Authors: Claire Kent
He must have put something inside it, because when he straightened up his hands were empty.
He hadn’t glanced in her direction yet, but—as he shut the safe and bookcase again—Kelly realized that he’d see her at any moment. Thinking quickly, she realized he couldn’t catch her watching him. So she knocked lightly on the office door and said, “Hey,” as if she’d just arrived.
Caleb’s head jerked toward her, the only sign he made of surprise. But Kelly could tell she had taken him off guard. His eyes were hard and cold when he replied to her greeting. “I told you I was working.”
He’d swung the bookcase back into place, but he must have known that Kelly had seen it closing.
Kelly felt an instinctive annoyance at his terse tone of voice. “Well, yes,” she replied sharply. “You did. But it’s time for dinner. There’s no reason to snap my head off.”
Caleb frowned. “I hardly snapped your head off. Don’t be overly sensitive.”
“I am not being overly sensitive. You’re the one who’s acting like I did something wrong.”
He controlled his face—as if he were fighting to keep his irritability and defensiveness in check. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said coolly. “I just prefer privacy while I’m working.”
Kelly was irritated now and didn’t bother hiding it. She hated this kind of cold condescension—from anyone. “If you prefer privacy, then you should shut the damned door. And don’t act like I’m trying to spy on you. Don’t you think I’d try to be a little sneakier than standing in plain sight in an open doorway?” Her voice grew more and more exasperated, until she was snapping out the last words.
Caleb was becoming visibly annoyed now too. “I never thought you were trying to spy on me. There’s no reason to act petty and childish.”
Kelly sucked in an angry breath. “You’re the one acting like a sulky little boy who got caught hiding his best toy. I don’t give a fuck what’s behind that bookcase, and how the hell would I be able to access it, even if I did? And the next time you speak to me in that condescending way, I’ll be out the door and you’ll never see me again. I don’t put up with that—from anyone.”
She was panting now, and boiling with resentment and annoyance. She wanted to claw the cold arrogance off Caleb’s face for good. Sometimes, it was like he was two separate men—the lover and the bastard—and it was far too easy to forget that the bastard existed, when the lover was so much of what she wanted.
His mouth opened, as if he would say something, but Kelly decided she didn’t even want to hear it.
She whirled around and walked away from the office, not even remembering what she’d come there for.
Several hours later, Kelly was lying in the dark in bed.
She wondered if Caleb was going to come to her, the way he’d gotten into the habit of doing.
Their argument had been stupid—the kind of thing that normal couples fell into all the time. But it worried Kelly a lot. She was on very thin ice here, and any misstep could lead Caleb to give up on her completely. They had no commitment. Nothing even close to a commitment. She was here only because Caleb wanted her to be, and as soon as that changed, any hope she had of getting more information to prove his guilt would be gone. There were still things she wanted to try—gaining access to his office at work, catching him in a weak moment and gently encouraging him to drop some clues. She needed more time to really make this work.
They’d eaten dinner together, but conversation had been minimal and stilted, both of them still bad tempered. Afterward, Kelly had taken a bath and gone to bed early.
She wasn’t asleep yet, though. Her mind was whirring and she couldn’t settle down.
The sex seemed to be getting harder and harder.
And better and better.
She reminded herself for the thousandth time that the better the sex was for her, for them, the more he would be deceived.
As long as his investigations into her past didn’t turn up anything about her biological parents, which was unlikely because her mother had buried the records so well, then Kelly still had time to succeed. She just needed to move faster. Take more risks. Find out the truth. Make Caleb pay.
And be done with this for good.
She couldn’t even imagine a life after it was over.
She’d been lying in the dark for a couple of hours when Caleb finally came into the room. Her back was toward the door, but she could feel him staring at her anyway.
He must have realized she was still awake because he asked, “Are you still mad at me?”
She turned over and frowned in his direction. “You haven’t given me any reason not to be.”
Caleb’s figure was looming and shaded in the dark room. “I’m sorry I was rude to you. You took me by surprise, and I never react well to that.”
“That’s for sure,” she muttered under her breath.
Evidently, Caleb heard her. He huffed out a breathy laugh as he started to get undressed. “Does that mean I’m forgiven?”
“I suppose.” While she’d been genuinely annoyed with his behavior, she also knew it wouldn’t be strategic to hold on to her indignation for too long. After all, she had certain things she needed to accomplish. “I really wasn’t trying to sneak around or anything.”
“I know.” When he’d taken off his clothes, he got under the covers with her and propped his head up on one arm and gazed down at her. “As you said, if you were really trying to spy on me, you’d be a lot more subtle than that.”
This was coming very close to the truth, sending flickers of anxiety through Kelly’s gut, but she managed to laugh in response. “Damn right, I would. I’m glad you have an appropriate appreciation for my competence in covert activities.”
Caleb leaned down until his lips were brushing over hers. “I have an appropriate appreciation for your competence in all kinds of activities.”
Kelly smiled against his lips. “Hmm. I think that was an attempt to seduce me.”
Moving over her, he kissed her full on the mouth, which caused Kelly to reflexively dig her fingers into his shoulders. “Did it work?” he murmured.
“It wasn’t the best attempt at seduction I’ve ever heard,” she replied huskily, able to think clearer now that he’d pulled out of the kiss. She brushed her fingers through his hair. “But I’m willing to give you extra points for effort.”
He chuckled and kissed her again, then he slowly caressed her body, teasing and fondling her until she was squirming and aroused. After reaching for a condom from the nightstand and rolling it on, he positioned himself between her legs, pushed up her nightgown until it was bunched around her waist, and took her in one leisurely, fluid stroke.
Kelly was already breathing erratically, and she gasped even more as he pumped into her—the muscles rippling in his straightened arms and his thrusts long, slow, precise, intensely pleasurable. Kelly rocked beneath him, her body moving with his effortlessly.
She felt the rich pressure of an orgasm developing at her center and tried to empty her mind of everything except the purely physical.
Her legs were bent and pulled in toward her chest. Her arms were bent up too, so that she could fist her hands in the pillow on either side of her head. As the intensity of the friction increased, Kelly jerked her head to the side and squeezed her eyes shut, biting her lip to keep from crying out with growing pleasure and need.
But she could still feel Caleb watching her, even through her closed eyes. She could feel him watching as his steady thrusts pushed her closer to the edge, as she shook and whimpered beneath him. And she could feel him watching as she came, as her body writhed with a shuddering climax, as she choked out the words “Oh” and “God.”
He came soon after she did, his body tensing up with coiled pressure as his thrusts and low grunts accelerated, until it was finally unleashed with muffled exclamation and the pulsing of his cock inside her.
Neither said anything afterward. Caleb rolled off her and took care of the condom. Kelly pulled her nightgown down over her hips and tried to compose herself.
Another fuck in a long line of them now. The argument and apology didn’t make it any different.
It wasn’t like they were in a real relationship. It wasn’t like that would ever be a possibility for them.
Caleb mumbled out a goodnight and threw his arm across her middle as he settled into sleep.
Kelly wished she didn’t like the weight of it so much.
The next day, Jack left her a message, saying he’d found something big and that they should meet in person to discuss it.
Kelly was kind of nervous, after almost getting caught last time. But she was meeting with her client again to work on the portrait, so she arranged to meet Jack covertly in her client’s apartment building. The bodyguard waited in the lobby when she went upstairs anyway, since she’d insisted on not having a bodyguard looming over her when she was working.
She figured it would be easy enough to meet with Jack on the way down, with no one else being the wiser.
He was tall and rangy, with broad shoulders and a five-o’clock shadow. He looked about Caleb’s age, but he was rumpled and laid-back.
He looked competent, though. It was reassuring.
Jack didn’t say anything when he saw her, just put down the newspaper he’d been pretending to read and walked casually down the hall, turning into what appeared to be a workout room.
“We’re fine here,” Jack assured her, as she closed the door behind her. “Marshall’s man is still in the lobby.” He had a file in his hand, and he was wearing khakis and a sport jacket. He looked big and solid and confident—like a cowboy from an old-fashioned movie.
“I know,” she told him. “It’s good to see you again.”
“You too.” His blue eyes ran up and down over her in a quick once-over. “You’re even more gorgeous than last time.”
She rolled her eyes, although the comment hadn’t been offensive. He seemed like a genuinely good guy. “Aren’t you supposed to be professional with clients?”
“Yes. I’m nothing if not professional. I wouldn’t dream of asking you out until you stopped being my client.”
She couldn’t help but laugh at the dry tone in his voice. “All right. So, seriously. You said you found something?”
His expression shifted to the task at hand. “Yes. One of my guys went over all the documents you sent. It sure was a shitload of stuff.”
“I didn’t have time to sort through it myself.”
“I know. I wasn’t complaining. But there was really nothing there. A bunch of medical stuff that I had a medical expert look over, but nothing looked out of place or suspicious. The one memo you found was the only one that was questionable, and that was too vague to be compromising.”
She slumped in disappointment. “I know. So you didn’t find anything? I thought you said you had something?”
“I do. But it didn’t come from the documents. I have a contact at the phone company Vendella uses, and she pulled up records for me.”
Kelly perked up. “Oh, really? What did you find?”
“Well, as you can imagine, we’re talking about mountains of calls, so it’s taken us two weeks to sort through them. Anyway, we tracked down all the numbers we could, and there was a call from one of the private mobiles to a man who is suspected of running hits.”
She jerked in surprise, her heart jumping painfully. “Really? A hit man?”
“More or less. There’s no evidence against this guy, but I guess his occupation is pretty well known in some circles.”
“And there were calls from a Vendella phone to him eighteen years ago?”
“One call. Lasting less than a minute. It could have been a wrong number, I guess, but it looks pretty fishy. It was a few days before your father was killed. My guess was he switched to an untraceable phone after the first contact.”
“So Caleb talked to this hit man?” She felt the blood leaving her face as the reality of this evidence started to sink in.
“That’s the thing,” Jack said, his mouth twisting slightly. “The phone wasn’t Marshall’s.”
She gasped. “What?”
“The phone wasn’t Marshall’s. It was his supervisor’s.”
His attractive face blurred slightly in front of her. “What are you saying?”
“It’s impossible to know from phone records like that, but this would be evidence that might point to the possibility of Marshall not being responsible for the murder. I completely buy that Vendella was responsible, but it might not have been the man himself.”
“But he was the project leader. And there was that memo.”
“I know.” He frowned and let out a sigh. “This is the stage of an investigation where it sucks. There is conflicting evidence, and we don’t know enough at this point to put it all together. But I’d say it’s at least possible that Marshall isn’t the guy on this.”
Her breath was coming out in shaky pants, and something had tightened in her gut. Something she couldn’t begin to identify. “So—so—”
“So all we can do now is keep looking. We’ll have to try to dig deeper.”
Her knees almost buckled. She grabbed at a shelf to steady herself.
“You okay?” Jack asked, looking concerned, and he reached out to give her his arm.
“Yeah. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. My mom and I were so sure it was him.”
“Well, it really looked like him. And it still could be. Don’t take him off the table as a suspect yet. You know him better than I do. What do you think? Is he capable of doing something like this?”
She nodded, staring at a spot in the air.
“Capable? Yes. Likely? I just don’t know.”
“We’ll start checking into his supervisor. He’s retired now, but still around. We might be able to turn something up. If you’re okay where you are, you might be able to help us get some of the information we need. But we need to do some more work before I can tell you where to look. Whatever happens, you need to be careful.”
“I will.”
“As I mentioned the first time we talked, I don’t think what you’re doing is very smart.”
“It’s not smart.” Her voice sounded a little breathy.
Jack’s eyebrows lowered. “Shit. You like this guy, don’t you?”
She stiffened with a quick inhale. “I do not like him.”
Jack shook his head. “Just be careful. I’ve heard he’s a lady’s man, but men like him aren’t safe. You don’t get to the position he’s in so young without trouncing people who are older, more qualified, and who have better experience. And trouncing them usually means using some unsavory methods. Even if he’s not a murderer, I don’t think he’s a nice guy.”