Page 22 of Goodnight
‘I don’t know him; I knowofhim,’ she said to the window, the small tic in her jaw the only sign of her anger. ‘In future I would like to have acompleteguest list for my team to go over before events like this.’ Her eyes shot to his and there was no mistaking it now: she was furious.
Nick shrugged. ‘Mum and Dad asked him at the last minute. They must have forgotten to –’
‘If you and your parents want me to do my job effectively then I would appreciate it if you would follow the few simple rules I have laid out.’ She turned to go and Nick pushed off from the desk.
‘Wait a minute.’ When she didn’t look back or even pause he huffed in frustration, slammed his drink down on the table and strode over to her, catching hold of her arm before she disappeared through the door. ‘Wait, I have some questions I’d like to –’
‘Is that an order?’ Goodie asked in a low, dangerous voice, her cold gaze fixing on his, then dropping to his hand on her arm as if it was diseased. He released her and stepped back, showing her his palms in a gesture of surrender. She shot him one last filthy look before turning on her heel and exiting the room on silent feet – something that Nick was surprised she could achieve, given the height of her stilettos.
Chapter11
Show weakness
Nick paddedthrough the dark kitchen to the fridge, pulled out the large jug of milk and moved over to where he knew Mrs B. kept the biscuits. He smiled as he opened the jar and grabbed the oat and raisin one that she knew were his favourite. He was a spoilt son of a bitch. As he was filling his glass and loading up his plate with his spoils, he noticed the door to the boot room was ajar. As silently as he could, obviously nowhere near Goodie’s level but he thought he was doing pretty well, he walked over to the door and pushed it open. He blinked down at the blanket laid out next to Salem, who was curled up in the centre of the tiled floor with Xavier. No Goodie. Maybe she’d decided to listen to him. He backed up a step, preparing to leave, then felt cold steel on his neck and froze.
‘Don’t ever try to sneak up on me again,’ she whispered in his ear and he let out a slow breath as the knife pressed in for a moment before falling away.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he swore, spinning on his heel to see Goodie crouched on top of the utility sideboard, her arms resting on her bent legs and her hands, including the one holding the knife, hanging between them. She was almost unrecognizable from earlier in the evening, now wearing dark skin-tight trousers with a black hoody. He glanced at her short hair and saw that it was mussed on one side; the only sign that she had been asleep. For some reason that uncharacteristic sign of humanity made his chest feel tight and he had the inexplicable, given that she had just been holding a knife to his throat, urge to hug her. ‘You’re a bloody lunatic.’ He gestured towards her, causing some of his milk to spill onto his hand and a biscuit to fall to the floor. ‘Shit.’
Goodie was staring at the milk before her eyes dropped to the biscuit. Nick could just about make out the corners of her mouth turning up very slightly, her cold expression banished briefly as her eyes danced. She slid forward and off the counter, bending down to stroke a now awake Salem’s head (the pug was still snoring at his side), tuck the knife into an ankle strap under her trousers, and finally retrieve the lone biscuit. As she straightened to standing, she held the biscuit out to him, placing it on top of the stack on his plate.
‘You’re eating? Now?’ she asked, her eyes still focused on the plate and her almost imperceptible smile still in place. Nick shrugged.
‘Couldn’t sleep.’
‘So you … eat?’
‘Ugh, it’s comfort food … stuff I used to have as a child. Didn’t your mum ever give you milk and biscuits when you couldn’t sleep?’
Goodie’s gaze shot from the plate to his, and her amused expression blanked back to her natural cold one. ‘No.’
Nick waited a beat, hoping that maybe she would give something away, but when he saw a muscle tic in her jaw he knew it was futile. ‘Well, you’ve been missing out. Come on.’ He backed out through the door, the memory of cold steel on his neck making him reluctant to turn his back on her. When she didn’t follow he stopped and waited at the doorway to the kitchen. ‘I’m not leaving until I’ve seen you eat some milk and biscuits.’
‘I am not a milk and biscuits type of woman.’
‘You are tonight.’ They went into stare-down, and to Nick’s surprise, after a robust shove from Salem into the backs of her legs in the direction of the biscuits, she sighed and gave in. Nick smiled, backing further into the kitchen so he could put his glass and plate down on the table and pull out a chair for Goodie. She looked from him to the chair, gave a slight headshake and let her eyes close for a second whilst running one hand over the mussed side of her hair. She must be tired, thought Nick, her movements were somehow more … human. As she went to sit in the chair he pushed back to retrieve the milk, another glass and the biscuit tin, setting them on the table in front of Goodie before delving into the tin and throwing one of them to a waiting Salem. He sat down opposite Goodie, took a bite of his own biscuit, and waited. Goodie rolled her eyes, another rare sign of humanity, then extracted a biscuit from the jar and bit into it.
‘There,’ she said after swallowing her first bite, ‘happy now? May I sleep?’
‘You can do whatever you like, Goodie,’ Nick said softly, noticing that now she’d started the biscuit, she was devouring it at a fairly rapid rate. She took a sip of milk and threw Salem another one. ‘Okay, you and your mother may be onto something,’ she conceded, as she was halfway through her second. Nick sat back in his chair and smiled at her, watching in fascination as one side of her mouth actually curled all the way up for a moment. It might have been a half smile, and it might have only been for a second, but it was something.
‘You told me you weren’t going to sleep in the boot room again, Goodie. The alarm is up and running now.’
Goodie shrugged. ‘I lied,’ she said simply.
‘I realize that,’ he huffed. ‘What I want to know is why; when I expressly asked you not to and when there is no bloody need.’
‘It is still the weakest point of the house. It’s where I would choose to come in if my target was inside. Alarm system or not.’
‘Is that something you’ve done often then?’ he asked. Goodie stared at him and lowered her half-eaten biscuit back onto her plate.
‘I think I’ve had enough,’ she said. Nick didn’t know if she was talking about the biscuits or the questions, but the return of her cold expression had him gritting his teeth. She pushed back her chair and gestured for Salem to follow; the dog sent the biscuit tin a longing look before reluctantly traipsing after her.
Nick watched the boot-room door close and ran through his options: he could attempt to throw Goodie over his shoulder and carry her to the guest room – this option had a few drawbacks, not least that he would likely end up in intensive care; he could shut off the downstairs heating, but somehow he wasn’t convinced that the less-than-freezing spring temperatures would have much effect on Goodie. So what was he left with? Making his decision, he pushed away from the table.
* * *
Goodie allowedherself to smile as she curled around Salem under the blanket and buried her face in his thick fur. A thirty-seven-year-old man sneaking down to the kitchen for milk and biscuits in the middle of the night was one of the funniest things she had ever seen. He hadn’t even been embarrassed to be caught; but then again his absolute and total confidence seemed to override embarrassment in most situations: he shrugged off Clive’s obnoxious taunting about his protection being provided by a woman; tonight he might have been dragged to the dance floor by his sister but once there he had danced like a maniac (at one point Goodie’d lost him in the crowd and was about to radio Sam when she realized that the reason he wasn’t in her line of sight was because he’d dropped down to the floor to perform some sort of break-dancing move for Arabella. The fact that he could not actually break-dance did not seem to hamper his enthusiasm and he’d ended up doing some sort of bizarre forward roll, much to Arabella’s delight judging by her unbridled laughter); he interacted with people seamlessly, talked easily, smiled readily; he was … charming. Yes, that was by far the best word to describe him: charming. And … and he was kind. He gravitated to the people on the outskirts of the party, pulling them into conversations, making them feel at ease, listening earnestly to whatever they had to say. It was clear he was protective of Bertie and that he was growing tired of Clive’s continued subtle digs at him; she noticed that he’d started stepping in whenever Clive tried to put Bertie down – more often than not turning things around to help Bertie come across as the eccentric but hilarious man he was, and not the fool Clive for some reason wanted to make him out to be.
