Page 3 of Last Shot

‘Help?’ he repeated, as the sound of Jett’s horn blared through the glass. ‘From an opportunistic rapist?’

‘I didn’t say you were –she’s hurling!’

Grey shoved Tattoos just in time for her Doc Martens to avoid being splattered by the famous Barbarani Wine mixed with Bambi’s stomach acids.

He expected her to gag or run away with her fingers pinching her nose, but apparently her disgust at the thought of a thirty-something-year-old man being left alone with a drunk girl outweighed the current smell in the air.

The fairness of that assumption irritated him more than it should.

‘Can I get her in a taxi now?’ Grey asked.

The woman glared, her green eyes flashing, but didn’t try to stop him. He hooked his hands under Bambi’s armpits but she was too heavy.

Fuck this.He scooped Bambi up like an 1800s bridegroom carrying his new wife over the threshold.

‘That’s not a taxi.’ The angry voice followed him outside into the car park, where the red Barbarani Porsche – Bessy – waited, rumbling with a mix of irritation and cockiness.

‘DoesMensaknow about you?’

Jett got out and came around to help Grey get Bambi into the backseat. Tattoos stepped protectively in front of the passenger door, blocking them from lifting Bambi inside.

‘It’s a Barbarani Taxi,’ Grey explained.

She raised her eyebrows. ‘You work for the Barbaranis?’ Something in her voice made his stomach clench. Why?

‘Well, I’m not here to bid for an hour with Luca Barbarani, if that’s what you were thinking.’

He half-expected her to say ‘me neither’, but all he got was stony silence, and his brain began to flare. There was something about this woman – andno,it wasn’t that tiny singlet. It was the glint in her eyes, like a knife sheathed behind a cloak. She wasn’t here for the auction. He was trained to spot these things. And after the last time he’d got it wrong –well, he wasn’t making that same mistake again.

What had she whispered to Luca, back in the hall?

‘She coming too?’ Jett asked as he typed Bambi’s address into the GPS, the blue of the screen illuminating the jagged scar that cut down the middle of his face.

Grey raised an eyebrow, half turning towards her.

‘I’m going back inside,’ the woman said, ‘as long as she’s all right.’

‘She’s more than all right with Jett,’ Grey said. ‘He could handle that car with his eyes closed.’ At the look on her face, he added, ‘He won’t though.’ He had no idea why he felt the need to reassure this woman of the Barbarani driver’s law-abiding nature.

‘I’m cold!’ a voice whined from Bessy’s cream leather seat.

‘Seat warmers are on,’ Jett said. ‘Soon you’ll be complaining your butt’s being eaten by a dragon.’

‘She’sshivering,’ Tattoos said with the inflection ofshe’s bleeding out from multiple stab wounds.

‘That’s why shops sell coats,’ Grey said, shrugging out of his own, glaring at the woman’s arms, their layer of ink the only defence against the wind. He opened the passenger door, annoyed to find Bambi actually shivering. The potential hashtag disasters circled his mind like sharks.

Hypothermia Victim Blames Barbarani Bachelor Auction.

Cold-hearted: Luca Barbarani Tosses Dying Woman Out into Streets.

‘Take this.’ He threw the coat at her; it swallowed her whole.

‘Luca can look me up,’ she slurred. ‘My handle’s @freedom_girl. I’m an influencer – I review hotels. I can get him a decent collaboration.’

The last time Luca stayed at a hotel, Grey had to organise the complete refurbishment of the penthouse suite. Alpaca poo, funnily enough, did not come easily out of carpet.

‘I’ll be sure to let him know. Take care.’

---