Page 71 of Sirens
“He used this super-weird cat metaphor, but basically, as far as I can tell, Grandzaddy Townsend somehow nabbed Madame Katz and yeeted her over the side of one of their Shanghai ships so she’d quit cockblocking their human capital. Oh! And he gave ol’ Spewart Senior the shakedown.”
The cool granite countertop felt delicious on Maggie’s forearms as she leaned against it and watched McGarvey evaluate his options.
“Do you know what this means?” she asked. “Madame Katz might actually have been workingagainstthem. That because she owned buildings that were ideally situated between the docks, she might have been using a brothel to help peopleescape.”
Goosebumps rose on Maggie’s exposed skin, infecting her with the same sweet rush of adrenaline she’d felt when she first seized this possibility.
She stared at McGarvey’s broad back through the fabric of his t-shirt, willing him tofeelthis. To understand not just what it meant, but what it meantto her.
Instead, he pulled out a neatly folded rag and a bottle of something so potent it could very well be the chemical cousin of napalm before walking back through the living room to the foyer. There, he began liberally spritzing the general area of her arrival in addition to just about every surface she’d touched.
Which was just…just…
“Fuckingrude,” she huffed, crossing her arms defensively over her chest.
Which was rapidly turning a blotchy pink as her Irish shot up faster than the unfortunately named urchin Charlie and his deadbeat Grandpa Joe in the also unfortunately named Wonkavator.
Way past give-a-shit, Maggie parked her hands on her hips and stepped out to block McGarvey’s path.
Which was when she accidentally caught her reflection in the elegant mirror on the entryway wall.
And oh, how it did her dirty.
Shreds of cobweb still clung to her fiery curls like so much Silly String. Gray streaks of dust streaked her face, neck, arms, and knees. Something that looked suspiciously like motor oil—if she was lucky—streaked the forearm she’d rested on McGarvey’s surgically clean countertops. And was that—oh dear God—fuckingguanoin her hair?
Not to mention the absolutely uncalled-for assault on her general person the cool overhead canned lighting was currently perpetrating.
Looking at her reflection in McGarvey’s mirror, she was confronted with the same version of herself that had once caused her to skip meals when she found that she could live on compliments and control instead. Every pucker and fold, every silvery pink scar an indictment of what other people saw when they looked at her.
Someone whose body—whose life—they were quietly relieved not to have.
Somebody whose presence made them feel superior by comparison.
Never before had that comparison been starker that in this perfect man’s perfect palace of solitude.
Maggie barked a laugh that hit her a shade too hard and too low in the chest. “I look like a trash gremlin chimney sweep,” she said, quickly biting the inside of her cheek when her throat began to close. “An unemployed trash gremlin chimney sweep,” she added. “Because whose chimney could I fit down? Right?”
Wonder of wonders, it wasthissentence that finally extracted a growled word from McGarvey’s throat.
“Shower.”
She found she couldn’t move until he did, almost like she needed to mirror his steps as she would if following footprints in the snow, disturbing as little as possible.
Stepping over the threshold into the spa-like expanse of marble tile, Maggie did her level best to keep her eyes averted from any reflective surface.
Which wassuperfucking easy, given how the man cleaned.
Standing there, vulnerable and half-naked, Maggie hugged her arms beneath her breasts as Trent turned knobs and flipped levers. Once he’d conjured a magical waterfall from the ceiling, he turned to her.
“Get in,” he rumbled.
“Oh wow,” Maggie muttered, releasing the econo-sized clasp of her bra and peeling it from her breasts. “Two whole words this time.” Flinging it over the towel rack, she slipped her panties down her hips and kicked them toward the vanity. “I’ll have to think of something really humiliating so you might manage a whole sentence.”
His nostrils flared as she stepped into the cobalt-tiled glass stall, gingerly easing herself beneath the downpour.
Which felt…delicious.
Maggie closed her eyes and stepped fully into it, wishing the water could wash away the concentrated muck she felt lodged somewhere deep in her middle. A core of cheapness…of wrongness she couldn’t shake.
