Page 26 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker #1)

“ Y ou can understand what I’m saying, can’t you?

” he asked, and all I could do for a second was blink at him, because he sounded like a Scottish stereotype.

I half expected him to call me a wee cunt, and wondered what that said about the Scottish people I’d known in my life.

Or maybe what it said about me, and the kinds of acquaintances I made.

I glanced to my right and left, like maybe there were other people present in the room I didn’t want to know the truth, but then gave the dog a tiny nod.

The woman, who apparently had freakish eagle eyes, cocked her head at me. “Dog lover are you, Mr. Knight?”

I pulled myself up to sit on my desk next to Twist, picking her up and setting her on my shoulder, where she perched like a vulture. “All animals, really.” I figured that would answer both her question, and the one the dog had asked. “What’s his name?”

She gave me a sweet smile, pulling him out of his basket and setting him in her lap. “This is my dear little Bannie.”

“It’s Bannockburn,” he groused, glaring up at her.

She seemed to have some idea what was going on, because she smiled down at him, scratching his ears and saying, “Such a grump.”

He mumbled something about the British always taking liberties, and it was all I could do to stare at the two of them and not start laughing.

“You’re sure he’s not dinner?” Twist asked. “He’s very . . . yippy.”

“Chill, Twist,” I told her, reaching up to run a hand down her back. “Anyway. Introductions?”

“You’ve certainly done your part,” the woman said, turning to her companion. “Arthur?”

He sighed the sigh of a man who knew he’d been beaten. “I’m Arthur Agincourt, and this is my sister Amelia.”

Twins, my brain offered again. With the cutesy matchy names. To say nothing of the alliteration. Poor guys.

“We read that the shop next door is for rent,” she said, drawing herself up and looking rather tall that way. “You own it?”

Arthur winced, once again pained, but he didn’t interject.

I shrugged and nodded. “Sure do. I’m the one who put the ad in the Advocate looking to rent it out. Were you two looking to rent a business location?”

“It’s out of our budget,” Arthur interrupted, looking at his sister rather than us. “ Far out of our budget.”

That got Davin’s interest. “How do you know that? The ad didn’t have a price, or we wouldn’t be getting such different offers.”

I only recalled the one offer with a specific monetary value, so I’d have to ask Davin what he meant later.

For now, for some reason, it hadn’t occurred to me that Davin hadn’t seen the ad in question.

“I definitely didn’t list a price,” I agreed.

The truth was that I had no notion of what the place was worth.

A little research had given me wildly differing suggestions, because it depended on location and foot traffic and the amenities in the space, among other things.

“What kind of business are you looking to open?” I decided to ask, instead of going into all the details and my reasoning, which almost never went over well.

Arthur looked pained by the question, but Amelia beamed. “A tea shop.”

I blinked, just staring at her for a moment, because . . . what?

Davin cocked his head, considering. “Serving sweets, sandwiches, and such?”

“Precisely,” she agreed, scratching Bannockburn’s ears as her eyes went distant.

“Mother used to take us to one in London once a week when we were children. With lovely bone china and old-fashioned furniture and shelves of poetry books if people wanted to read them. My favorite was always Dylan Thomas.”

For some reason, Davin lifted a brow at that. “Not Keats? Wordsworth?”

She made a face at him, nose scrunched as though he’d suggested something terrible.

Truthfully, I had no idea what the hell they were talking about. Before the last two seconds, I couldn’t have named three poets. Mostly just Emily Dickinson. Or Shakespeare. He’d been a poet as well as a playwright, right?

Who the fuck knew?

Everyone in the room with me, apparently.

“So. Tea shop. Sandwiches and, like, pies?”

“Cakes,” Davin corrected. “Maybe tarts. If you’ve never left the States, you’ve probably never seen anything like it. I’m not certain there’s a market for it here.”

Arthur, who had seemed to vacillate up until that moment, frowned. “There’s something for everyone at a tea shop. Amelia makes excellent cakes. Coffee, even, if people must.”

Tea, though? Not coffee? I wasn’t sure that would sell in the US, but they had my attention.

Davin went to open his mouth again, but I grabbed my desk chair and slid it in front of the waiting room ones they were sitting in. “What kind of sandwiches?”

“Does that actually matter?” Davin asked, and when I turned to look at him, there it was, bemusement.

“Of course it matters. You know you like food as much as I do. You want the good stuff right next door.”

He leaned his head to the side, lips pursed and eyes saying that he definitely agreed, even if he wasn’t quite willing to say it aloud.

“But this is an expensive location,” Arthur broke in. “And...we were going to pay the rent from my income, but it seems”—his cheeks pinked, and he stared at the floor—“it seems that the job offer I got before we arrived has dried up somehow, so I no longer have the ability to fund it.”

“Auntie left us enough money to get started,” Amelia said, reaching over to pat his arm consolingly. I suspected that it constituted some huge breach of protocol, but he didn’t pull away. “We’ll just have to be very careful.”

This was painful.

I would feel bad asking them for any rent, let alone the kind of rent the sweatshop people had offered.

But also, I needed a lot of money. I had to pay the taxes on the building somehow, and unless Davin and I made a lot more money than I expected to, most of it was going to have to come from that rent.

“Besides,” Amelia said, her voice going snippy, “if they won’t follow their own country’s laws, you hardly want to work for them. It wasn’t even what you want to do with your life. If you work in the tea shop, you could make your chocolates like you’ve always wanted.”

His what?

“Your what?”

Arthur ducked his head again, cheeks fully red at this point, and I was worried he might die of embarrassment. “It’s nothing. I just...as a child, I used to make chocolates. It was just a lark. Nothing I?—”

“Everyone always loved Arthur’s chocolates,” his sister interjected. “He never wanted to be a personal assistant to some rude old CEO anyway.”

Ouch. That sounded kind of awful.

I looked at the dog, wanting nothing more than to ask his opinion. I always trusted animals’ opinions more than humans. Or vampires.

He seemed to read my mind, because he gave a little bark, and—“He makes the best Sunday roast, too. Ought to serve that at this shop of theirs. Make a fortune that way.” He shot a suspicious look at Twist, then looked back at me, even as Amelia was trying to shush him.

“You don’t seem so awful. They could work with you.

Not like that bastard Fearson, firing the poor lad over missing his leg.

Wasn’t his choice to have it blown off.”

I blinked for a moment, staring at the dog, then looked at Arthur in shock. Yes, I did glance down at his leg, but it just looked like a leg in a pair of pants to me. Two matching shoes, and he’d walked into the shop just fine.

Also, wasn’t it entirely illegal to fire someone for a disability?

Though they’d have to prove that was why, first, and if it had been some rich CEO, well...I wasn’t so naive I thought that was likely to come out in their favor.

“Bannie,” Amelia exclaimed. “Calm down. I know you like them, but people get nervous when you go barking like that. I’m so sorry. He really isn’t being mean. He just wants to chat, you see.”

“It’s fine,” I denied. “He seems like a friendly fellow to me.”

To prove my point, I offered the dog my hand.

Amelia beamed. Davin stiffened, strain on his face like he was worried I was about to be savaged by a creature smaller than the coffee maker he’d thrown away. Even Arthur seemed a little concerned.

Bannockburn? He sniffed my hand and gave it a good lick, then nodded to me. “It’s settled then. We’ll see more of you. We’re already staying just down the beach.”

“I tell you what,” I said, looking up at the twins, first her, then him.

I went over and snatched a business card off my desk—yes, my mother had thought of everything—and handed it to them as I continued.

“You two think about what you can afford, and get back to me. I won’t rent the place out in the next few days, so you give yourselves a minute to do your budgeting and all that. Then we’ll see what happens.”

“Perfect,” Amelia agreed, hugging her dog to her chest as her brother took my card.

Arthur bowed his head. “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Knight.”

“Just Flynn, please. It’s been lovely to meet you all.” I nodded to each in turn. “Amelia, Arthur, Bannockburn.”

For some reason, as they left, Amelia turned to give me the oddest look.

I frowned after them. “What did I do?”

“Renamed her dog,” Davin said, artless and simple, for which I was incredibly grateful. “Or, I assume, he gave you a different one than ‘Bannie’? Because that’s all she called him.”

“Shit.”

“Indeed,” he agreed. “But at least she didn’t seem to be offended.”

She had not, it was true, and Arthur hadn’t even seemed to notice. Surely he knew the dog’s full name, so it hadn’t surprised him to hear it.

I sighed and shrugged, then looked up at Davin. “I’d be really screwed if I took them on, wouldn’t I?”

He looked up to where they were headed off on the path down the beach, considering.

Then he shrugged. “Maybe a little. To be fair, we can charge the local vamps a fortune to install security on their properties. Captive audience and all that. You might be able to manage even without much from rent.”

“I mean, I never really wanted to be a landlord. It’s kind of a terrible job, you know? I’d always feel like I was taking advantage of people.”

He stared at me for a moment, then shook his head. “Completely understand why your mother sent me.”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”

But he wouldn’t say.