Protection for Hire (3 page)

“You’re still staying with your mom?”

Read: So I know where to find you if I want you to do something for me, especially anything involving breaking fingers.

Tessa nodded at the corner of a gigantic cube of tofu peeking out of her soup. “Until I can get a job and move out.” She closed her eyes and bowed her head. Maybe Uncle would get the hint …

That would be a
no.

“What kind of job are you looking for?”

Read: I’m delighted you’re willing to return to the workplace, because I have the perfect job for you.

Inspiration struck for how to neatly avoid the question. “Uncle, hang on a second. I need to say grace.” She jerked her head down.

DearLordThankyouforthisfoodAmen.

“Grace? What grace? Who’s grace?” His bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows lowered over his eyes.

Read: You don’t tell your uncle to “hang on.”

“I needed to pray before I could eat.” Tessa picked up her chopstick and the boat-shaped spoon. She took a magical sip of broth, ignoring the stinging heat, rolling the salty, savory goodness on her tongue before letting it slide down her throat, warming as it went down. She didn’t need crack — she had Jerry’s ramen.

“Are you done eating? I need to discuss things with you.”

Tessa froze with the noodles on her chopstick only inches from her mouth. She sighed and let them plop back into the soup. So much for the hoped-for casual chat, non-related to the work she’d done for him before getting arrested.

Uncle reached over and took her hand. “I want to say again, thank you for what you did.”

It took her a second to realize he was referring to Fred, to inserting herself under suspicion for his son’s crime seven years ago. Despite his humble words, the cool, dry skin of his palm lay heavy over her knuckles. “You’re welcome, Uncle,” she replied.

He released her and leaned back in Jerry’s chair. “I can give you a job.”

From anyone else, it would have been a generous, innocent offering. From Uncle Teruo, it carried the weight of a royal statement and deep undercurrents. “Uncle, I already explained this to you.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “You’re just worried. You’re too smart to get caught again.”

As opposed to Fred, who was stupid enough to have been wandering around with the bloody knife in his hand when Tessa found him that night. Fred would have folded under police questioning and led to trouble for Uncle if he’d actually been arrested.

“And I would not ask any more favors from you,” Uncle continued.

If she’d been eating, she would have snorted ramen noodles. That was a loaded promise. Uncle might not actually voice any requests for Tessa to take the heat for someone’s crime again, but the situation and Japanese sense of duty would compel her to offer to do it or be held in disfavor by the old-fashioned
oyabun.

She wasn’t sure how to put this delicately, so she plunged full-steam ahead. “Uncle, I told you in my letters from prison and when I first saw you after I got out. I am a Christian now, and I’m trying to learn to love people, not break their kneecaps.”

His frown looked suspiciously like a pout. “I never asked you to break kneecaps.”

She rolled her eyes. “Unnnncleeeee …” Her exasperation drew the word out into six syllables. “You know what I mean.”

He lifted a forefinger as a thought came to him. “Your cousin Ichiro became a ‘Christian,’ too, but he still works for me.”

Tessa rolled her eyes. “Itchy’s girlfriend grew up Episcopalian and has no idea what he does, so he went to church with her so he could get into her pants.”

He glowered at her. “Are you saying you’re going to church so you can …” His mouth worked silently while red stained his cheeks. “… with some boy?”

Tessa choked. “What? No.” This was not going the way she’d hoped. “I go to church because I’ve become a different person.” She’d been tempted to say better person, but the way her luck was going, Uncle would think she was insulting him and order a hit on her. Or just send Fred to poison her air space.

An indulgent smile hovered around his stern mouth. “This
is new for you. Don’t be so hasty to make a complete life change until you know this is who you want to be.”

Three years as a Christian wasn’t long enough? Then again, she’d had only a few months as a Christian outside the prison walls, so maybe he was justified in thinking it might be a temporary thing.

Except it wasn’t. She knew it wasn’t, with a knowledge deep in her gut, a knowledge deeper than the secret places of her heart. A knowledge that gave her both peace and strength to say, “Uncle, I’m not going to change my mind.”

“Be reasonable. What kind of job can you get?”

She mutinously glared at her cooled bowl of ramen. “I got my college degree in prison.” Psychology. It had fascinated her because she’d spent so much of her life reading the emotions and thoughts of the people she talked to on behalf of her uncle. She wasn’t exactly proud of what she could do — knowing when people were lying, what they were feeling, being able to manipulate their emotions — but she wanted to use that skill for helping people rather than making or collecting money for the yakuza.

Uncle Teruo’s face gentled. “You know that I believe you can do well at anything you set your mind toward, but with only a Bachelor’s in Psychology, there aren’t many jobs available. Plus …” He sighed. “I’m sure you’ve realized by now that there aren’t many people who would hire an ex-convict, especially for any type of psychology job.”

She had known that even when studying for her degree. She just hadn’t really wanted to admit it to herself because her studies had been so fascinating and she hadn’t wanted to switch to a different degree program.

“Don’t be stubborn,” he said. “You haven’t had any job offers, have you?”

Telling her to stop being stubborn did what it usually did — made her completely pigheaded. “I have had offers. I just chose not to take them.”

“Oh? What?”

“A woman offered me a job as a bodyguard.”

“Paying how much?”

“Er … we didn’t discuss it.”

“Why not?”

“Well … her assets are still being held by her husband, whom she ran away from because he was using her as a punching bag.”

“So she couldn’t pay you?” he said slowly. Uncle’s face had that expression that wondered where his niece’s brains had suddenly dribbled to.

“She said she’d pay me as soon as she got her money back. She called some family friend who was going to get her a really good lawyer.”

“I see.” He stared at her for a moment, eyebrows raised, mouth a thin line. “And you turned down this incredibly lucrative business deal because …?”

She stared down at her soup bowl. “She has a three-year-old son. And I wasn’t sure about the kind of trouble I’d attract, considering what I used to do.”

“Your ruthlessness is what makes you an Ota,” he said proudly. “But it does collect some enemies.”

Only her uncle would praise her for her ability to cause physical pain.

Tessa had been sorely tempted to take Elizabeth up on her offer, especially after talking with Mina about her own bodyguard business, but she realized that it wasn’t fair to Elizabeth
to saddle her with an even more dangerous person than her fist-flying husband. Tessa would rather try to find a legitimate job first and prove to the world that she was no longer working for her uncle. Once Tessa was off people’s radar, then she could protect her clients without bringing even more danger to them.

The old Tessa wouldn’t have cared who she put in harm’s way, but the new Tessa hopefully thought about other people more than she used to.

“And this is the only job offer you have?” Uncle Teruo asked. He settled back in his chair, the very picture of an uncle indulging his niece’s pipe dreams.

“I’m interviewing at OWA tomorrow,” she said.

“Didn’t you already apply to OWA?”

“Yes.” Twenty-two times. “So?”

“This is for another salesperson position?”

“Uh, no. Janitor.”

His brow darkened. “My niece is not a janitor.”

She was when even McDonald’s wouldn’t hire her. Maybe they thought she’d kill someone by flipping a burger in their eye. “It’s a foot in the door,” she said. “From there, I can get promoted. Outdoors and Wilderness Adventures is my favorite store.” Just the name made her want to smile.

He sighed heavily and opened his mouth to protest, but she said softly, “I really want this job, Uncle.”
I really want to go legitimate.

He surprised her by reaching across to grasp her chin between his square fingers. “I miss having you around,” he said.

Tessa stilled. Uncle Teruo and his wife, Aunt Kayoko, had always given her more affection than Tessa’s own selfish mother and irritable sister. With Aunt Kayoko gone, Teruo was her family. She may not want to do illegal things anymore, but she
couldn’t deny his hold on her heart. She knew that as long as she had him, she’d never feel alone.

“Uncle.” She swallowed. She hated denying him. “Please understand.”

“I do.” He sighed heavily. “I do. And I owe you a debt I can never repay.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“I owe you lunch.” He gestured to the soggy noodles in front of her. “Eat. I don’t want to be accused of starving my niece.”

He stood with stately grace. On his way to the office door, he paused as if suddenly remembering something. “You said you’re still staying with your mother?”

“Yes.” The tightness of her voice gave her away.

Uncle Teruo found that vastly amusing. He chuckled as he turned the door handle, he chuckled as he exited the office, and he was still chuckling as he turned in the doorway to lean into the office to tell her, “Six more months.”

“What?”

“You’ll come back to me begging for a job so that you can move out, because I know my sister. You won’t be able to live with Ayumi for longer than six more painful months. Have fun!” He shut the door with a soft click.

T
essa should never have brought her mother to OWA, Outdoor and Wilderness Adventures retail store. “And what in the world is that monstrous thing?” Mom pointed to the indoor climbing wall, where a tall, lean man was inching his way up. Tessa could tell he was a novice at rock-climbing, but his movements had the grace of an athlete. An OWA store employee was belaying him — controlling the rope to catch him if he should fall — but the employee seemed a bit distracted by the Kim Kardashian look-alike flirting with him.

“That’s a climbing wall, Mom.” Tessa steered her away from the giant structure near the front door of the OWA store and toward the main floor.

“Don’t they know they could get sued? Honestly, Tessa, you say you like this store? It’s full of dangerous things.” Mom held up a headlamp.

Tessa eyed the Mammut 2-in-1 headlamp/lantern combo. “Um, okay, yeah, you could use that to
blind a raccoon
.”

Mom dropped the item back down onto the shelf. “Well, how am I supposed to know what it is? It looked obscene.”

With a bored expression, Alicia returned from sorting through the workout clothes. “How much time before your interview?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“Do you always arrive this freakishly early before your interview?”

“Only the ones I want.” Which, these days, was all of them.

“Well, since you brought us here to help, let’s do a lastminute check.” She surveyed Tessa’s crisp white button-down shirt and slim gray skirt with a critical eye. “You have creases on your shirt, your hair is hopeless as always, and you have a panty line.”

There was something wrong about being accompanied to a job interview by her mother and her sister. Not that they could walk into the back office with Tessa to make sure she wasn’t putting the hiring manager in a choke hold or something equally guaranteed not to get her hired.

But this was Tessa’s favorite store, and she wasn’t above withstanding her family’s usual criticism on her hair and clothes if it might get her a job here.

“The crease is from the car seatbelt. I did my hair this morning but it’s just naturally straight and hairspray won’t keep it up for long. And I can’t change my underwear,” Tessa said.

“Well, fine, if you don’t mind men looking at your rear end.” Mom shook her head and cast her eyes toward the ceiling.

“Let’s hope the hiring manager will be looking at my face, not my backside.”

“Try to slouch without looking like you’re slouching,” Mom said. “It’ll make you look shorter.”

“Men don’t like hiring women they have to look up to,” Alicia said.

“You shouldn’t have drunk so much milk when you were
younger,” Mom said. “It probably boosted the height genes you already had from your father.”

Tessa didn’t blame her for the disdain in her voice for the man who’d ditched them when she was ten, but she made it seem like it was Tessa’s fault for possessing said genes. “If I slouch, it’ll seem like I’m hiding something.”

“I don’t know why I bother helping you get a regular job,” Alicia said. “This whole religious thing will wear off in a few months and you’ll be back working for Uncle Teruo.”

“I became a Christian three years ago while surrounded by convicts. I’m pretty sure this religious thing isn’t going away anytime soon.” A part of her regretted her snippy tone as soon as she said it. If she’d really changed, shouldn’t she be able to relate better to her sister rather than degenerate into their old bickering? She’d been able to bypass the drugs, drinking, and hanging out with her yakuza cousins since she got out of prison, but it was so hard to change old behaviors when it came to her sister and mother, mostly because they’d never understood her or approved of her even before she worked for the yakuza. When they were children, feminine and self-centered Alicia had only been embarrassed by her tomboy younger sister, and Mom had favored her older daughter, leaving Tessa feeling left out and lonely. Was it any wonder she’d hung out with her male yakuza cousins, who liked her feistiness and boldness?

“Well then, hurry up and move out so I can finally sell my house and move into Mom’s. I would think you’d have done it by now,” Alicia said in an accusatory tone.

Tessa couldn’t understand why Alicia was still just as hostile toward her as when Tessa had worked for the yakuza, which Alicia had disapproved of. Even though Tessa had been working so hard to change, it was as if she wasn’t good enough, no matter
what she did. That frustration was making her respond with the same sarcasm as the old Tessa, even though she did her best to control her temper.

“When I first got out of jail, you were still blissfully ignorant about Duane’s extracurricular activities and there was no reason for me to move out. Maybe I’ll just stay at Mom’s house,” she threatened.

Alicia’s skin, fairer than Tessa’s, showed all the motley splotches of her irritation. But to Tessa’s surprise, her mother almost smiled. Maybe Mom actually wanted her to stay. Why, she couldn’t fathom. Loneliness? Boredom?

No, probably the live-in, unpaid maid.

She squelched a belated niggle of guilt that she was the reason Alicia and her daughter, Paisley, couldn’t move out of her soon-to-be-ex-husband’s house, but it wasn’t Tessa’s fault no one would hire her. And just like stay-at-home-mom Alicia, Tessa couldn’t rent an apartment without a job.

Mom reached into Tessa’s shirt and started tugging at the cups of her bra.

“Mom, we’re in public,” Tessa hissed as she tried to squirm out of the way of her hands.

“Too bad you were so opposed to padding these.”

“Mom, I hope the hiring manager doesn’t look at my chest.”

Mom ignored her and reached into her purse. “I know what will help — duct tape.”

“What?” Tessa couldn’t believe Mom carried a roll with her. Then again, this was Mom.

Mom pulled out a short length. “Works wonders to lift the bosom.”

“Mom! No way.” Tessa quick-stepped backward out of range of her mother, who held the piece of duct tape in front of her.

“Oh, don’t be such a baby. I used this all the time when I was in the Miss Cherry Blossom pageants. We’ll go into the bathroom really quick and —”

Tessa stumbled and she registered the shift in padding under her feet. Uh-oh, she had walked into the area under the climbing wall. She’d better get out of here, quick. She was surprised the OWA staff worker belaying the climber hadn’t yelled at her to —

“Edddiiiiieeee!”

The shouted name came from directly above her, but before she could even react, a sack of potatoes crashed onto her shoulders.

Actually, it fell a bit slowly, but it still fell on her.

“Oops,” a male voice said from several feet away. The OWA employee.

“Tessa!” her mother shouted, sounding either concerned or embarrassed. Or both.

She lay sprawled on the floor at eye level with a pair of sneakers running toward her, probably those of the OWA employee/belayer.

How strange, the sack of potatoes smelled incredibly sexy — male musk, sage soap, and a thread of cologne that screamed
money.

“Are you okay? I’m so sorry.” The muffled voice had a slight drawl that tingled down her spine.

The OWA employee attached to the Nikes in front of her nose pulled the potatoes off of her, and she sat up and turned to look.

She couldn’t believe she’d thought he was a sack of potatoes.

He was lean, but wide, and chiseled shoulders burst out of the tank top he wore. From the way his long legs were folded up under him, he would be even taller than she was.

But why in the world were his blue-green eyes looking at
her as if she were a ghost? And not the see-through, squinty, I’m-not-quite-sure-I-see-something-there type of ghost look, but the Oh-my-gosh-it’s-the-dead-nun-who-hurled-herself-off-the-balcony-after-her-illicit-lover-plunged-to-his-death type of look.

“Tessa Lancaster?” The hesitant young voice tore Tessa’s attention from golden-brown curls, high cheekbones, and a Roman nose to a twenty-something woman in the coveted uniform of an OWA staff worker. The girl’s face registered confusion and wariness.

“That’s me.” Tessa tried to spring to her feet with the eagerness of a future OWA employee, but nearly kissed the ground again when her knee buckled.

“Uh … we’re ready for your interview.”

Perfect timing.

He’d seen a ghost.

As the tall, slim figure walked away from him, Charles Britton blinked rapidly to make sure it was really Tessa Lancaster. Was she out of prison already? It had been so long. He almost hadn’t recognized her — rather than the sleek all-black she’d worn to the courtroom, today she was dressed in a white button-down shirt and dark gray pencil skirt, and her hair, which he’d previously seen falling halfway down her back, had been twisted up into a professional-looking French knot, from which straight brown strands were already escaping.

Probably due to him nearly flattening her into the ground.

“Eddie!” he roared, turning toward his brother. “You were supposed to be holding that rope-thing.”

“The climbing rope,” Eddie corrected him absently, his gaze riveted to Tessa’s disappearing figure. “She was cute.”

“I’m sure she’d like the phone number of the guy who
dropped his brother on her head.
”

That finally got Eddie’s attention away from Tessa. “Sorry about that. I was talking to this girl …” He glanced around. “Hmm. She’s gone. She was cute too. Although not as cute as your landing pad.”

“So if you’d been holding my climbing rope when I was out on a real rock face, I’d have left my brains over the mountainside?”

Eddie grinned. “Only if there was a cute climber like her to distract me from my belaying duties.”

“Tessa Lancaster is not cute. She causes a man more trouble than two girlfriends.”

“Hey, you know her?”

Charles should have kept his fat mouth shut. “I saw her in court once.”

“She was your client?”

“No.” But a shot of alarm made his blood fizzle. Now that he worked for Pleiter & Woodhouse, would Tessa’s mob boss uncle hire Charles’s law firm to defend mafia clients? No, Teruo Ota had his own fleet of well-greased lawyers, and even if he did hire Charles’s firm, Charles wasn’t partner — yet — so it’d be unlikely that he’d be asked to take on a case involving such a high-profile client. And especially not Teruo Ota’s jailbird niece.

Charles started unhooking himself from the climbing apparatus. “Help me get this stuff off.”

Eddie started helping him. “So how do you know her? And can you introduce me?”

“No, I can’t. She doesn’t know who I am.”

Eddie’s hands stilled as he unhooked yet another strap. “She doesn’t? So how do you know who she is?”

“Because she’s the niece of the Japanese mafia boss in San Francisco.”

“Whoa.” Eddie’s eyes became like Mama’s antique blue china saucers.

“I know she’s cute, but now you see why I said she was trouble?”

Eddie paused, giving him a searching look. “You think she’s cute.”

“So do you.”

“You never think girls are cute.”

Charles glared at his brother. “I assure you, I like girls.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “That’s not what I meant. You would never
allow
yourself to notice a woman connected to a criminal family.” He gave an evil grin. “Until now.”

“Just get me out of this harness,” Charles said. “I can’t believe you dropped me.”

“Technically, you fell. And I, with my lightning reflexes, put friction on the rope to slow you down for the last few feet.”

“Why didn’t you slow me down the
first
few feet? Your only job was to prevent me from hitting the ground.”

“What can I say? I’m a babe magnet.” Eddie struck a pose.

“I saw only one girl, and she ran away from you.”

“Don’t forget Tessa. And she walked away only because you landed on her and not me.”

In that brief moment Charles had looked into her face, she’d seemed different from when he last saw her. Then, she’d been hard, with a dark, dangerous air to her. Today, she’d seemed … lighter.

No, it was probably the fact she’d been stunned by having all 200 pounds of him try to pulverize her into dust, tempered only by the rope going taut at the last second to soften the blow.

“Does this mean you’re not going climbing with me next month at Mount Shasta?” Eddie asked.

“Are you trying to kill me so you can get all the inheritance money?”

“There won’t be any. Mama will make sure to blaze through the last penny on her deathbed.”

Actually, Charles had just done her accounting last night, and unless Mama bought a couple private islands, she was in good shape for a couple lifetimes. “Did Mama call you?”

“Yeah. Uh … did she tell you anything about coming to live with us?”

“What?”

“It’s apparently a sudden decision.”

“I thought she had just moved in with Aunt Coco. That Aunty Coco was looking forward to having her stay with them for a few months.” After Mama and Daddy divorced several years ago, Mama had been very well off with her settlement and the trust fund set up by Mama’s father, General Durand. She found that if she didn’t have to pay for the taxes and upkeep of her house, she would be able to live nearly exactly as she had before Daddy cheated on her and left her. Also, as she got into cooking, it was more fun for her to cook for others. So she sold her plantation home and began living with relatives for several months at a time.