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KATIE
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I WAS IN THE MIDDLE of getting ready to go to Rachel’s house for our witching session—which I’d already decided was probably going to have a whole lot more to do with wine, dinner, and movies, and hopefully lots of talking—when there was a knock at my door.
I frowned at my image in the mirror, which only had half of its makeup on, and then grinned at her.
It was five in the afternoon on a Saturday, and I hadn’t ordered room service. That wasn’t housecleaning, and the concierge didn’t exactly come up to my room to drop off important messages. That left only one possibility.
Adam. Or, as I’d recently been calling him, Miller. I didn’t know why he liked it so much, and I had to be careful not to call him that at the office, as he was going by a different last name there to keep people from guessing at whole he was, but every time I said it, something happened to his face.
It was like he went from Regular Adam to Sexy Adam in the space of a blink. Workday Adam to Saturday Night Adam.
Safe Adam to Sexy, Smoldering, Dangerous Adam.
Okay, so I sort of liked the transition. Okay, so I really liked the transition. I was still getting used to being able to do that to him, and it turned out I couldn’t get enough of it.
I took another glance at my reflection, measured how weird I actually looked with foundation and blush on but no eye makeup, and then shrugged and went for the door. This man had seen me waking up in the morning with no makeup on at all. If he got scared off by me only half-made up, he wasn’t the guy for me.
When I pulled the door open, he was smiling like a little kid that had just bought his first ice cream cone by himself.
“You,” he said quietly, “look beautiful.”
I was about to tell him that I most certainly did not, considering I was still in my sweats and only half my makeup, but I didn’t have the chance. I’d barely opened my mouth before he was through the door and pushing me up against the wall, his arms caging me in as his lips came to mine for a smoky, blazingly hot kiss. He worked his tongue into my mouth and danced with me, moving one hand under my chin to tip it up, and I melted into him, feeling my bones and joints all go to jelly at his touch.
When he was finished, I was breathless, and the air between us was burning with desire.
“Well, hello,” I whispered. “Did you just come up to steal a kiss, or did you have more in mind?”
He moaned, deep in his throat. “I wish I had time for more, believe me.” He took a step back, though, and shook himself like he was trying to regain control. “Unfortunately, I have someplace to be.”
I turned my face and gave him a side-eye. “Is that so? And you think the way to impress me, after all this time, is to come in here and tell me that you have something better to do than hanging out with me?”
I pretended to pout, knowing that he could see right through it. He could see right through a lot of my masks.
It was one of the things I sort of liked about him. After a lifetime of hiding my true self from people, out of necessity and because it was my job, it was sort of refreshing to have someone who could see who I actually was.
He laughed. “If memory serves, woman, you also have someplace to be.”
I shook off the playfulness and walked back toward the bathroom, getting myself gathered once more. Adam might be allowed to see through my masks—at least a little bit. That didn’t mean I didn’t need to wear them. And tonight was important. I needed to be on my game.
“Right you are, boy-o,” I replied. “Rachel’s tonight, and I’m determined to finally get some valuable information.”
“I thought you didn’t want her to be the bad guy,” he said from somewhere in the living room—where he was, I didn’t doubt, going through the paperwork I had sitting on the desk. The man was genetically incapable of leaving things alone when he was left by himself.
“I don’t want her to be the bad guy,” I confirmed as I brushed eye shadow across my lids. “But I need to find something that proves to me that she’s not. Some source of hidden wealth that she’s using to pay the bills she has. Proof of a sugar daddy, perhaps.”
A snort. “She seems like the type of girl that would have several of them.”
I narrowed my eyes at myself in the mirror as I started on mascara, considering that response. Rachel might seem like that on the outside. On the inside, I didn’t think it was true. She was too smart to put up with anyone ever telling her what to do.
But if I found proof of someone like that, it would go a long way toward convincing me that she wasn’t our thief. Not if she had other sources of income.
The good news was that it wasn’t going to take much. I’d gone through the information Samuel had given us again and again, and I still wasn’t sure why she’d been included on the list. Some of her accounts didn’t quite add up, but that could very easily just be standard mistakes that didn’t mean anything.
She certainly didn’t have anything as telling as Joseph and Arthur. And she had less opportunity than those two.
Sure, she had a lot of debt, but who didn’t?
I just didn’t see the pieces that would have made me point to her as a prime suspect. So it should be easy to find something that told me she definitely wasn’t.
I was just going to have to do it without her figuring out what I was doing.
“Where are you going, anyhow?” I asked, not sharing any of what I was thinking.
“Oh, that’s what I came to tell you. Arthur invited me to his house for dinner. Pretty great, huh?”
Another frown for the girl in the mirror. I slid the mascara wand home, screwed it on, and then walked out into the living room.
“Just you and Arthur?”
“Well, I assumed his wife will also be there. I thought it sounded like a great opportunity for research. The look on your face says otherwise, though.”
It would.
On one hand, it was a terrific opportunity for research, just like going to Rachel’s was a good opportunity for me.
On the other, this was Adam—the CEO of the company, who may or may not have been identified as such—going to a stranger’s house without any backup. And without, it seemed, one single consideration for how dangerous it could potentially be.
The law enforcement part of my brain was on high alert at the thought. But I knew Adam well enough to know that if I said so, he’d just get even more stubborn about going. He took that whole I run the company thing pretty seriously, and he definitely wasn’t the sort of guy who was going to take kindly to me warning him that something might be more dangerous than he realized.
Dammit.
I already had plans that I wasn’t willing to compromise on, or I would have forced him to take me along, too. At least I knew how to handle a gun, if it came down to it. I even had one packed in my luggage.
Just in case.
But I was going to Rachel’s, and I needed to get there and prove that she had some other way of getting money. Some way that didn’t include stealing from Adam and his company.
So I pasted a bright smile on my face. “That does sound like a good opportunity for research. And I’m glad you’re going out.” I reached out, grabbed the front of his shirt, and yanked him to me, bringing his face close to mine. “But be careful with yourself. If I find out you’re being reckless or letting them take advantage of you, I’m going to be very upset.”
He looked really shocked for a moment, probably because I’d never acted like this around him before. But then his face sort of... melted into something that looked a whole lot like there were gooey, sticky thoughts going on behind those eyes.
“Ah, you would beat me up just for putting myself in danger? You really do love me, don’t you?”
I froze at that. I knew he was kidding with what he was saying. The way he was smiling and laughing it off told me that much. He didn’t think he was hitting anywhere close to the truth—which was what made it a joke.
The problem was, he was a whole lot closer to the truth than he realized.
I shook it off, though, and put my professional mask back on.
“I don’t want you doing anything stupid while I’m not there to back you up. That’s all,” I told him firmly. “Now run along. I have to finish getting ready.”
I gave him a quick peck on the cheek, trying like hell to act like none of this was even remotely risky, and then watched him as he turned and walked through the door again.
Damn, the man had a terrific ass. He’d better keep it safe while he was out playing detective.
***
WE’D ALREADY FINISHED two bottles of wine, and Rachel was up and popping the cork—or, as the case may be, unscrewing the lid—of the third.
“We drink too much,” she said.
Actually, she shouted it. Because we’d both had enough to drink that we were having a little bit of trouble with our volume control.
“You drink too much!” I said/shouted back. “I’m only like this when I’m with you!”
She made a sarcastic face at me. “Given how well you hold your liquor, Kate, you’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.”
I just smiled at her with as much innocence as I could muster and held up my empty glass.
Truthfully, I could hold my liquor better than I was letting on. I’d been practicing that for years, because I’d found it to be very, very useful for people to think you were drunk when you were actually stone cold sober. It got them off-balance and made sure I was sharper than they were when it came down to it.
No, I didn’t get into dangerous situations often, but when you’re a private investigator, you make sure you remember the things that happen around you. And tonight, it was very, very important that I remember what was happening. I hadn’t had a chance to do much research yet, but the drunker Rachel got, the closer she got to not remembering anything that happened tonight. And the sloppier she’d get about letting me wander around in her apartment on my own.
I hadn’t had a chance to do any of that yet, but I was hoping I’d have a chance soon. The tension of knowing it was coming and not having done it yet was killing me.
Rachel came strolling back to the table with a newly opened bottle of rosé and a somewhat lopsided smile on her face, and slid back into her chair.
“Now,” I said, holding my glass toward her again, “It’s your turn.”
We were playing the same game I’d introduced Adam to the other night, as a way to get to know each other better, and Rachel was really, really bad at it. First of all, she had incredibly obvious tells. Every time she lied, her eyes slid to the right. So it was really easy for me to guess when she was making something up.
Also useful for when I stared asking her the hard questions, if I had to.
She was also really, really bad at figuring out when I was lying. So, you know... She was drinking twice as much as I was.
Like I said, I knew how to stay sober when the person I was investigating got stinking drunk. I didn’t think we had much longer at the game, though. We were getting really close to Rachel hitting a sleepy phase, and when that happened, I was going to rummage through everything I could find, looking for any evidence of either guilt or innocence.
I was really, really hoping for the innocence. Because the more we played the game, and the goofier she got, the more I remembered how much I liked her.
“My turn to do what?” she asked. “Guess? Or lie?”
“Lie... or tell the truth,” I said with a shrug. “It can be one or the other, remember?”
She opened her mouth to answer me, but was interrupted by the phone next to her, which suddenly started buzzing. She took one look at the screen and grabbed it up, slapping it to her head.
“Mom!” she crowed.
Shit. I hoped her mom had heard her drunk before and understood how much patience it took.
In the meantime, the other woman had given me just the opening I needed.
I’m going to the bathroom, I mouthed at her, pointing toward the hallway.
Rachel nodded and waved me in that direction, pointing to the phone and making a face, which I took to mean that her mom would talk forever.
Perfect. Hopefully she talked as much as Rachel did. That way I’d have plenty of time to go through Rachel’s office, which was right next to the bathroom.
