probably due to all the wine combined with a total carb overload. At that moment in time, slumped back in my seat, watching his full pink lips move, I’d have agreed to anything.

Which presented me with a bit of a problem when I heard what he had to say.

CHAPTER 21

BLACK SAT BACK in his seat, watching me through soft eyes, relaxed but alert.

Mine kept trying to close.

“So,” he started. “Last night was interesting, wasn’t it?”

“I guess you could call it that.”

“I think you have a rather unique skill set.”

“And…?”

“Last year, I started up a company with a friend of mine, providing security and investigation services. We’ve encountered certain situations where having a female on the team would have been extremely useful, and we’ve spent months looking for the right woman without any success. But yesterday evening, I found her.”

“Where?” Was I missing something?

“You, you idiot.”

Oh, yes, the wine. I remembered now.

“Well, I think you’ve made a mistake. I don’t know the first thing about investigating or securig…securitat…securitising.”

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