“… something else more important to do.” I felt like such an impetuous brat, both with my tone and with interrupting him. I took a deep breath and tried to put my therapist's hat back on.
“No,” he replied defensively, before sighing. “Yes,” he admitted.
“And what was more important than trying to save your marriage?”
“Being sure that I wasn’t walking from a snake’s den into a hornet’s nest.” He laid a file folder on the table from a laptop case I hadn’t noticed in the seat beside him.
“And what is that?” My therapist's hat started to melt.
“Your file, Miss Davenport.”
“You have a file on me. I’m the hornet’s nest?”
“I thought you might be. My marriage to Scarlet proved to me I have a terrible sense of gauging a woman’s integrity.”
I stared at the file. It seemed awfully thick for a dossier on me. It was at least a half an inch thick. I figured any file on me might contain a half a dozen sheets—DMV information, credit report, credit score—things a high-tech security guy could get his hands on without my written permission to do so. This contained much more than that.
“So you dug into my past? For what?”
“You see, Miss Davenport, my indiscretion with you at the Gentleman’s Club, wasn’t supposed to happen. I had ditched my security team, found my way to the nearest place that sold a drink, and found myself sitting at the stage of a strip club. I just wanted a drink or two and a chance to clear my head. Work some stuff out.”
“Indiscretion. I was an indiscretion?” I sat back in my chair, crossing my arms over my chest. My anger flared up, and I didn’t know what I was thinking or saying. I sounded like a jealous girlfriend who’d been ghosted for two weeks. He just came to me for therapy. I wasn’t his girlfriend, but being thought of as an indiscretion was like pouring salt into a wound.
“Poor choice of words, Miss Davenport.” He put up his hands as if to shield himself from my simmering fury. “More like a synchronicity.”
“So why the file?” I still refused to pick up the file and look through it. I didn’t really want to know what he had in there.
“I had to be sure, before I came back to work with you, that you were who you seemed to be in your office and not the woman who I met at the club.” He seemed to pick his words carefully.
“What if I’m both? What’s wrong with who you met at the club?” More simmering bubbles.
“Nothing was wrong with that woman at the club. She was…”
“Don’t say it. You have one minute to tell me why I’m here and what you want.” I tried to shoot lasers at him with my green eyes, but I didn’t believe I pulled it off. My ex had always said I looked more cute than menacing when I got mad.
“Miss Davenport. I looked into your past, trying to figure out if I could trust you. I still want to work with you, fulfill my contract with you, and get to where I can divorce Scarlet. Everything in your file points to the fact that you keep your word, handle difficult situations well, and are good at your job. Your professional reputation is impeccable, and that’s just what I need. I just can’t have it come to light what happened between us at the club. That could screw a lot of things up in my life.” He sat back and took a deep breath. “I’m at your mercy, Miss Davenport. What do you say?”
He managed to look powerful and act vulnerable at the same time as he gave me his pitch. It felt a little too much like a pitch, though. My intuition told me that this was a bad idea, and that there was something I was missing. I couldn’t fight my curiosity to look at my file. Perhaps it would help me decide.
“May I look at the file?” I turned my gaze to the file folder.
“Certainly. Please do.”
I picked up the file and opened it up. My professional photo from my website and a sheet of basic information was stapled to the left side: birth date, address, phone numbers, height, weight, education, marriages, and residences for the last twenty years. The right side had some sheets detailing business records, my divorce papers, including some transcripts, pages from my high school yearbook, college records, professional certifications, and some personal interviews. My best and my worst moments summarized better than Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates could put together.
“You didn’t have to waste a tree for this, you know. You’ve heard of this thing called computers, haven’t you?” My comment was acerbic.
“My team is thorough.”
“Team? So you’re not the only one who has been reading up on my life?”
“I entrusted this to my best security analyst.”
“Trace?”
Dirk smirked. “Trace specializes in things more mechanical. Machinery, cars, guns.”
“Oh, so, another jar-head did the dirty work for you? How pleasant.” I continued to ruffle through the information from the personal interviews. The last name on the list made my heart jump.
