Chapter 4

Tiny and I were lying in my bed, tired and sweaty, after our celebratory fuck. It didn’t hurt so much as usual. Perhaps I was stretching to accommodate him.

“Do you think my breasts are too small?” I asked.

“No, they’re perfect,” he replied, a little too quickly for my liking.

“But what about Mrs McKenzie’s breasts? They’re spectacular. Surely all men prefer them that size.”

“On your frame they’d look grotesque. Besides, yours are delightfully sensitive.”

With a gentleness that belied his size, Tiny caressed my tiny globes and nearly got my motor running again.

Tiny. Without whom my company would have collapsed, the amount of time I’d had to spend away from the office recently. He could do most things as well as I could, even better in some cases. The only talent I brought to the table that he couldn’t match was my ability to invade people’s minds. Or could he? That might explain why he was happy to work for me. I could have checked by invading his mind. Right now would be a good time, while we were lying skin to skin. But two things stopped me. The first was my moral code. I used my ability as sparingly as possible because I wouldn’t have liked it if other people were poking around inside my own mind, and I was especially reluctant to use it on someone who depended on me. And secondly, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stomach what I found. I’d see the haunted look in Tiny’s eyes sometimes when a suppressed memory forced its way to the surface.

I made a decision.

“I’m going to make you an equal partner,” I said. “I think McAllister and Scott Investigations would make a great name for the company.”

“Hell no!”

“Why not? You probably do as much to keep the company going as I do.”

“Firstly I don’t want the pay cut. I know you pay me more than you pay yourself.”

That was true. Tiny had asked me to pay him what he was worth, and that was a lot. I preferred to draw less income than I could have done, reinvesting the balance back in the company to build up its balance sheet, in case we hit a lean patch.

“Secondly,” he continued, “I’m quite happy to be out of the firing line. Your success rate means you piss a lot of people off. It’s your name on the company stationery, so you’re the one who has to check underneath her car for suspicious devices. I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime ... several lifetimes.”

Tiny had said ‘secondly’, not ‘and secondly’. I pick up on little details like that. I reckon I would have made a decent investigator even without my special ability. I wondered if there was a suppressed ‘and thirdly’. Perhaps a doubt whether he would always be able to control his PTSD.

I was ruining the moment by overthinking. I snuggled up to Tiny and let myself drift off to sleep, knowing he’d inevitably be gone by the time I woke up the next morning.