“You must be Bellona Dantès.”

I smile warmly at Lander’s brother. “Everybody calls me Bell.”

Once inside the sitting room, Travis Gable motions for me to take a seat on a very sleek but uncomfortable chair. The whole room is done in black and white, the furniture angular and modern to the point of being cartoonish.

“Bellona . . . I 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 almost ten 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.”