Interlocking Hearts (4 page)

But Paisley was cursing at his back. The weird mechanically inclined hipster was out the door.

Paisley was the one who did the walking away. This jerk hadn’t even given her a chance to finish her coffee. Normally the guys she met were the ones chasing her down. Paisley went back up to the counter and ordered Mr. Montgomery’s coffee and cake pop. She had to turn back to the end of the line when she realized she forgot the coffee cake. The barista frowned at her until she added her third tip of the day to the glass jar. The Robohippie had her flustered.

Robots had as much right to live their own lives as people did. Paisley just wished they weren’t such pains in the ass sometimes.

* * * * *

Paisley ate some cake with Mr. Montgomery, but it didn’t taste as good as it normally did. The scene in the coffee shop had tainted her sugar buzz. She tried to be upbeat, but no one could accuse her of having a poker face. Just an hour and a half later she had Miss Matilda’s coffee and two repaired bots next to her.

Her cell phone rang as she pulled up to the palace.

“Have you given Miss Matilda her coffee yet? I noticed you purchased the type she prefers.”

“Coral, you really need to stop hacking into my cell location and credit card purchases.”

“So you wish for me to stop deleting those finance charges you ask me to change every month?”

There were only so many things you can conspire with a robot on before they threw them back in your face. Freaking photographic memory units were annoying at times.

“Why did you send someone to kidnap me today?”

“I did not ask anyone to take you anywhere against your will. I requested that Jon bring you to the offices so you could talk with me like you wanted. My meeting ended rather abruptly for some reason and I had time to spare. You were available for at least an hour. I calculated that it would be enough time for our conversation. I didn’t think it was necessary to call you back since I sent someone. Was I mistaken?”

“You were rude.”

“I’m sorry.”

How can you stay mad at someone who sincerely apologizes when she does something wrong? You couldn’t. Honesty was hard to argue with.

“I know you didn’t mean anything by it, but coming from someone who had to get an official document to prove she was capable of living her own life, I’d think you would consider the correlation that running mine would be a tad insulting.”

Paisley heard some clicks. And a rustle.

“Thank you for accepting my apology. I just switched over to this dumb phone. I know you told me that it was not comfortable for people to see me talking to the com-link in my head.”

Coral called smart phones “dumb phones” because she told Paisley that they were nowhere near as intelligent as a Coral-600. Therefore they should not have the smart descriptor.

It constantly made Coral sound like she was mad at her phone, and always made Paisley smile.

“I’m sure the people around you are much happier to know you are not talking to yourself. Mental illness makes humans uncomfortable.”

“Why is that?”

There wasn’t much Coral asked Paisley to explain any longer. Now that Coral had moved out of the palace and into Quinn’s cabin, she went out and found most answers herself. She still came to Paisley with a lot of
why
questions. Those were sometimes the hardest to answer.

“Just like anything else—people fear things they don’t understand.” Paisley put the boxes down and placed the coffee carrier onto the table in the entryway. She grabbed the flyer in her pocket and crinkled the paper to make sure it was still there. “I found another one of those green flyers.”

“Is it the same print process? The same typeface and subject content?”

“It’s scary.”

“That doesn’t answer my questions.”

Paisley didn’t even want to look at the information again. She left the paper in her pocket. “We’re still meeting later, right?”

“Of course.”

“I took it down from the coffee shop. I’ll just bring it with me.”

“Thank you, Paisley.”

Paisley had to think for a second. A lot of times, Coral’s thought process moved a lot faster than her own for obvious reasons. Even trying to think ahead, Paisley couldn’t grasp what she was being thanked for.

When she asked, Coral told her, “For being a friend, even when it’s something you don’t understand.”

If you asked Paisley, that was the definition of what a true friend was anyway. It didn’t require a
thanks
. It just required the same friendship in return.

Coral gave that to her without question.

Paisley looked at the large clock that hung over the woodwork decorating the entrance to the formal living room.

She still had a few hours left in her shift. She went off to kill some of that time with Miss Matilda. Her boss was never closer to happy than when enjoying her cup of coffee. Nothing wasted time like a bit of caffeine.

* * * * *

“Did Mr. Montgomery say anything about special maintenance requirements or upgrades we should consider with these units?” Miss Matilda asked between sips in the kitchen.

“Nope. He said those guys have plenty of good years left in them.” Paisley put away some of the clean dishes and wiped off the counters.

She liked having things sparkle around her. If she couldn’t afford diamonds and flashy jewelry, she could at least catch a glint in a counter every now and then.

Taking pride in her work wasn’t usually her style, but she lived here too, and she liked the idea that what she did made other people happy.

“I have a request for you to be ready for a meeting with Coral on my schedule. I assume she informed you?”

Miss Matilda was one of the few people who knew Coral as well as Paisley did. Miss Matilda just approached her from the opposite end of the spectrum. She always helped Coral learn how to behave. Paisley was the one who had to show the bot how to break a few rules when they didn’t work for her anymore.

Now Coral had gone all political and she was the one helping to make the rules. Paisley guessed it was good that her friend was fixing what was wrong with the system, but that wasn’t the life for her.

If Paisley had been in Coral’s shoes and a hot mechanically inclined man had offered to run away and forget the outside world existed, Paisley wouldn’t have stayed to fight. She’d have hunkered down and had sex until her pussy rusted.

“I called Coral, actually. I miss her.”

“She is becoming a very important figurehead, isn’t she?” Miss Matilda finished her coffee and tossed her cup in a nearby trash can. The automatic emptying system sucked it into the chute to be cleaned and sorted for recycling. The women listened until the
thwump
of the pressurized air told them the trash was on its way to its destination before continuing the conversation.

“She’s a lot more important than I am. That’s for sure,” Paisley mumbled as she brushed crumbs off the counter.

“Why say that?”

Paisley used a broom to sweep the mess into the closest vacuum opening along the kickplate of the kitchen cabinets. “I’m just someone who cleans up after people. I don’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. Coral is going out to change the world and she’s not even a year old.”

“Coral was a person long before a paper she signed declared it, and you know that just as well as I do.” Miss Matilda took the broom from her and slapped the back of one of Paisley’s hands.

“Ow.”

“People like us who run a household… People like us who support those in the limelight are just as important as those who are famous. Without us clearing the way for them, no one could see their light.” Miss Matilda shook her head. “There is more to life than having someone read about you in a newsfile.”

Then Miss Matilda smacked the other hand and left the room. “Help with dinner service. You don’t get out of all your duties today. You didn’t bring me a cake pop.”

Dammit. Paisley knew she should have grabbed an extra.

Chapter Two

Dinner service wasn’t all that difficult. The chefs did the cooking. Paisley and the other service staff just went around and served food, refilled drinks and cleared dishes. The rest of the meal was usually spent standing off to the side watching people eat.

It was yet another reason Paisley wouldn’t make a good celebrity. After working this long in the service industry she had no desire to pay someone to watch her eat. She would end up getting indigestion and no one wanted that.

Of course she could probably afford great medicine if she was famous, but having staff would be really awkward on the nights she wanted to have a big bowl of ice cream and a bag of popcorn for the entire meal.

An elbow smashed into her ribs and Paisley tried not to cry out. Bridget was on service duty as well and was making sure Paisley did her fair share. Meaning she wanted Paisley to do most of the work. Paisley was going to keep a stash of cake pops in her room from now on. If all it took was a little sugar to keep her from dealing with this woman, it would be money well spent.

Paisley was leading the way into the dining hall with the first course of fresh squash bisque. Just to remind Little Miss Elbow that she was not in charge here, Paisley stopped suddenly and snickered as the dishes clinked behind her.

Paisley heard the growl, but continued forward and spun to open the swinging door with her rear. Looking her adversary straight in the eye, she simply said, “Sorry, I had a hitch in my side. Hope I didn’t cause you to spill.”

Because the door was open now, Bridget couldn’t even give her an evil eye. It was great. Paisley waited for all of the service crew to exit the door and followed as she was supposed to.

Black and white uniforms, ironed to a crisp, were all she saw as she made her way to the last person at the table.

As she rounded the other server’s shoulder, she almost spilled the soup. She was supposed to serve the picture of male perfection she’d glimpsed at Mr. Montgomery’s repair shop. Paisley tried to close her mouth, but the disbelief was too much to swallow.

“Why, hello again,” he said as she placed the soup in front of him.

Paisley didn’t know what to do. No one talked to the service staff during meals. It was a formal dinner. She looked at the other staff and glanced at the king and queen, who seemed preoccupied with their napkins before she quickly whispered back, “Hello, sir.”

“You are a lady of few words,” he said with a smile as he picked up his spoon.

A voice raked over Paisley’s nerve fibers from across the table. “Be happy she doesn’t talk to you. I tried to initiate conversation and she was anything but a lady.”

Paisley’s head snapped up, and just like a scene from a horror movie, a man she had no desire to ever see again was being served by another member of the staff. He no longer had the knit cap and rainbow suspenders. Now, his beard looked like it had actually been combed and his clothes didn’t look like they came from a store rebellious teens shopped at to piss their parents off.

All cleaned up, the robohipster she had met in the coffee shop looked kind of hot. He had trimmed the new growth on his cheeks and some product in his hair had it laying perfectly with just a little bit of shine.

Paisley was frozen in space. What was this guy doing at a formal royal dinner? Was he with the hot guy she was going to quiz Coral about? Paisley couldn’t move. Or she didn’t until Bridget walked by and swung her hip into Paisley’s on purpose.

The momentum flung her forward and she scrambled to get a grip on the table. Being a formal dinner, the lace table cloth had been lain out. Per normal dinner prep, Paisley had polished the table with a solid layer of shine glaze last night.

Thanks to her brilliant cleaning skills, Paisley’s hands gripped the lace, just in time to feel the delicate fabric begin to slide. Images of pulling the entire dinner service off the table flashed before her eyes and she tried to adjust her stance. Her arms splayed and she turned so as not to go face first into the soup she had just served.

She turned the wrong way, and when her feet twisted her ass ended up falling right onto the hottie.

“Oh shit.”

Curse words are not appropriate to use in polite conversation. When you are a staff member at a royal dinner, using them was a terminable offense. There were probably older laws on the books that would have had her beheaded for this, but luckily the queen had a potty mouth too. Paisley had gotten away with some mild language slips before. She hoped it would save her this time too.

Her majesty coughed loudly as soon as the “s” sound started leaking from Paisley’s lips. It covered the curse for everyone except the man whose lap she’d taken over. Theirs was a queen of the people for sure.

Paisley used the distraction and attempted to run, but a strong arm looped around her waist and held her there. Warm breath blew at the baby hairs surrounding her ear as he whispered to her.

“Know that this was the best part of my visit to the palace. Don’t you dare apologize.”

He let her go after that, but Paisley’s underwear had fused her legs together and she thanked whatever god was in charge of genitalia assignment that she wasn’t a guy, because she had a lady boner to end all lady boners right then.

The queen coughed again, but this time it wasn’t for her to distract everyone at the table. It was to let Paisley know everyone was staring at her.

Paisley ran. There was no graceful exit. There was no dignity. There was just the fight or flight instinct set to get the hell out of there.

She wasn’t serving any more dinner. She was just getting the fuck out of the palace. Paisley was the most forward person one could ever meet, but she kept her business life and her getting busy life separate. Having someone hit on her in her uniform wasn’t anything new.

Having someone make her eyes cross with lust while she was serving them wigged her out.

She jumped down the last two steps to the servers’ quarters. Paisley shut her door and stripped out of her uniform. She threw on a shirt and jeans, and texted Coral while she took down her hair and the stupid little clip she had glued to her head with hairspray.

Usually she would take the time to take down her bun and release her hair, but she needed to get out of the palace now. She tossed her uniform and a change of clothes in the sack.

What the fuck did that guy think he was doing? It didn’t matter. One thing a staff member couldn’t screw up was protocol with visiting officials. Unless the personnel file had been altered since last week’s meeting, she had broken at least three rules. It was only a matter of time before Miss Matilda filled out Paisley’s exit papers and handed them to her to sign. Paisley couldn’t get fired if she wasn’t here to get fired, so she threw a few more things in her biggest purse, dropped in her travel toiletries bag and mentally planned to not come back until it was light outside again.