Page 39 of Courting Danger
“Uh,” he said. “I have a case for you?”
“Is that a question?” I asked.
“Well, maybe you can tell me if it’s a case.”
“Sure,” I said, gesturing for him to take the client seat at my desk while I slid into my desk chair. The guy glanced around my office, and I tried not to focus on the stacks of paperwork and visible dust bunnies in the corners.
It wasn’t that I wanted my office to get this dirty or that I didn’t notice it. Every time I decided to clean, I either got a break in my current case or a new client walked through the door. If I didn’t know better, I would say it was a conspiracy.
But I couldn’t see any of my enemies going to such extremes just to make me look bad.
“So, you have a case?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. Like a lot of my clients, he seemed unsure how to bring up what had brought him to my door. My clientele was specialized, ranging from witches who lost their familiars to ghost infestations. Often, my clients’ problems tended toward theweirdif notdownright sketchy.
People didn’t come to me when things were easy in their lives. They came to me when things were hard and when there was no one else who could help them.
“I get it,” I said. “Whatever it is, you wouldn’t come to me if it was easy. Why don’t we start at the beginning?”
“Parker,” my boyfriend called out from inside the closet.
I knew the next few minutes were going to be very weird for everyone involved if I didn’t do something.
“Nick, not now?—”
Nick opened the closet door.
My client gaped. I couldn’t blame him. Nick was shirtless and wore only a pair of soft sweatpants, the waistband loose around his hips, revealing a set of abs and a V-cut that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a porn star. A soft dusting of hair trailed down from his naval, disappearing into his sweatpants. He looked warm and reminded me of mornings in bed when neither of us had to work.
He was balancing a cup of coffee in one hand, his other on the doorknob. “Parker?—”
When he looked up, his eyes went wide, and he stuttered, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you were with a client.”
My client was frowning, glancing between me and Nick, then back toward the closet, which was on an exterior wall, giving me no option to pretend there was an apartment behind it.
“Isn’t that a closet?”
“Yeah,” I said, drawing out the word.
“So, what are you? A genie?” my client asked Nick, puzzled.
“Oh, no,” I said, waving a hand. I couldn’t explain that the door Nick had come out of was a portal to my house. That would involve explaining that I didn’t dohumanmagic, which was not something I ever did. “This is my boyfriend, Nick. He has a thing for office supplies.”
“He looks like a genie,” my client said, pointing at the coffee and then gesturing to his sweatpants. “Was the coffee, like, a wish?”
“No,” I said. “Not a genie. He just has a thing for office supplies. Really gets him off. He’s an alchemist, you know.”
“Oh,” my client said. “Analchemist.”
Nick gave me a look, an eyebrow raised, the edge of his lips quirked up. “Yeah, paperclips really get me going. Alchemist, that’s me.”
Nick raised one shoulder in a shrug. My client nodded as though this made sense. Alchemists were known for being fussy,particular in everything from how they cast their magic to the pens they used to do so.
I appreciated that Nick was going along with the farce about office supplies. Although normally he wasn’t as fussy as the stereotypical alchemist, Ihadseen him organizing my socks by the level of discoloration. When I called him out on it, he tried to explain that it was better because then I would know which to get rid of first.
I’d asked him if he wanted to organize my credit cards as well. Which, of course, he did. That had led to the pantry and some creative role-playing about an organization expert and his client.
“So, where did the coffee come from?” my client asked, craning his head to see over Nick’s shoulder. I spun and kicked the door shut.
