“Don’t lie to yourself. You’re scared to take on a story that sounds like it’s going to generate a lot of commentary.”
Nadine shot to her feet. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she snapped. She stood up and grabbed a dart to throw at the board. How dare he? “It has nothing to do with being scared,” she called over her shoulder, throwing another dart.
“Sure.”
“What do you mean, ‘sure’?”
“I don’t believe you.” He said it like a fact, not a challenge.
She came around the couch, crossed her arms, and stared at him. “It doesn’t matter what you believe because I know. It’s not the story for me, okay?”
Murasaki came up, and Wes ran a hand down her back, not saying anything. The cat’s contented purr filled the space between them as Nadine glared at the wall, half-acknowledged thoughts tumbling through her head. She didn’t want… It was all Lisanne’s… It wasn’t like she…
Then she threw herself on the uncomfortable couch and kicked out her legs.
“Fine. I was jealous and then I was mad she had the nerve to say I needed her help and under it all I was scared and I took it out on her rather than admit it.” Each word came out faster and faster until by the end she was stumbling over them.
“Makes sense,” Wes said.
“Does it?”
“Yeah.” Wes snatched his hand away as Murasaki tried to bite him. “Like, you’re not winning any friendship awards here, and it’s not fair to Lisanne, but it’s a natural reaction. I get it.”
“It’s all on me. She’s trying to help, and I’m being a jerk about it.”
“It’s not help if it’s unwanted, and you went through a bad situation,” said Wes. “She’s trying to fix something that’s not her thing to fix.” He looked as if his own words surprised him.
Nadine sat up. “It sounds like you have experience with this.”
Wes shrugged uncomfortably. “What are you going to do?”
Nadine didn’t press, not wanting to put him on the spot. “Leave it for now, because we have work to do here.”
“You’ll have to talk to her sooner or later.”
“Later.” She didn’t want to lose Lisanne’s friendship, but she also didn’t want to deal with it until she was calmer.
Nadine’s phone buzzed before he could reply, and she looked down to see who it was.
***
When Nadine glanced at the screen, her eyes widened, and Wes did his best not to react when he remembered what they were doing the last time she wore that expression. While he appreciated the new shift in their relationship, he had to admit it was a little distracting.
“Monica emailed back with her number,” she said.
That wiped the dirty thoughts out of his head. Or mostly until she tugged her sundress back in place. “Let’s figure out what we want to ask so we’re prepared,” he said, eyes on her bare shoulder.
It took them ten minutes to hash out their questions, but when Nadine dialed the number, it was to find that Monica Olway had little patience for a soft approach.
“The man is a worm,” she said bluntly after Nadine explained who they were and a bit about what they were looking into. Monica had agreed to be on speaker with Wes but didn’t allow them to tape or putanything on the record, claiming she’d been burned before.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Nadine asked. Wes leaned forward, eager to hear Monica’s story.
“I was his executive assistant for a year,” Monica said. “And yeah, I got the job because I exaggerated on my résumé, but who doesn’t? I was good. Ask anyone. Anyway, I was working late one night, and he comes up and he says to me, ‘Monica, you know Ian Ali,’ and I say yes, because he’s in accounting over at procurement, and I knew everyone. Excuse my bragging.” She took a breath and kept going. “So he says to me—Senator Wilson, not Ian—he says to me, ‘Monica, I want you to follow him and see what he does.’ And I say, ‘Why?’ because that makes no sense, right? And the senator, he says he thinks Ian is stealing and giving the money to someone, and he wants to know who. And I say, ‘Ian?’ And he says, ‘Yeah.’”
“Why did the senator want to know?”
Monica snorted. “Because he’s a worm. It’s not his business. He could have told Ian’s manager to take care of it. He wanted dirt on that poor man, probably to threaten him the same way he did me. I don’t know how he found out about my résumé thing.”
