Page 48 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker)
When the hotness twins looked at each other before speaking, my curiosity was doubled.
That was when I realized the dog was staring at me with shrewd, interested eyes.
Uh oh.
CHAPTER 20
“You can understand what I’m saying, can’t you?” he asked, and all I could do for a second was blink at him, because he sounded like a Scottish stereotype. I half expected him to call me a wee cunt, and wondered what that said about the Scottish people I’d known in my life. Or maybe what it said about me, and the kinds of acquaintances I made.
I glanced to my right and left, like maybe there were other people present in the room I didn’t want to know the truth, but then gave the dog a tiny nod.
The woman, who apparently had freakish eagle eyes, cocked her head at me. “Dog lover are you, Mr. Knight?”
I pulled myself up to sit on my desk next to Twist, picking her up and setting her on my shoulder, where she perched like a vulture. “All animals, really.” I figured that would answer both her question, and the one the dog had asked. “What’s his name?”
She gave me a sweet smile, pulling him out of his basket and setting him in her lap. “This is my dear little Bannie.”
“It’s Bannockburn,” he groused, glaring up at her.
She seemed to have some idea what was going on, because she smiled down at him, scratching his ears and saying, “Such a grump.”
He mumbled something about the British always taking liberties, and it was all I could do to stare at the two of them and not start laughing.
“You’re sure he’s not dinner?” Twist asked. “He’s very . . . yippy.”
“Chill, Twist,” I told her, reaching up to run a hand down her back. “Anyway. Introductions?”
“You’ve certainly done your part,” the woman said, turning to her companion. “Arthur?”
He sighed the sigh of a man who knew he’d been beaten. “I’m Arthur Agincourt, and this is my sister Amelia.”
Twins, my brain offered again. With the cutesy matchy names. To say nothing of the alliteration. Poor guys.
“We read that the shop next door is for rent,” she said, drawing herself up and looking rather tall that way. “You own it?”
Arthur winced, once again pained, but he didn’t interject.
I shrugged and nodded. “Sure do. I’m the one who put the ad in the Advocate looking to rent it out. Were you two looking to rent a business location?”
“It’s out of our budget,” Arthur interrupted, looking at his sister rather than us. “Farout of our budget.”
That got Davin’s interest. “How do you know that? The ad didn’t have a price, or we wouldn’t be getting such different offers.”
I only recalled the one offer with a specific monetary value, so I’d have to ask Davin what he meant later.
For now, for some reason, it hadn’t occurred to me that Davin hadn’t seen the ad in question. “I definitely didn’t list a price,” I agreed. The truth was that I had no notion of what the place was worth. A little research had given me wildly differing suggestions, because it depended on location and foot traffic and the amenities in the space, among other things. “What kind ofbusiness are you looking to open?” I decided to ask, instead of going into all the details and my reasoning, which almost never went over well.
Arthur looked pained by the question, but Amelia beamed. “A tea shop.”
I blinked, just staring at her for a moment, because . . . what?
Davin cocked his head, considering. “Serving sweets, sandwiches, and such?”
“Precisely,” she agreed, scratching Bannockburn’s ears as her eyes went distant. “Mother used to take us to one in London once a week when we were children. With lovely bone china and old-fashioned furniture and shelves of poetry books if people wanted to read them. My favorite was always Dylan Thomas.”
For some reason, Davin lifted a brow at that. “Not Keats? Wordsworth?”
She made a face at him, nose scrunched as though he’d suggested something terrible.
