Hannah Jayne: Under Wraps

“It was here a moment ago,” she groaned. “I know it was. Ooh!”

“Pardon me,” the cop said, his voice smooth and deep. “May I? I’ll just be a minute.” His dark eyebrows rose up kindly, and it seemed even the zombie went weak-kneed and stepped aside, offering her place in line.

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “I can’t seem to find my papers anyway. Sometimes I lose my head when it’s not screwed on tight,” she drooled, her milky white eyes locked on him.

“Thank you.” The cop nodded to the zombie and then turned to me. “Hello,” he said, inclining his head of dark curls toward me. “Do you know where I can find Mr. Sampson?”

I had an image of myself climbing up onto my desk, covering the cop’s chiseled jaw and high, rose-colored cheeks with kisses, my fingers tangled in his mass of silky dark curls as my body pressed against his, fitting into the curves of his chest, of his trim, taut stomach, our hearts beating passionately as one….

Instead, I opened my mouth and nothing came out. I smacked it shut, blinking dumbly into the cop’s kind—but confused—face.

Nina shoved me, her bloodless hands cold on my arm. “Sophie works for Mr. Sampson,” she said. “She can take you right to him. She was just going there right now as a matter of fact. Weren’t you, Sophie?”

I tried to glare at Nina, but she was already engrossed with a hobgoblin who was slobbering all over her desk.

“Yes,” I finally forced, “I can take you to see Mr. Sampson.”

I looked up into the cop’s beautiful blue eyes, and although I had no idea what swooning was, I was pretty sure I was doing it. I started to think of the two of us, hands joined, spinning in a meadow somewhere while the theme to Love Story played in the background.

“Miss?” The cop blinked at me, and I felt my face flush.

I did a mental head slap and decided that I really needed a hobby. And a boyfriend.

The cop frowned and leaned closer. “Are you okay?”

That’s the thing about redheads. That’s the thing about having milky-white skin. Every time I blushed or flushed even faintly, I’d go tomato red from my toes to my eyebrows. Think third-degree sunburn. Not exactly the cute, pink-faced tinge of an embarrassed brunette.

“I’m fine,” I whispered.

I took a few deep breaths to steady myself before going to join the cop on the other side of the partition.

“Hi,” he said, offering a hand. The top of my head barely cleared his shoulder and he stooped a little bit.

I took his hand—it was large and cool, his palm rough—and shook. “Um, hello. Hi. I’m Sophie. Sophie Lawson,” I said, pulling out all the stops in my impressive vocabulary.

“Are you Mr. Sampson’s secretary?”

I raised one annoyed eyebrow. “I’m Mr. Sampson’s administrative assistant.”

“Oh”—he raised both palms placatingly—“right, of course.” His sinful eyes traveled to my vacated frontcounter spot.

“I was just filling in,” I said quickly.

“Right,” the cop said. “Not really work for an administrative assistant.” His grin—framed by full lips that made my mouth water—was wide and a little playful and just the tiniest bit smug.

“And you are?” I said, extracting my hand and crossing my arms.

“Hayes. Detective Parker Hayes. Police Chief Oliver”—Hayes’s blue eyes slid skyward—“sent me down here.” He grinned again. “I didn’t even know here existed.”

“Yeah,” I said, turning on my heel, “follow me.”

I tried not to pay attention to the hard set of the detective’s jaw, to the way his dark hair snaked over his collar, to the slight scent of juniper and Ivory soap that surrounded him. I’m so not doing this, I murmured in my head. Not interested at all. And then, when we turned a sharp corner and Detective Hayes’s hand brushed against mine, I thought, Well, maybe just for a second. We can just be friends, right? We should be friends.

I was about to name our firstborn when Detective Hayes fell into stride with me. “So, you work down here all the time?” he started.

I nodded. “Four years now. Forty hours a week.” I grinned. “Give or take.”

“Give” meaning there were always an extra couple of hours tacked on around the full moon when I needed to double-check Mr. Sampson’s chains and drop off a takeout box full of rare—as in raw—filet mignon. “Take” meaning there were always an extra couple of hours taken for lunch when Nina sniffed out yet another designer’s sample sale in China Basin and dragged me down to try on armloads of skinny jeans and boho shirts at ridiculous discounts.

Hayes looked around. “Don’t you find working here kind of … odd?”

“No more strange than any other office job,” I said, nodding to Pierre, a centaur who also did the filing.

Hayes paused. “Okay, like that,” he said, gesturing back to Pierre, his voice lowered. “How does a—a—”

“Centaur,” I supplied.

“How does that get to work in the morning? It’s not like he can hop on BART.”

I snorted. “Of course not. Pierre drives a Chevy.”

Hayes rolled his eyes, and I grabbed his elbow, leading him in a wide berth around a group of fairies and one pixie gathered around the water cooler.

“Just keep walking and don’t make eye contact,” I told him under my breath.

“Okay, wait. I might not know a lot about this stuff, but you’re telling me to avoid them ?” He looked back, eyeing the pink-and-pale-green-clad diminutive group, their voices high-pitched and impossibly sweet as they chatted. “You can’t tell me you’re seriously afraid of Tinker Bell over there. What’d they do? Get fairy dust in your eye or something?”

I kept walking but faced Hayes. “Fairies are mean. Everyone knows that.”

Hayes remained unconvinced. “Mean? They’re talking about cookies!”

I stopped dead in my tracks as the fairy chatter died. “Uh-oh,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Fairies are very private. When disturbed by gawkers—”

“I wasn’t gawking!”

“—or intruders, they can react very violently.”

“Them?” Hayes swung around to the tiny, sweet-faced group, their wings twittering, littering the gray, industrial carpet with sparkly crumbles of pixie dust.

I grabbed Hayes by the arm again and yanked, hard. “Run!” I shouted in midstride, as the fairies—eyes narrowed, apple cheeks angry and flushed—flung themselves through the air toward us. Hayes and I ducked into an empty conference room, and he leaned against the door, doubled over, hands on knees. “Fairies are mean,” he said, grinning. “Who knew?”

“They’re a complete HR nightmare. Anyway, you should lock your doors when you leave here. And check your shoes. They can be surprisingly sinister.”

“I can’t believe you don’t find this the least bit weird,” Hayes was muttering as I made sure the coast was clear.

We stepped into the little foyer that housed my desk, a half-dead spider plant, and a red velvet fainting couch that Nina used for the (more than) occasional vamp nap. I gestured toward the closed door to Mr. Sampson’s office.

“Here we are,” I told the detective.

I knocked twice and then clicked open the door, poking my head into Mr. Sampson’s office. “There’s a Detective Hayes to see you, sir.”

Mr. Sampson looked up, his brown eyes velvety and inviting. He raked a large hand through his blond hair and then patted it back in place, cocked his head, and smiled at me, holding one finger up.

“Not a problem,” Mr. Sampson said to no one, his voice throaty, rich. “We’ll get that taken care of right away. Thank you. I’ve got an appointment right now. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to let you go. Yes—” His dark eyebrows rose, his eyes finding mine. “Certainly. I’ll have Sophie look into that.”