C.E. Murphy - Heart of Stone

She lifted a shoulder and let it fall, dismissing the question of whether things were working out, then sighed. “I’ll be here twenty-four-seven after tonight.”

“Promise me you’ll at least go home to shower,” Russell said. “Please. For all our sakes.” He tipped his chin toward the hall behind her. “Go on. You’ve got a lot of work to do, and I expect brilliance, Counselor.”

“He actually had the balls to say it, Cole. Russell said I was good for the case because I’m black. He actually said that. And then. Then. ” Outrage had her in its grasp again, Cole the unwary mark who’d asked how her day had gone. Margrit stood before her closet, eyebrows knit together so hard her head ached. “Dammit, I don’t have anything to wear!”

Cole leaned in her bedroom doorway, watching her warily as he thumped a wooden spoon against his shoulder. “You could go like that. I’m sure Tony would appreciate it.”

Margrit scowled at him. “I am not going on a date in a sports bra and running tights.”

“You going to take all this moodiness out on Tony? I thought you two were trying to patch it up.” Her housemate pushed away from her door and stepped across the piles of clothes that littered the floor. “I don’t understand how someone with a mind as orderly as yours can live in a room as messy as this one. And then what?”

“A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered mind,” Margrit muttered. She sat down on her bed, surrounded by lumps of discarded clothing, and put her face in her hands. “Then I went to see Eliseo Daisani.”

“You what?” Cole turned away from her closet, spoon lifted like a ceremonial spear. “You what? ”

“I went to see Eliseo Daisani,” Margrit repeated. “He knows my mother.”

“How?”

“I have no idea! He offered me a job!”

Cole put his spoon hand against the closet as if he needed the physical support. “Eliseo Daisani offered you a job?”

Margrit looked up through her fingers. “Yeah.”

“Did you say yes?”

“Of course not!”

“Margrit! He’d pay you half a million dollars a year! What’d you say?”

She snorted and flopped violently onto her back. “And move me to the upper East Side. What do you think I said?”

Cole shook his head and turned his attention back to her closet, rifling through it. “I think you went back to work and said to your racist boss you’d take the case against Daisani, despite it not being your area of expertise, and despite your fears about how it’ll play to the media. Grit, you’ve got more clothes than Cameron and me put together. How can you have nothing to wear?”

“Those ones are all dirty!” Margrit pointed accusingly at her closet without looking at it. “And those ones are all- wrong! ” She smacked the pile beside her, then shoved it away as she scowled. “And that’s exactly what I did. He’s not racist,” she added in another mutter. “He’s playing the advantages he has, and it pisses me off.”

“All wrong…” Cole sounded exasperated, ignoring her defense of Russell. “Where are you going for dinner?”

“I don’t know. Moroccan, I think. He knows I like it. So not dressy.” Margrit picked up a handful of clothes from the bed and discarded them again with an overwrought sigh.

Cole snorted. “You’ve been totally played, Grit. Are you aware of that?”

Margrit frowned at his shoulders. “What are you talking about?”

“‘Eliseo Daisani is a dangerous man. You might make an enemy.’ Russell might as well have painted a bull’s-eye on the case and loosed you at it like an arrow, Grit. Either he knows you incredibly well or he’s astonishingly lucky. Here, wear this.” Cole pulled out a gold camisole and a red cashmere sweater, tossing them on top of her. “And jeans. It’s not like you have to make a stellar first impression.”

“Maybe I should try. This whole thing with Tony…Do you really think he played me?”

“Tony?” Cole blinked at her. “You two play each other like violins, Grit. That’s why you keep getting back together.”

“Russell, Cole. Do you think Russell played me?”

“Oh. I think anybody who knows anything about you knows that waving a red flag in front of you will get you to charge the target. You’re the world’s most stereotypical Taurus.”

“I am not.” Margrit sat up with the camisole and sweater clutched against her chest. “What’m I going to do when you and Cam get married and move to the boonies and I don’t have my favorite metrosexual to clothe and feed me?”

“You’ll go on dates naked. What time’s he picking you up?”

The doorbell rang. Margrit started guiltily and hugged the sweater harder. Cole laughed, wagging his spoon as he left her room. “I’ll distract him. You owe me, Grit.”

Shouts of laughter greeted Margrit when she emerged from the bedroom a few minutes later. She followed the sound through the apartment, finding Cole and Tony relaxed in the living room and drinking beer. Tony climbed to his feet, holding the bottle behind his back as he glowered good-naturedly at Cole. “You promised she’d be half an hour.”

“Well, she usually is. You gave him that shiner, Grit?”

The skin around Tony’s left eye, along the nose and under the socket, shone deep blue and purple. The inner corner of his eye was red and weepy, fluttering as if it could neither stay open nor close comfortably. Margrit put a hand over her mouth, staring in surprise. “Wow.” She flexed her other hand, glancing down at the swollen, reddish knuckles, then looked back up at the bruised man before her. “I think you lost that fight.”

He touched the area gingerly. “Ya think?” He dropped his hand and looked her up and down, a smile crooking his mouth. “You look fantastic. I like the red. We ready?”

“Almost. I just have one question.”

Tony exchanged a glance with Cole. “This can’t be good.” He looked back at Margrit. “Shoot.”

“How on earth did you get those roses to the office so fast? It didn’t take me that long to get back to work.”

Laughter crinkled Tony’s eyes, and then he winced, touching his fingers to the bruise again. “I called Anita and begged her for a favor.”

“I thought her flower shop wasn’t open yet.”

“It opens officially on the first, but this was an emergency. I threw myself on her big-sisterly mercies.”

“Did you tell her what you’d done?”

“She wouldn’t send the flowers until I did. She said men pulling that sort of shit was exactly what keeps her from getting married again.” Tony made a face. “Despite Mama and Papa nagging.”

“Or maybe because of their nagging. Your mom puts mine to shame. Well, tell her thank-you for the flowers. They were beautiful.”

“I don’t get thanked? My sister does?”

“Life isn’t fair, is it?” Margrit sat down on the couch to pull her shoes on, then stood again, smiling.

Tony cast a despairing look at Cole. “Why do I keep trying to make this work?”

“Because she’s beautiful, intelligent and challenging?” Cole suggested.

Margrit dimpled. “Careful, or I’ll try stealing you from Cam. Do we have reservations, Tony?”

“Yeah. We should go. Anaconda says hi, by the way. She wants to know if you’re all coming over for the Superbowl on Sunday. It’s tradition.”

Margrit laughed. “We’ve only done it twice!”

“Tradition gets set fast in my family. Besides, Ana’s thirteen. You wouldn’t want to break her heart.”

“Okay, but I’m telling her you’re calling her Anaconda out of her hearing.”

“I’m going to have to marry her,” Tony said under his breath to Cole. “Out of self-defense, if nothing else.”

“Marrying me means I couldn’t be forced to testify against you, Tony, not that I wouldn’t volunteer to.”