shifted, looking guilty. “Well, maybe I misunderstood …”
“She’ll apologize because I tell her to,” Yvan ground out. “Shani …” He pointed at Stack as if he was showing a naughty dog the way out.
She lifted her head like an innocent woman facing a firing squad. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bookman. Please …” She swallowed hard; Elliot could see movement at the base of her throat, and that movement drew his eyes downward to the cleavage that swelled out the top of her plunging neckline. She didn’t need the push-up bra she was wearing. He dragged his eyes to her face again as she begged, “Please, forgive …” Then she stopped, and another look crossed her face. Not outrage, not embarrassment, not discomfort. Something else, and it scared him.
She slipped her hand into her pocket. Yvan saw the movement, reptilian eyes swiveling down. “Don’t tell me.” he began.
What the hell?
She withdrew a small cell phone and looked at it as if it was the detonator for a nuclear weapon. It must have been on silent, because nobody had heard it ring.
“I’ve explicitly told you, all of you, you are not allowed to carry your phones on the job!” Yvan was in a fine lather. Something told Elliot that this was his usual state of being.
Shani gave him half a second’s glance. “You know my situation, Yvan.”
“I don’t give a pickled monkey’s butt about your situation.”
“Hello?” Shani’s voice was a whisper. Elliot’s eyes were riveted to her face, beyond curiosity. Under the plum-dark skin, the blood drained. “I’ll be right there.” She clicked the phone shut. “It’s Bee,” she said to Yvan.
Bee? What bee? He half expected to see one buzzing around their heads.
If you’d set a spirit level along Yvan’s mouth, the bubble would have been dead center. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“I need to go. Now.”
Yvan lifted his hand and checked his watch. “Your tail is mine for another hour and forty minutes.”
“Bee’s sick, and I’m going to her.”
“You do that, and …” He didn’t finish the threat.
Shani ripped off the silly apron she was wearing and threw it down. “You want to fire me? Consider me fired. But please, Yvan, ask Ralph to give me a lift to the other side of Ventura. Maybe I could catch a late bus. There’s nothing running here in Belmont tonight.”
“Ralph drives a catering truck, not a taxi. Besides, we’re busy tonight.” He added meaningfully, “We’re one hand short.” The scarecrow of a man swooped down and scooped up the apron, tucking it under his arm, then stalked off.
That left three of them. The events of the last minute and a half seemed to have gotten through to Stack. Instead of basking in his petty triumph, he looked abashed, but Elliot knew his father wasn’t man enough to say he was sorry unless it suited him. Stack’s eyes took in Shani’s stricken face and then he, too, slunk away.
And then there were two. Elliot put his hands on his hips and took in the pain on Shani’s face. He’d known this woman only ten minutes, but inexplicably he was hurting for her. “You okay?”
She looked at him as though he’d asked the world’s most asinine question. “No.”
“What’s the problem? What bee are you talking about?”
“My daughter,” she answered irritably, as if he should have known. “Béatrice.”
“Ah.” Now he understood. “She’s sick?”
Shani nodded wearily. “She had a fever when I left home this evening.” She found her purse next to the broom cupboard. As she shouldered it, he noticed a thin wedding band on her finger. For some reason, that disappointed him.
“Was that your husband on the phone?”
She turned and wrenched open the kitchen door, which gave side access to his father’s garage and, beyond it, the broad driveway. “That was my sitter. My baby’s worse. Her fever’s a hundred and four.” She slipped through the doorway and into the darkened garage.
He hurried to keep up with her. “Where’re you going?”
Her look made him feel as if his IQ didn’t graze eighty. “I’m taking her to the hospital.” She twisted, looking for the garage light, the better to see her way out. He found it easily and clicked it on.
“Let me rephrase that. How are you getting there? Yvan said—”
“I heard what Yvan said. I’m walking to the bus stop.” “But there aren’t any—”
“Night buses that pass through Belmont. I know.” He could see her legs flash in the floodlights, hear her heels click on the driveway. “I’m walking to Ventura.”
“That’s two miles away!”
She didn’t even glance in his direction. Her determined mouth barely moved as she told him, “Then I better get to walking.” A stiff, late-September wind stirred her hair. She didn’t have a coat on, and that dress of hers, what passed for a dress, barely brushed the tops of her thighs.
Elliot watched as she hurried away, her hips rolling in her haste, legs moving swiftly past each other. Seeing a mother so concerned for her child’s well-being that she was willing to trot across town on heels too high for waitressing stirred something in him. “Shani, wait!”
She half turned, frowning at him for interrupting her pace.
He ran down the path, grasping her by the arms.
“Wait.”
She looked down at the hands he’d placed on her, brows together, and when he read on her face the indignation at being restrained by a second Bookman in one night, he let go. The lady had already proved she didn’t mind biting—and not in a good way.
“I have … to get … to my daughter,” she explained carefully. “Fast.”
The fear in her eyes made his heart constrict. “It’s too late. Too cold.”
“I don’t have a choice.” She resumed walking as though her pace had never been interrupted.
He wasn’t explaining himself right, dammit! “Wait!” As he stopped her again, she sucked in a breath. He was sure she was about to scream, so he talked fast. “Just give me ten seconds, all right?”
“Why?”
“I’ll take you.”
“What?”
He left her standing there and sprinted back to the kitchen. The Triumph wasn’t the best mode of transport for what he had in mind. He snagged his father’s car keys without a second thought and darted back outside.
The burgundy Lexus chirped a friendly
