Deceptive Innocence by Kyra Davis

haven’t heard that name before,” he says as he sits across from me, crossing his ankle over his knee. “Is it Italian?”
    “Sort of. I was named after the Roman goddess of war.”
    “Really,” he says dryly. “Are you looking for a fight?”
    “No, just a job.”
    His mouth curves up for the first time. “Good answer.” He examines me again. His brow furrows ever so slightly. Maybe he thinks I look familiar. But it’s been over ten years since we last met. I was barely eleven and he was . . . what? Twenty-eight? The cards have been shuffled and reshuffled so many times since then. He’ll never make the connection.
    “And you go by Bell,” he says, tasting the nickname. “I like it.”
    “Is Mrs. Gable here? I understand that she’s the one I’d be working for.”
    “She’s at a med spa.” He puts his cell on the glass coffee table that sits between us, next to a display of bleached white coral. “I once assumed personal assistants were just for celebrities. But my wife, Jessica, is disorganized, frenzied, and a little too fond of her dry martinis and prescription pills.”
    “A risky combination.”
    He shrugs as if indifferent to his wife’s welfare. “She needs help running her own life; that’s why you’re here. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend a fortune on an assistant just to keep the world from discovering she’s an idiot. If I’m going to hire you, you’ll be expected to serve us both.”
    Serve . It’s an interesting choice of word. My feeling is that it’s been chosen carefully.
    “You speak Spanish?” he asks.
    “ Fluidamente .”
    “Good. Every once in a while I’ll need you to arrange and keep track of certain off-hour appointments for me or deliver messages. Sometimes I’ll use you as a translator when I meet with Spanish-speaking investors. This PA job requires . . . finesse and organization, a strong work ethic, and, if you don’t mind my saying, humility. I need someone who’s prepared to do it all.”
    By which he means all the things that an executive assistant should be able to handle on her own, unless some of these meetings need to be kept off the record and away from regulators’ eyes. In which case: use your personal assistant.
    “Of course, Mr. Gable,” I say smoothly. “As I’m sure you’ve seen on my résumé, I’ve worked in this kind of position before.”
    “Right, right, I checked that reference . . . You worked for Stephan George, the real estate mogul.” He unbuttons his jacket, drapes his arm across the top of the sofa. “Or at least he was approaching mogul status, from what I understand. Shame about what happened to him.”
    I nod solemnly, letting my smile slip. “It was completely unfair. He was innocent of all those charges.”
    It’s the right answer. Travis and Jessica have gone through more than ten personal assistants in the last decade; only three of them have lasted more than three days, and all of them previously worked for employers who had some dubious legal dealings in a white-collar kind of way—which probably means that Travis likes to hire people who he doesn’t think will have ethical qualms about being immersed in his more sordid dealings.
    The very thought makes my heart dance.
    “Of course, of course,” Travis is saying. “Tell me, where is the good Mr. George now?”
    “They say he’s somewhere in Latin America, but really, it’s anyone’s guess.”
    “If you did know, would you tell me?”
    “I like Mr. George,” I say cautiously, “and I’m very loyal to my employers even after my services are no longer needed for . . . for reasons that are beyond everyone’s control.”
    Travis steeples his fingers. He could pass for a James Bond supervillain in that pose.
    “George took off almost a year ago,” Travis continues. “Your résumé says you’ve been bartending since then at some place called Ivan’s?”
    “It’s one of Micah Romenov’s bars.”
    The surprise registers on