I confiscated a yellow hard hat and plopped it on, my braid dangling behind me. Walking through the place, I looked up through the unfinished stairs and out through the windows in the mansard roof high overhead. This place took the word mansion to new levels.

Inside the kitchen was a guy with a hard hat and a set of plans under his arm, talking to a woman in jeans and a tailored jacket, and Derek. It looked like a high-level meeting while the plumbers adjusted PVC piping and electricians and heating-and-air guys tested the floor-warming system that would soon be covered by tile. It was noisy and energetic, but the activity looked good-natured and easygoing, unlike the frenetic way office workers often looked. These people were having fun; they liked their jobs.

I tucked my hands in my back pockets and moseyed toward the bosses. Derek was talking security. Separated by a wall made only of studs and nails, I stood behind him listening as he discussed the sprinkler system. It had to disperse enough water to put out a major fire, which meant taking water from the Mississippi not so far away. Leo’s previous house had used Mississippi water, grandfathered in under a law that hadn’t been written when the first house’s kitchen was retrofitted with a sprinkler system. Now the MOC wanted the whole house sprinklered, and had discovered that he needed permits from people like the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers. From Derek’s tone I could tell that Leo wanted fast action but the initial-agencies were balking. Big surprise.

Like all post-active-duty military men, Derek seemed to have a sixth sense when he was being watched. Or he was just paranoid all the time. He turned to scan the surroundings, eyes probably picking out likely spots for snipers, and saw me. His eyes narrowed, and he frowned. I grinned and gave him a little wave. “The Enforcer is here,” he said. “Maybe she can help with the kitchen issue.”

Kitchen issue? Not likely. But I walked over, willing to pretend. Sometimes a cold look and a little Beast in my eyes was all it took to get things done. “Sup, y’all?”

The woman got this look. This “You are not in my league” look. And she was right. She looked chic even in a hard hat, though I’d never have worn three-inch heels to a construction site. I set my hard hat on a counter and slouched against a stud to listen to the problem. The woman was a decorator and her paint colors weren’t matching the tile colors and she wanted something more au courant than beige, white, cream, and snow in the room. She wanted bronzes and coppers and earth tones. Like I cared. But I let her talk and listened with half an ear as I worked out how many cameras we would need to cover the five-car garage. The woman also wanted the two sets of double ovens to be moved across the kitchen from the place where they were in the plans, so she could put a window in the exterior wall. Yada yada.

I glanced at Derek while she chattered and had to swallow down a laugh at the frustration on his face. It wasn’t easy being boss. All bucks stopped with him—and better him than me. When the decorator wound down, Derek said, “If moving the ovens didn’t cause problems elsewhere”—he thumbed at a wall that hid a safe room, and suddenly I understood the problem—“I’d let you have your way on the ovens. But it’s no deal.” He looked at me when she started to speak again, and said, “Jane? What do you say?”

Great. So much for bucks stopping with Derek. To the decorator, I said, “As I understand it, you have two requests—color scheme and light in the kitchen. Right?”

She nodded and I went on. “But you also have a job to do. Your job is to make Leo happy. Derek’s job is to keep Leo safe. And that’s my job too. You can’t move the ovens, because that makes it harder for us to do our job. Putting the ovens there”—I pointed where Derek had thumbed—“isn’t going to happen.”

“But—”

I held up a hand to stop her. “Let me finish. Request number one is color. Leo likes whites and beiges and he’s outlived au courant several centuries ago.” I studied the space and realized that I had the attention of the entire crew. Lucky me. “You can’t change Leo’s white-toned color scheme but you could make the faucets and knobs bronze and put in some aged copper panels in the ceiling if you want. Drop some bronzy lights over the island.” I’d seen that at Katie’s and it looked really good. “Hang some big copper pots over the island or along the wall next to the cook top.” I pointed. “And . . .” I turned in a circle, trying to see the room as it would be soon. “Maybe put in a copper or bronze exhaust hood. Instead of the white quartz or granite cabinet tops like on the rest of the counters, put copper sheeting on the island. You could even get the oven and refrigerator doors done in copper or bronze, all without changing the color scheme.” When the decorator’s mouth fell open, I said, “What?”

“That’s . . . perfect, actually,” she said. Then jumped in quickly with, “But this room needs more light.”

“Yeah. Vamps don’t care about light. They care about security. Why don’t you knock out that wall there”—I pointed to the back of the house—“and put in some French doors and tall windows if you need light in the daytime. Just be sure to get the engineer to work with you on the sizes and necessary measurements of the bullet-resistant glass and the support I beams for the stories above.”

Her red-lipsticked mouth made a moue of surprise. “You’d let me do that?”

I looked at Derek and the construction boss and the architect, who had wandered over to listen. They all nodded. “Sure. So we’re good on not moving the ovens?”

“We’re fine.” She looked down at her notebook and wrote Copper Cladding in big letters.

Derek walked away, shaking his head. I followed, not understanding his reaction. I didn’t usually bother with multisyllabic words like consternation, but that was how Derek looked—consternated. Derek and I had had some issues over the months when I’d been under contract to Leo, and while some matters had worked themselves out, some hadn’t. I wasn’t sure they ever would. As soon as we were out of earshot I said, “What’s with the head shaking?”

“You solved everything. That woman was driving me nuts. She had been driving everyone nuts for over an hour.”

Crap. I really was turning into a girl. When the heck had that happened? I kicked a chunk of two-by-ten out of the way. Maybe a little too hard, in my frustration with my life, as it hit a freshly hung piece of wallboard and bounced back at me. I jumped out of the way, but the wall now had a huge dent in it. Dang it.