Love for the Cold-Blooded (9 page)

Like an idiot, Pat had chosen a number that he’d literally flushed down the toilet as contact info for fake hooker Padraig Weirdspelling.

What if Silver Paladin had gone back to rescue Pat’s album from City Hall’s roof after Pat had rebuked him, like a good little hoagie — ahem, pardon Pat’s French, like a properly super and heroic
superhero
? How was the man supposed to restore Pat’s album to its rightful owner when he had no way of contacting him?

Pat dropped the shirt and dove for his phone.
Hey Cea how’s it hanging? Tell me how to reroute my old unregistered prepaid number to my current number? I don’t have the card anymore.

One thing he did have, though: Sisters who were scary smart as well as beautiful. Pat wasn’t exactly bad with the technical stuff, but he wasn’t interested enough to remember this kind of thing. And really, why should he? Sisters, after all.

Ten minutes later, with Boadicea snarking at him over the phone, Pat was reconsidering the wisdom of his sibling-based information technology strategy. “Why didn’t you do this before you trashed the card, numbnuts? It would have taken about ten seconds and a thimble full of forethought. Oh, wait, I think I see the problem…”

“Yeah, whatever. So anyway, I also need to know if anyone called the old number recently.”

Silence greeted this announcement. The quality of the silence clearly marked it as the ‘I will let your words hang in the air until they expire from embarrassment when they realize how dumb they are, Patrick’ kind, but Pat hadn’t grown up with three older sisters for nothing.

“I guess it’s not possible, huh?” He sighed dramatically. “That’s what the guy in the phone store said, too. I just thought maybe
you
…”

“The guy in the phone store? Are you sure you want to insult me right now, Patrick?”

Pat glanced at the small mirror in the corner to give the smart and devastatingly handsome guy reflected in it a wicked grin and a thumbs-up. “Just saying.”

“Do you honestly think I don’t know you’re trying to manipulate me?” Cea’s voice practically froze the airwaves with disdain. “Your attempts at subtle machination are an embarrassment to the entire family.”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s working though, isn’t it?”

This silence was markedly different from the previous one — more of an ‘I’m pretending to make you sweat in order to preserve my pride’ kind of silence. “Give me half an hour,” Cea snapped finally, and cut the connection before Pat could laugh evilly into her ear.

Half an hour later, Boadicea was at Pat’s door, pushing in past him as soon as he’d opened it. She made an annoyed face at him as she brushed by, but she pretty much always looked annoyed, so Pat didn’t take it as a bad sign. Unlike the fact that she’d turned up in person instead of calling, and wearing glasses rather than contact lenses… which meant this was serious business.

“So, baby brother.” Cea flopped down on his couch to spread out in all directions. She was a tiny scrap of a woman — barely came up to Pat’s collarbone — but she possessed the uncanny ability to take up more space than any two sumo wrestlers. “Turns out you have two recent voice messages. Quite interesting ones, too.”

Pat knew better than to show exaggerated interest, but he couldn’t help but perk up a little. Maybe
Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Ho
was not lost after all! “What did they say?”

It was eery to watch someone who wasn’t Mom give that particular slow, malicious smile. “That depends. What’s the information worth to you?”

Great, that old chestnut. Pat rolled his eyes at her, indicating she was being predictable and petty. She rolled hers right back, indicating that he could suck it.

Fine, whatever. Pat couldn’t be bothered to squabble with her right now. She held the better cards, and both of them knew it. “Okay, gods.” He sighed heavily, manfully resisting the urge to stick out his tongue. He was being the mature and long-suffering person in this conversation, so it would probably have been unfitting. “You can have the stupid signed copy of the last
Were Lovers
book. That work for you?”

“Deal, sucker.” Cea looked so smug that Pat had to grin. He’d never really liked
Wolf Lover
anyway; it was the weakest of the series. Cea had lousy taste in supernatural romance.

In another minute, she’d whipped out her phone and was calling up Pat’s messages from the data void.

“This is Maria Black calling for Patrick West,” the first message announced in a brisk, no-nonsense tone. Black’s pronunciation of his name was a little odd, but considering the crazy spelling Pat had come up with, she was doing a stellar job. “Our file on Mr. West is incomplete. In order to accept him as a vetted A-list contractor, we require additional information. In particular, we appear to have no health or drug test documentation whatsoever. Also, the image of Mr. West we have been provided with is quite unacceptable.”

Cea waggled her eyebrows at Pat while Black rattled off her contact information, closing with a stern reminder that non-vetted contractors could not be given anything but B-list status, and were thus likely to languish in unworthy unemployment for evermore.

After it had ended, a friendly computer voice announced the date and time of the message. Evidently, the call had been made the morning after Pat had created Padraig’s file. Black was the Andersen Estate’s database manager; Pat had never actually met the woman, but judging from this voice message, she’d probably have disapproved him right out the door (and maybe out of his job) before he’d so much as said hello.

Health and drug tests for hookers, really? Whatever had happened to just hanging out on a random street corner? Brave new world, indeed.

Not that Pat wanted to be the kind of hooker who hung out on street corners. Or any kind of hooker, come to that. He was going to be an urban planner. That thing where he’d sort of been an accidental hooker once, that had been an honest mistake. Could have happened to anyone.

“Mark Kingfisher, personal assistant,” said the next message. “My employer wishes to engage Mr. Patrick — uhm, Owest’s services this afternoon at 15 o’clock sharp for the duration of two hours. Should Mr. Owest be previously engaged, we will be happy to pay any cancellation fees and additional costs incurred by the short notice. Please return my call without delay.”

Whoa.

Pat blinked, trying not to look as stunned as he felt. The date on that message was almost a week ago — which was, in turn, about a week after Andersen’s initial accidental engagement of Pat’s so-called services.

He was so glad he hadn’t taken those calls. He wouldn’t have had the first clue of how to respond, and would probably have blown it and been forced to give the money back or something.

“So, baby brother.” Cea was grinning at him again, thought thankfully now with more teasing and less evil. “What are you up to, kiddo? Come on, spill. Is it illegal?”

Why did everyone always ask him that? “Sorry to disappoint, but no. At least not really. Uhm. Not in principle, kind of thing.”

Cea didn’t seem very convinced. In fact, she was clearly coming up with something devious, to judge by the way she was wrinkling her nose and narrowing her eyes.

Unfortunately, Pat couldn’t give her the attention her deviousness demanded right now; his brain was full of other thoughts, all jostling for a chance to hang out on his frontal lobe. Because, wow. Andersen had tried to engage Pat’s services again.

Pat had a healthy amount of self-confidence, but he hadn’t been kidding himself — enthusiasm did not make up for the kind of experience a professional would have brought to the table (bed, whatever). Andersen was used to pros, had been
expecting
a pro, and Pat was an amateur of the rankest kind.

But even so, Andersen had obviously thought Pat rocked. Of course, maybe part of it was simply that he’d been relieved not to be stuck with yet another cloned underwear model. Those dudes had to get boring after a while, right? But that alone didn’t explain it, and… yeah, to sum up: wow.

It was a pretty amazing feeling to be hot, desirable and naturally great at sex. Pat could definitely get used to it.

“Patpat, why are you grinning like a creeper?” Cea asked, suspicion heavy in the crease of her brow. Pat waved at her to shut up. He was thinking, damn it.

Thing was. Thing was, Pat wasn’t the only hot and desirable guy in the equation here. Andersen had stupid opinions about astronauts and his hoagie alter ego sucked at the finer details of the rescue gig, but credit where credit was due, the dude had killer abs. And the rest of him wasn’t too shabby either.

Getting this pseudo-companion phone number working wasn’t just Pat’s chance to get his BadMadRad album back. It was also Pat’s chance to get laid by someone seriously attractive who clearly thought Pat was awesome. Why shouldn’t they hook up again? No reason whatsoever, was there. Andersen would be happy, Pat would be happy, bingo. No crime without a victim, right? Getting paid silly amounts of money was almost incidental.

Almost. Pat still hadn’t bought that winter coat.

The only downside to Pat’s brilliant new plan was that he couldn’t pull it off alone. He certainly wasn’t going to give up his signed editions of
Leopard Lover
and
Lord Hawk’s Elven Folly
… but there was one currency that always worked wonders in the West household, even if over two decades of experience had made Pat very cautious about doling it out.

“Boadicea,” he said slowly. “How would you like me to take over your next turn of minion duty?”

She was suspicious, of course, but it was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up. Pat had known it would be. She was up next, and everyone hated minion duty. Everyone except Hell, that was, but you couldn’t really count her, seeing as how she was, well,
Hell.

Pat made Cea put one hand on her heart and the other on the cover of
Wolf Lover
to swear her to total secrecy, and then made her swear that she agreed her previous oath included Zenobia and Helena (he knew from painful experience that this extra clause could not be skipped).

Then Pat spent five minutes filling Cea in on the rough outlines of the hooker misunderstanding, and ten more minutes to stare at her in total disgust as she laughed until her face was crimson and tears were rolling down her cheeks.

“Oh my gods, Pat,” she wheezed when she had finally stopped guffawing, and had crumpled into an exhausted, quivering, weakly giggling heap. “Silver Paladin paid you for sex?
You
? Patpat, don’t take this the wrong way, I love you but that hoagie is insane. And also a pervert.”

“You are the worst sister ever,” Pat snapped.

She wasn’t really, though, which was why she eventually gathered herself, went to wash her face, and peppered Pat with questions over a pot of the yucky herbal tea she loved so much he always kept a box in his cupboard. Then she surfed the infoweb for an hour or so, making thoughtful noises and taking notes.

Lastly, she called Black and Kingfisher, introduced herself as a senior companion account manager at Strider&Sons, and proceeded to sell them the equivalent of not only a bridge, but also a ferry service, a yacht harbor, fishing permits and a hundred kilometers of highway.

By the time she was through with Data Manager Black, Padraig Ouesd was on the Andersen Estate’s A-list of contractors, boasted a full set of the required documentation, and had been granted an exception on the matter of the profile picture (“it’s against Strider&Sons’ policy to provide high-resolution images of our companions — we have found that this significantly reduces privacy issues for our clients, allowing even the most privacy-conscious among them to meet freely with our companions in public spaces”).

Personal Assistant Kingfisher, in his turn, overlooked the regrettable delay in Strider&Sons’ return call; Pat didn’t actually follow most of the verbal quickstep that Cea performed here, except that it was never implied that her agency was in any way at fault. Kingfisher also accepted that Mr. Ouest was only available at night and never on weekends (Patrick could hardly impersonate someone else when he would have to enter the mansion through a security checkpoint manned with people who might well know him, to be greeted and escorted to Andersen by a colleague who was almost certain to recognize him on sight). Lastly, Kingfisher agreed to pay a ten percent bonus for the kind of immediate response Mr. Ouest had provided on the occasion of his previous engagement by the personal assistant’s discreetly nameless CEO (“we have a special system in place to ensure our most important clients have virtually no waiting times — we guarantee that no other agency can provide such a quick response”).

Pat was paying a steep price, but it definitely looked to be worth it. Particularly since he’d made sure to specify that Cea’s price included future troubleshooting and negotiation, as well, and she would be the one to take calls by the Andersen Estate during all hours that were non-business hours for Padraig.

Cea made a damn good pimp, all things considered. If she ever grew tired of the IT gig, Pat would write her a reference.

Chapter Four

Remember: Anyone worth doing is worth doing right.

“S
o,” the recording of Andersen said, sounding almost entirely casual. “Send up a guy. The short blond one will do.”

Pat almost snorted out a mouthful of lemon pop through his nose. Honestly, what was up with the
short
? “Dude, what the hell, seriously. 1.78 is average, you sad-sack loser.”

The AI chose not to comment. Probably because it still didn’t have a voice input feature for the night kitchen and so had no idea what Pat had said, which, yeah. Pat was growing to appreciate the AI’s deafness more and more as time went on, given that it was probably as much of an adherent to the serving heart philosophy as all of the flesh and bone employees around here.

Well, except for Rob in security. He’d been in some kind of special ops team in the army, and Pat suspected he was the scariest guy on the planet. But then, security didn’t really count, seeing as it was pretty much a completely different world from the one the rest of the Andersen Estate’s employees moved in.