a ti-dye shirt, suspenders, and white capris.
Lucian breathed a sigh of relief as Devlin all but hissed at the guy.
“Vladimir,” he greeted, dipping his head. The man had hair as white as snow, yet his face was young and puckered from wind. Bright blue eyes twinkled up at him before they landed on Devlin.
His face dropped from flamboyant to disdainful.
“Drama Queen,” Devlin spat, moving to the back wall again. She pressed herself into the shadows as if the action would make the Vladimir disappear.
“Someday, woman, you will be working for me,” he said with a flick of his wrist, his own action of flipping her off. Lucian held in a smile.
“What did you need?” he asked, ignoring their banter. Everyone knew that Devlin and Vladimir hated each other, so their insults and arguments were nothing new.
“I was just going to report that a beautiful black haired woman and a strapping man arrived at this disappointment of a building. They will be back shortly, the man said. He wanted to give the lovely woman a tour – that may be the new slang for ‘fuck’ though,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and standing straight.
Vladimir was the kind of man that could direct a movie and get off on being called gay. He looked down on half of the population, resented almost everyone, and loved to talk in big sentences.
He was also very blunt.
Lucian moved to the door. “Why would you say that?”
Vladimir gave him an arch look, taking a hankie out of his back pocket and twirling it around in his hands. He did that enough that it didn’t bother Lucian anymore. “Oh, you should have seen the way they were looking at each other! I was scared my booty was going to get singed off because of the flames of heat and desire that radiated from…”
“Alright. We get it.” Lucian rubbed his face with his hand and opened the door, looking out. The room was empty, the normal clicks and taps of the room absent. He had sent everyone home for a break. Reconstruction was going on in the front, and they were getting ready to sell the gas station. Vladimir had unfavorably agreed to let Lucian use his bar as the new headquarters, so they had no use of the gas station.
Lucian had many settlements across the nation to last his organization a lifetime—and more.
“Gay boys should just shut up in general,” Devlin muttered from the back, the insult aimed at only Vladimir.
He gave her a sweet smile and waved the hankie at her. “At least I can get the big ones, my dear.” With that, he flounced out of the room with a skip. The action was only to piss off Devlin, and it had done its job. The second he was out of the room, a paper weight came flying at Lucian’s head.
He caught it, glaring at her. “Be grateful, at least you get to work with us still. He could have easily said that you couldn’t work at the Alley Cat and I wouldn’t have cared enough to convince him to let you stay with the group. So instead of acting like a child, get your priorities straight and not piss off the gay man.”
Devlin was silent. He could tell that she was debating about throwing another paper weight at his head or sulking out of the room. She chose the latter, and he followed after her. It wouldn’t do to have Talon and Jamie making out like sex-crazed teenagers in his store when there was business to do.
Talon grabbed his cell phone out of his pocket. He didn’t bother to look at the caller ID.
Jamie was standing next to him, looking at the walls with a dazed look on her face. They were silvery, metallic, and apparently something that she had never seen before. The whole station was at odds with the work space that lay behind it.
The look of distaste on her face when they had walked into Sinclairs had had him chuckling, and now that they were behind the store and she was getting a little taste of what Talon put up with, it was almost comical. What would she think if she knew he didn’t live anywhere near here?
She would love his condo, he thought, watching her. The empty, one-point five million dollar a month room didn’t have the touch of a woman, nor a man. He had got the room in impulse, and since then he hadn’t had