pocket of her knee-length grey wool coat and checked the message she had received when she had reached out to her client demanding a meeting, contacting him on a number she had no doubt he would torch once the contract was done.
The café it mentioned wasn’t far now.
She tamped down her nerves, something she’d had to do far too many times in the last day. They had been shot since she had teleported away from the elf, using a gift she rarely relied on these days. In fact, it had been so long since she had used that ability that she was surprised she still remembered how it worked. She had stopped using it when someone had witnessed it and started asking too many questions, probing into what she was.
Just as the elf had.
Mackenzie spotted the café ahead of her, close to a junction in the broad street that formed a crossroads with Oxford Street. Cream stone buildings towered on either side of the four-lane road, red double-decker buses and black taxis reflected in the windows of the stores on the ground floors.
The temptation to hail one of those taxis and get the hell out of Dodge rose within her as she spotted a lone male sitting at one of the tables outside the café.
She sucked down a breath and stoked her anger, bringing it up like a shield so he didn’t notice how nervous she was about meeting with him again. There was something about him that set her on edge, had brought her close to turning down the contract when she had first met him.
She should have rolled with her first instinct.
The contract had seemed like a miracle dropped in her lap, the perfect way of elevating her guild and getting more clients and more coin flowing in. She had known it was too good to be true, but she had convinced herself otherwise.
She didn’t have to work too hard to fan her anger towards an inferno. She only had to think about the insufferable bastard her client had also hired, one who had taken pity on her and let her live, as if he had the damned right to decide whether she lived or died.
That decision rested solely in her hands.
She was deeply aware of that, had faced death countless times.
Mackenzie stormed up to the black-haired man and yanked the seat opposite him out. She sat in it with as much spit and fire as she could manage. He arched an eyebrow at her. His impossibly blue eyes held a flicker of warmth as that eyebrow lowered, his firm mouth lifting into a hint of a smile.
As if her anger merely amused him.
He casually lifted the elegant white cup from its saucer, sipped the frothy coffee in a demure way that reeked of class, and lowered it again. He had come dressed for the wintry weather, pairing a black roll-neck jumper that reached up to his square, stubbled jawline with a thick woollen onyx coat that hugged his lean frame and looked as if it had been tailor-made for him.
Probably on Savile Row.
He leaned back in his seat and crossed his legs, causing the fine material of his black slacks to pull tight over it and revealing an expensive-looking leather Chelsea boot. She bet her left tit that his boots hadn’t been made in a sweatshop in a poor country. This man had the air of one who demanded only the best and hired the finest craftsmen to make his clothes, no expenses spared.
Which was totally why he had hired her guild.
“You mentioned there was a problem in your message.” His posh English accent lent a regal bearing to him that wasn’t necessary to make her feel the vast difference in their positions.
She scraped and scrounged together enough coin to keep her guild running and this guy was probably sitting on millions he had no use for. She planned to relieve him of some of the terrible weight of his bank balance.
“I want more coin. Turns out you hired more than one guild. If I’m going up against that guild, I think I deserve a better incentive. Whatever you offered them, you’ll pay me when I fulfil this contract.” She was surprised she made it through her well-rehearsed speech without revealing the nerves running rampant inside her.
She told herself to be strong as she waited, to be firm. Syn had been coaching her all morning in how to be unmoving and how to not take no for