Page 103 of Under Her Protection

Leo sat down on the other chair. She put her hands, flat, on her knees.

"I heard them," Leo said, quiet. "In the lavatory. They called me the hot bodyguard. They said she always fucks her staff until she gets bored of them.”

Avery's face did not move.

"Who."

"Two of them. Not Isabella. Not Sienna. Two I do not have names for. One was called Sylvie. One had a Spanish accent under an English accent."

"Copy."

"Avery."

"Yes."

"I cannot be in her bed anymore. I have… I think I have feelings for her.”

“No worries. I will take it.” Avery said.

Avery put her coffee down.

She did not, at that moment, say anything else. There was an unspoken acknowledgement between them.

Leo drank her coffee. It was warm.

"I am not going to have the conversation, Avery. I am not going to stand in her bedroom and explain that I can’t work for her because I am falling in love with her. I am going to leave. I am going to finish the Lara work from HQ. If you want to tell her anything after a fortnight, that is up to you."

"Copy."

"And if she asks why."

"Mm."

"Tell her I was not sleeping."

"You have not been sleeping."

"I have not been sleeping. That is also true. Use the true one."

"Copy."

Avery did not, again, say anything.

She did not put her hand on Leo's arm. She did not cross the two feet between her chair and Leo's chair. She did not, because they were Coles, and Coles had been taught very young not to behave like that. She drank her coffee. Leo drank hers. The paraffin heater made its small paraffin sound. The courtyard gravel was, out there in the wet, the courtyard gravel.

At half twelve, Avery's laptop screen pulsed once. She looked at it for three seconds. She turned it toward Leo.

In the corner of the screen: a server flag on the Beaumont account, timestamped eleven forty-three.

"That will wait," Avery said.

"Until morning," Leo said.

"Until morning."

Avery closed the laptop.

At one in the morning Avery went upstairs to the guest room on the first floor, and Leo lay down on the lodge cot for the first time in six weeks, and did not sleep, and at five forty-nine she got up.