The Negotiator (Professionals 7)

“Can I ask your name? Don’t worry. I will say Cora told me.”

“Niko.”

“Niko. I’m Miller.”

To that, I got another nod.

A moment later, a second guard moved out into the garden talking in Greek on his phone, gaze moving toward me, talking some more, then again.

“Uh oh. Sounds like I’m in trouble for distracting the guards,” I mumbled under my breath as the second guard moved back inside.

“He was checking in on you. And, yes, before you ask,” Niko said, lips curving up even as he avoided eye-contact. “Yes, that is unusual.”

“Niko, I feel like we are going to be fast friends. Between you and me,” I said, turning away from the house so that the other guard couldn’t see me talking, “Cora is trying to make my stomach burst. How about I sneak some of that stuff out to you? I hear that Greek men love to eat.”

“That’s not a lie,” he agreed, nodding. “So, we’re friends.”

“I’m here to protect you,” he corrected.

“We’re just going to skim over the little ‘and keep me prisoner’ part for now, I guess. But, anyway, I’m not above bribing a person to be my friend. I will wear you down, Niko,” I promised, and I could swear there was a ghost of a smile on his handsome face as I made my way back inside to straighten up the kitchen for Cora.

The rest of the afternoon, I spent being stuffed with Greek sweet treats, gyros that I helped make but were still somehow edible, (slipping an extra bit of goodness to Niko to keep him in my favor), then sitting in the living room waiting for Christopher to get home.

At three o’clock on the dot, he was there.

What did I feel at seeing him, you might be wondering?

It should have been anxiousness.

Or distaste.

Even anticipation of the job to come.

But it was none of those things.

Nope.

What I felt was something very suspiciously similar to happiness.

That was going to be a big, big problem.

I needed to get the deal done and get Alexander home before the lines of professionalism became too blurry.

If for no other reason than that the guys back in Navesink Bank wouldn’t have a reason to rib me for getting another bad guy under my belt.

So, I was just going to get the job done, and get back on a plane to the States in the next few days.

Or, at least, that was the plan.

But you know what they say about plans…

FIVE

Christopher

I didn’t need to leave the house to handle my business.

The fact of the matter was, I had to go because I had to get away from her for a little while.

Cora was right.

I never had guests.

I certainly never had female guests.

When it came to the fairer sex, I kept things fun and casual and out of my space. The woman’s house or hotels; never my own home.

There was a tactical reason for that, since you never truly knew who you could trust. You never knew who you had on the payroll that you thought was loyal, but wanted to take you down. Enough even to hire a woman to loan out her body, so they could get research about the inside of my house, it’s strengths and weaknesses.

On top of that, I was trying to be a good role model to my little brother. I’d seen far too many women in and out of my father’s life. I remembered many early morning meals at the breakfast table with some random, beautiful woman who told me how cute I was, how much she was looking forward to being my new mother. And then a few weeks later, just when I had started to grow attached, they were gone, and I was crushed.

I refused to do that to Alexander.

And after many women breaking car windows and screaming outside my childhood home, I learned that some women—despite being explicitly told otherwise—would start to picture a future with you when you let them too much into your life.

So, I never brought women into mine.

Much to Cora’s disappointment.

For the most part, she had done surprisingly little nagging me to settle down, to find a good woman who would cook for me and give me half a dozen babies.

I think she understood that my focus had been my business, then raising my brother after our father passed.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want those things. The wife. The children. There had always been a traditional streak to the men in my family. It was simply that it never felt like the time. And the women? Well, they never felt like the woman.

I had no plans to turn a side dish into a main course. That was a recipe for years of my father’s mistakes when it came to women. Thinking with his dick instead of his brain.

If I was going to have a woman in my world, she was going to be the one I wanted to come home to, to wake up to, to give children to.