The Negotiator (Professionals 7)

“At least here, he can go into town if he’d like. So long as he keeps his mouth shut about who we are and why we’re here.”

“He’s smart enough for that.”

“You’d think that. But then there might be a pretty girl. And fifteen-year-old boys are notoriously stupid around pretty fifteen-year-old girls.”

“He already has a girl,” I reminded him.

“Fifteen-year-old boys can also be fickle.”

“Thirty-year-old men can be fickle, so I guess we can’t fault him too much.”

“He’ll learn through his mistakes. Much like the rest of us.”

“Do you plan for him to work for you when he’s older?” I blurted out, not sure why I was asking, how I could possibly consider it any of my business.

“That would be up to him. After high school. After college. Then he can decide. You’re disappointed,” he concluded as I moved past him, back into the bathroom, then through to my bedroom with its queen-sized bed with a cream comforter and about a dozen pillows.

“I didn’t say that,” I told him, dropping down on the bed.

“You didn’t need to. You’re easy to read.”

“I’ve literally never heard someone say that about me before,” I told him, feeling a bit taken aback at the idea. The whole reason I was so good at my job was because I had a great poker face. You would never know if I was bullshitting you during a negotiation, or if I was being genuine. I’d have been killed a long time ago if I hadn’t carefully honed that particular skill.

He shrugged that off. “Your eyes give you away. You think I should want better for my brother than I have,” he concluded.

“That is usually the goal for parental figures toward the young men and women they are raising.”

“I want for him the same things I wanted for myself when I was his age. A stable profession. An income that will prevent him from worrying. The freedom to enjoy downtime, to take holidays. Maybe he will find that in starting his own business. Maybe he will find purpose in being a doctor, saving lives. Maybe he will write books or open a bar. Or maybe he will choose to find those things the same way I have.”

“Working for you would be much more dangerous than writing books or running a bar.”

“Being alive is dangerous,” he shot back.

“Yes, but your life more so.”

“And yours isn’t?” he asked, brow raising.

“We’re not talking about me.”

“When you have a daughter, will you tell her not to do what you did for a living?”

When.

Not if.

It was an interesting distinction that my body physically responded to, my stomach flip-flopping, my breath catching.

I hadn’t given much thought to children. There had never been any reason to. My life was too crazy for kids. Not to mention my complete and utter lack of a man I would ever want to mix my DNA with to make a human being.

Just the mention of a daughter conjured up strange images, ones I found oddly fascinating.

A round belly.

The fluttery sensation of a kick.

A swaddled baby in my arms.

A little girl looking up at me with a face that looked a lot like mine.

It was an odd, but fascinating thing to consider. Even if there was slim to no chance of it ever becoming a reality.

“I would want her to be loved and supported and protected enough to never need to choose a dangerous profession.”

I realized I had managed to give away too much of the very carefully concealed parts of my past when Christopher’s eyes went thoughtful, seemed to penetrate into me, searching.

I thought he was going to press it, to demand more. But when he spoke, what came out from between his lips was unexpectedly sweet.

“Any child would be lucky to have you as a mother, Melody.”

The impact of those words was something I found hard to process, let alone label. But I felt warm under that kind of praise. Reassured. Comforted.

But I didn’t want him to see that, to expose that sort of vulnerability to him.

“You only say that because you don’t know that I once taught a kid of one of my clients how to undo the parental blocks on their computer so they could watch Game of Thrones.”

“How old was he?” he asked, lips curving up a bit.

“She was thirteen.”

“Now I am starting to wonder if I should’ve had parental controls on Alexander’s devices.”

“I was watching people get limbs sawed off when I was ten or eleven. And I turned out halfway decent.”

“Halfway decent is pretty good,” he agreed.

“Besides, if a teenaged boy wants to watch porn, he is going to find a way to watch porn. So, really, they’re pointless anyway.”

“We’re far from the days of trying to get an adult to buy you a dirty magazine.”

“Tried to bribe old dudes to buy you dirty magazines, did you?” I asked, watching that flush creep up his neck.