Before long, he covered her hands with his own, bringing one to his lips. “What’s wrong, honey?”
“I think you all were arguing about me.”
He didn’t answer, just kissed her hand once again.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have…” she whispered.
“Well, I guess we could forget about everything that happened this afternoon. Or…” Leading her to the end of the counter, he turned and wrapped her in his arms, placing his hands against her bottom and pressing her tighter and tighter against him.
“Or what?”
He released her and started up the steps. “Or, we can go upstairs and see how that seahorse pillow in your room feels beneath my head. Your choice.”
She waited till he got to the top of the stairs before she slowly made her way up. Forgetting was never going to happen. So there was really no choice, unless… “Or, we could see how I look wrapped in that soft red throw you’ve got on your bed.”
He crooked his finger and laughed. “We’ll save that for another time. Right now, I think the seahorse deserves a ride.”
Arguing with that would be like refusing a million-dollar lottery ticket. And she’d never refused a sure chance in her life. She wasn’t about to start now. By the time she walked into her bedroom, he was already in bed with the seahorse pillow under his head.
She felt a slight warmth on her face as he pulled her across his body, positioning her with his touch while she raised her arms, slipping off her swim cover. The past few days, thinking about him and her together, she’d only imagined this would be about good sex. Suddenly she worried she might be headed for love.
Two hours later, she was satisfied, showered, dressed, and standing at the dining room table, legal pads and pens stationed in front of a chair. Mitch had set the entire house’s double security system so she could wander anywhere she wanted, and he wouldn’t be following. Stacked on the counter were assorted sticky notes she’d brought from the media room. She planned to color-code her thoughts and happenings from her magazine assignments during the past months.
The logical place to start would be at the beginning. The fastest way to track down what had happened in the past week or so would be the day she was fired. The day the company’s security team took her badge and credentials before escorting her out of the building. She hadn’t even had a box to carry her belongings out, because she’d kept only a bare-bones cubical, since she traveled most of the time. Even when she was in town, she mainly worked on her laptop in her apartment.
How could she simplify this task? Make her brain flow backward, day by day? People…she’d start with the people trail. Meticulously writing down everybody she encountered for the past couple of months, she soon had the entire dining room table covered in tiny stacks for each day. Thankfully, when Drake had sent her new phone with her dad’s texts, he’d also included her calendar setup.
The slow going was tedious, but she forced herself to stay focused. She knew from experience that the only way to tell a story was to put in the work for accuracy. Accuracy and research were her forte. Slowly, she seemed to be making headway.
She heard Mitch come down the stairs a second before he walked up beside her.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“These are my days for two months.” She splayed her hand in a sweeping gesture above the table. “This stack is about the main people at the publishing house. You know, like the publisher, admin assist, CEO, CFO, editor, people like that.”
“I’m scheduled to talk with Josh and Reese again in about thirty minutes. Can I take that paper upstairs with me? That way, I’ve got something they can be working on.”
“Sure—better yet. I saw a printer in the media room. I’ll make a copy.” She tore the pages on the publishing house hierarchy off the pad and ran to make the copy.
When she came back to the table, Mitch was tapping on a couple of stacks, back and forth, back and forth.
“What do you need?” she asked.
“Can you get me something on the people in these two stacks?” He tapped the papers again. “In thirty minutes?”
“You mean the day before I was fired, and the day before that?”
“Right.”
She shoved the copy she’d made for him in his hand. “Sure. You go back upstairs, and I’ll run something up before your call time.”
“Thanks.” He headed up the stairs.
She quickly wrote out who the people she’d interacted with that day had been in relationship to her assignment. There were only five for the two days. Four of the people had been the same on both days. The one person who was different on the day before she was fired was the informant. The woman who had wanted to talk to her off the record.
After making a copy of her notes for those two days, she hurried up to Mitch’s office. The three men had already started talking, so he quickly scanned in her notes.
“Wait here.” Mitch motioned to the other chair in the small room. “Josh may have questions once he does a quick run of our name recognition program.”
