Page 4 of Love Spell

Blondie paused.

What had he been talking about?Did it matter?

“Let’s go.”Timo stood abruptly, felt the dark room and flashing lights and whirl of bodies twist around him with the violence of a snapping bone, clutched the barstool, gasped, “Fucking hell —” and tried to remember the drinks he’d missed.This wasn’t from three drinks.

Had he taken something?Hell no, he’d quit that shit.A joint now and then to unwind, a few drinks, but he didn’t do the hard stuff anymore.That was the shit that had trashed his nose even though he’d never been a heavy user.Timo had too much to get done to be a heavy user of anything but his own time.

“You okay?”Blondie had his arm.

“Fine, just felt a bit dizzy.I’m fine.”Timo made his way through the throng and music for the bouncers, suddenly feeling frantic for what passed for fresh air in Soho.

He took it for granted that Blondie would follow, didn’t even look around from gulping in deep lungfuls with his chin tipped back.

“Too bloody hot in there,” Timo said.“Stop a cab or I’ll get us an Uber if you don’t see one.”His hands moved as lightly as bricks trying to find his phone on the inside of his jacket.

“Sure.”Blondie stepped out to the curb while the nightly revelry of London swarmed past and traffic still surged after midnight.“I love your accent.”He grinned inanely back at Timo.“Where are you originally from?”

“You know what?Screw it.I’ll walk home.”Timo turned his back and started off almost at a jog.

“Whoa!Wait, what?Sorry, did I say something wrong?”

Timo kept walking while Blondie ran after him.

Had he said something wrong?Of course not.Only pointed out that the one thing Timo had tried to achieve all his adult life and failed at — destroying his own accent — remained very much noticeable to everyone around him.Even arseholes in clubs who’d exchanged only a few shouted remarks through the din.

“Hey, what is it?We don’t have to talk about anything like that, okay?”

Timo nodded, letting the guy fall into step beside him.No way in hell was he going to start talking about Russia, but he did like a good grovel.

They stumbled into a taxi, didn’t have to face the Tube full of drunks or wait on Uber, and Timo resigned himself to his company.The damn car was so hot.

Finally home in the penthouse, he opened windows, splashed water on his face at the kitchen sink when he should have been offering a drink to his uneasy guest, kept one eye closed against the intensifying pain behind it, and wondered vaguely if he had food poisoning.Wouldn’t he be sick by now?Nothing but a headache that was leaving him a bit disoriented, a bit hot under the collar.Where would he even have picked up food poisoning?One bite of smoked salmon?

“Are you sure you’re okay?”Blondie stood uncertainly by the counter, watching Timo, fiddling with his phone, glancing around the mood-lit penthouse and glittering skyline of London beyond the endless window glass.The place wasn’t huge.Timo didn’t need huge.But it felt huge with the open plan and all that glass, especially at night, when the whole of the city seemed to sprawl below his feet like the night sky to a god.

Of course he shouldn’t go.Timo had been absently toying with the idea of him all day, like picking at a scab, hoping for a hookup at the wedding, but this was close enough.Now here he was, the culmination of a rather mediocre, unproductive day just begging to be saved by an enjoyable night.

Timo patted his own face with the towel, leaned back on the marble counter, and drummed his fingers on the edge.Did he need a coffee?A painkiller?A joint?Should he stick his fingers down his throat?He wasn’t much good at making himself vomit.Objects down his throat rather agreed with him.Too many drinks and just a touch of food poisoning?That was probably it.Not enough to make him properly ill, only off-colour.

“Do you want a …?”Timo rubbed his eyes.He’d been going to ask about a smoke, but marijuana wasn’t tops for settling his stomach.His mum would have given him ginger tea and sent him to bed with a cool cloth over his eyes — but his mum had been dead for twenty years so there was that sorted.

He would feel better if he could go into work.Work always settled and focused him.Work was life and life was work.Not that Timo didn’t know how to take time for his workouts and 10Ks.He had that balance in place, too.

But work came first.No use going into the office before 5:30 a.m.and that was hours away.He did like to be first in.The whole team worked hard.If they didn’t, they didn’t last.It was his team, his company, and the only thing he enjoyed more than discovering new talent to join his traders was firing the slackers and idiots who proved him wrong for having faith in them in the first place.

It did the whole office good to see Timo be the first to arrive in the morning and last to leave at night.He couldn’t always manage it.Marathon days and weddings and shit like that got in his way.Still, Timo was pretty sure his reputation as a boss who was also the hardest worker in the office remained untarnished.

He had a couple of new guys who might need reminding.Simon Brooks from Croydon, who was a hell of a lot smarter than his hometown implied, and that American fresh out of uni, Noah something.Started with a C.Something Polish or Czech originally, wasn’t it?Ancestors would have been Eastern European immigrants to the States.What the fuck was that kid’s name?How could Timo forget a name?He couldn’t forget a name.He was the goddamn king of networking.He didn’t forget names.

Noah was the newest junior on the team.He’d be assisting the more senior guys since they only had one PA right now.

Open email on his phone, find the CV.It was on the tip of his tongue.

Cerveny!Noah Cerveny.Of course.Meant “red” in Czech, but they’d have axed the character accents when they’d immigrated so perhaps it didn’t really mean shit anymore.

He spotted new emails he had to check once he had that screen open.What the fuck was wrong with Dave sending another email marked URGENT?If it was urgent you picked up the bloody phone and made a bloody call.If it wasn’t, you texted, emailed, or waited to talk in person.You didn’t send an email and wave a flag over it proclaiming its urgency.

Damn, he wanted that man gone.There were days when being brilliant at the job just wasn’t enough, days when you also had to be able to take a fucking memo or you were no use to anyone.

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