Page 6 of Lair

I feel my stomach bottom out. “What?”

The corner of his mouth curls in a faint smirk. “Mr. Voper is very... particular... about the type of girl who works on his boat.” He gestures to the middle of the room. “Please.”

Heat sweeps up my chest, my neck, into my face. My hands, I find, are shaking as I stand and smooth my skirt. Is this legal? This can’t be legal. My head is a buzzing cloud of confusion as I tuck a flyaway hair behind my ear and turn to face him, feeling like a child.

He has his phone out and is pointing it at me. Click.

He’s taken a picture.

What the...?

Before I can say a word, the phone’s vanished. He stands, résumé in hand. “I’ll pass these on to Mr. Voper,” he says curtly, and extends a meaty hand. “Thank you for coming in.”

The dismissal rings in the air. I shake the hand in a daze, murmur some thank you and grope out, right past Renata Sproule sitting with unnerving content in the dark behind her receptionist’s desk. “Mind the heat,” she trills as the bell tinkles behind me, and then I’m squinting in the glare outside as my mind processes with awful clarity: What the fuck was that? What am I to do now? Will I run out of money before I find a job? I reach out to steady myself on Greg’s Jeep as the final, crushing thought comes: Will I get weak enough and go back to—

“Miss Strand.”

I whirl—it is, impossibly, the captain standing in front of me, phone in hand as if just hanging up from a call. With no change in expression whatsoever he stares at me and says, “Congratulations. You’ll be on the first flight to Monaco tomorrow.”

“I hate you,” Cailee whines as she punches my shoulder with a beer, and I salute her with my own. “Love you too, babe.”

Greg grins between us.

I’m teetering on a high, I can’t contain myself. I feel as if happiness is exuding from my pores, making me glow. We’re at Tap 42, central hangout in the yachtie world of Fort Lauderdale. A constellation of wire bulbs stab down at us from the ceiling, casting our faces in an orangey golden light. Greg looks like he’s died and gone to heaven as we strain to hear each other over the hubbub.

“I can’t believe it. Monaco? The Med?” Cailee rests her chin on a fist. “My little Aurora. All growed up.”

“So he just came right back out?” Greg says, shaking his head. “Like, a minute later?”

“I know, right? And that picture he took. Weird.”

“Don’t forget the creepy receptionist chilling in the dark,” Greg adds.

A thought has occurred to Cailee, though. She asks, cutting through all this, “What was the yacht called again?”

I smirk around the rim of my beer. “The Lair.”

But the look Cailee and Greg give each other makes my face slacken.

“What?”

Greg fails spectacularly at an indifferent shrug. “Nothing. Just... it’s owned by Adrian Voper. The reclusive billionaire.”

“And he’s supposed to be hot,” Cailee chimes in.

“Yeah?” I say with a strange coiling in my gut. “What does he look like?”

“That’s just it,” Greg says. “No one knows. Nobody’s ever gotten a picture of him.”

My turn to shrug. “Aren’t all those yacht owners super private?”

“Sure,” Greg concedes. “But this one’s also a nightmare to work for. Like, OCD, a super control freak—”

“I think that’s all she needs to hear, don’t you?” Cailee says lightly, and Greg flushes.

“Yeah, sure. Of course.” He takes a swig from his beer, looks at it. “Another round?”

“With haste, sir!” Cailee cries. “I am in grieving!”

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