the apartment at eight in the morning to get to the office on time. You’d better be here before then. Or you might not be able to get in,” he added with pursed lips.
She took his meaning. The Goth Girl would probably lock her out once she knew Gaby was going to work here. She chuckled. “Okay. I’ll be here before eight.”
“Do you have other relatives besides your grandmother?” he asked curiously.
Her face closed up. “No,” she said, without elaborating.
That expression made him curious. But there would be plenty of time later to dig deeper, if he wanted to. He needed an employee. Her private life was no concern of his. “Monday, then. Good day.”
He let her out of the apartment and closed the door.
She was fumbling in her purse to put away the sheets of paper he’d returned to her when she heard an absolute feminine wail come through the door of the apartment she’d just left.
“She’s going to work here? No!”
Gaby smiled to herself all the way to the elevator.
* * *
HER BODYGUARD WAS waiting downstairs beside a black limousine. It was a sedan, not the stretch limo he usually drove for her grandmother. Gaby had wanted to be discreet, although the last thing she’d come here for was a job. She lived near her grandmother, who was one of the wealthiest women in the country and Gaby was her only heir. The job was an opportunity, though, and she was going to take it.
“How’d it go?” Tanner Everett asked with a smile.
She looked up, trying not to stare at the black eye patch over the blue eye that had been damaged beyond repair in some foreign country while he was plying his former trade as a mercenary.
“I got hired.”
His black eyebrows arched. “Hired?”
“Well, he was expecting someone to interview as a personal administrative assistant. I let him think I was the person. And I got cold feet about asking him questions when the Goth Girl answered the door.”
He put her inside the sedan and got in under the wheel. “The Goth Girl?”
“You had to be there.” She laughed and shook her head as he cranked the car and pulled cautiously out into traffic. “It seems that Mr. Chandler has a niece with enough tattoos and piercings to put her in line for a job making license plates in some big federal facility.”
It took a minute for that to penetrate, and he roared. “She sounds like a handful.”
“She is. I’m going to be Public Enemy Number One.” She grinned. “I love the sound of that. I’ve led such a quiet, uneventful life with Grandmére,” she added.
“You didn’t get to talk to him about your grandfather, I gather.”
“No. He isn’t the sort of man you approach directly with such questions. I almost made a fatal faux pas,” she told him. She leaned back against the seat. “I hope my grandmother isn’t going to be mad because of what I did. It was an opportunity I didn’t feel I could overlook. If I get to know him, I can find out all sorts of things without having to beg for information.”
“That way lies disaster,” he said quietly, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. “Lies catch up with you.”
“This is just a little white lie,” she argued with a smile. “And nobody’s going to get hurt. Honest.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
* * *
HER GRANDMOTHER, SMALL and wizening and fierce for all her size gave Gaby a severe stare when she was told about the position. She gave Everett one, too, but it just bounced off him.
“I did not tell you to get a job,” she told Gaby firmly, her faint French accent coming out as she grew angrier, her pale blue eyes throwing off sparks.
“But it’s the best way to find out,” Gaby argued. “I won’t have to stay long. Meanwhile, I can learn about him and his law practice. I can find out which attorney in his firm represented grandfather and how he felt about what...what happened to me.”
Everett made a face. “Your grandfather should have had ten years for that.”
“His best friend is a judge,” she said on a sigh. “Justice is largely a matter of money these days,” she added cynically.
“Not always.”
Madame Dupont made a gruff sound in her throat and turned away, resplendent in a taupe silk pantsuit that took ten years off her age. It made her short, wavy silver hair brighter, too. “My granddaughter, working at a menial job. What is the world coming