Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [334]
Bert came in, and shut the door behind him. Shutting the door was not a good sign either. Bert is 6' 4", and played football in college. He’d started to gain that past-forty, nearing-fifty extra around the middle, but Lana had put him on a diet and an exercise program. He looked better than he had for most of the time I’d known him. She’d even persuaded him that tanning cocoa brown every summer was not healthy for anyone. So he looked pale, but healthy. It also meant that his hair hadn’t gone that white-blond that it used to in the summer. His hair was actually a pale yellow, with a little white creeping in, but the white was so close to the way his hair used to look with his tan, that it had taken me days to figure out it was his way of going gray.
I was sitting in one of the two dark brown, nicely upholstered client chairs that had been another of Lana’s ideas. They were more comfortable than the straight-backs he’d had before. My legs were politely crossed, my hands folded in my lap. I was the epitome of ladylike.
“That skirt is too short for business hours, Anita,” he said as he rounded his big desk and eased into a chair even bigger and browner and more leathery than the one I was sitting in.
I slumped down in the chair and put my boots up on his desk, with my ankles crossed. The movement raised my skirt up high enough to flash every last inch of the lace tops of my thigh-high hose. I was a little short for the movement to be comfortable, but I doubted Bert could tell I was uncomfortable. I looked at him around the heels of my knee-high black boots.
“The skirt is also black. We all agreed that we don’t wear black to work. It’s too depressing.”
“No, you think it’s too depressing. Besides the skirt has flowers embroidered on the side by the slit. Blue, green, and turquoise, which matches exactly the shade of turquoise of the jacket, and the blue of the top, it’s like an outfit,” I said. I was also wearing a gold chain with an antique locket on the end of it. It had two tiny paintings, one in either side of it. They were tiny oil paintings of Jean-Claude and Asher. The locket had once belonged to Julianna, and was more than three hundred years old. It was handwrought gold, heavy and solid, and very antique-looking. Tiny sapphires traced its edges, with one larger one in the middle. I’d thought it looked great with the outfit. Apparently not.
The short little turquoise jacket also covered the black shoulder holster and the Browning Hi-Power under my left arm. I’d have put on the wrist sheaths, but with the jacket off, the knives showed under the thin material of the top. I could just take off the gun if it got hot enough in the office, but to remove the wrist sheaths, I’d have to strip off the shirt. It didn’t seem worth it. They were in the car, just in case I started to feel insecure.
Bert didn’t have any weapons under his rich, chocolate brown suit, which had been tailored to fit his body. As he’d lost weight, the athletic cut to his suits had emphasized his broad shoulders, which had sort of appeared as his waistline had decreased. His shirt was pale yellow, and his tie was a paler brown, with tiny gold and blue figures on it. All the colors suited him, they even brought a little warmth into his gray eyes.
I slumped down further into the chair, using the padded corner to brace my back and head. The skirt had scooted up far enough that the black silk of my underwear was peeking out, though it probably couldn’t be seen from where Bert was sitting.
“If I tell you the skirt is too short, you’ll wear something even shorter tomorrow, won’t you?”
“Yep.”
“And if I complain about the black . . .”
“I’ve got black dresses,” I said, “I’ve even got short black dresses.”
“Why do I even bother?”
“Arguing with me,” I said.
He nodded.
“I have no idea.”
“At least you’re wearing makeup, I appreciate