Free Worlds Apart by Barbara Elsborg Page B

brushed his shoulders. Wow, is this where all the good-looking guys in the country have been hiding? Roo couldn’t help but notice the swiftness with which Niall disappeared. She’d been hoping he’d offer her coffee.
    “Couldn’t you stop running?” Taylor asked. “Straight through the house and out the back?” He gaped at her hair. “You usually shower when you use the bathroom?”
    “Yes,” Roo mumbled. “Sorry. I like to be completely clean after I’ve used the loo.” Shut up. “ Not that I really needed the shower. It’s just a strange habit of mine. Dates back to diapers. No, forget I said that.” Shut up, you twit. Both guys stared at her with their mouths open. “ I had to save a spider. Not a tarantula or anything, just a—”
    Taylor made a slashing motion across his throat and gestured to the guy behind him. “Roo meet Jonas. Jonas, this is Roo, our new PA. Jonas is an investigator like me so you’re working for him too, taking messages, making appointments, typing up his illegible notes.”
    “Pleased to meet you.” Roo shook Jonas’s hand.
    Wow, firm grip and big anthracite eyes. He pulled her forward slightly and his nose twitched. Is he sniffing me?
    “Back at you,” he said and let her go.
    “Come into the office.” Taylor gestured for Roo to go ahead and she tried not to limp.
    “What happened to your heel?” Taylor asked.
    Well, he was a detective. Of course he’d notice.
    “It fell off. I tried to stick it on but it came off again on the way here.”
    “Maybe the glue wasn’t strong enough. What did you use?” Jonas asked.
    “Um…” Roo mumbled.
    “Let me have a look and see if I can fix it,” Jonas said.
    Roo sat on the chair in front of the small desk and took off her shoe. When she pulled the heel out of her purse, she tried to peel off the gum, but of course the damn stuff was solid now. Jonas took the heel from her hand.
    “You trod in—oh.” He laughed. “Wrong end. I’ve never seen anyone try that before.”
    Taylor sat behind his desk. “What?”
    “Sticking a heel on with chewing gum. I’ll just be a minute. There’s something in my bike tool kit I can use.”
    Jonas slipped out and Taylor stared at her, tapping his pencil on the desk. Roo tried to look efficient, organized and keen, and tried really hard not to tap her foot in time to Taylor’s taps.
    “Your blouse is fastened up wrong,” he said.
    Oh shit. Roo fumbled with the buttons.
    “Right. No need to wait for Jonas. He knows how I operate. I’ll run through what we do. The calls you’ll get will be to do with surveillance, intelligence gathering, serving of court papers, tracing people who’ve skipped owing money, investigating insurance claims, checking alibis for court cases, tracing missing people in adoption scenarios and acting as a go-between. Stuff like that.”
    Roo wondered if she was supposed to take notes because she’d forgotten most of that already. Taylor looked across at her and she tried to think of an intelligent question. When do we break for coffee? How long do I get for lunch? When will I get paid?
    “When do we br—what do you do most of?” she asked. Wow, that was close.
    “Observing people in connection with false accident or sickness claims, and matrimonial work—checking assets and following husbands and wives who suspect each other of cheating.”
    “Right.”
    “We work for private individuals, companies, solicitors, councils, government departments, insurance companies, banks and we do subcontract work for other companies like ours.”
    Roo nodded. He could have been talking gibberish.
    “If I’m not here to answer the phone, all I need you to do is take a message. If it’s an enquiry about a job, I’ll contact the caller later. You got that?”
    Roo nodded. It was the safest thing to do.
    “When I’ve accepted a job, I need you to start a file, using the client’s name, summarizing the instructions they’ve given. Name, date, contact details