Page 37 of Colton's Secret Weapon
And slid the casserole into the oven to the sound of Mitchell’s feet on the creaky stairs. Smiling. Thanking her stars for sending her the helpmate they had.
The man had a deeper understanding of life.
He just didn’t know he had it.
And she was okay with that.
The morning kept Mitchell busy. Dove, he noticed, not so much. She tried engaging when something came up that could use herattention, or when someone directly approached her. But for the most part, she sat on the floor of her father’s office—dressed in a long flowing burgundy, pink and white skirt, and a long-sleeved pink crop top—and made some phone calls.
She didn’t go out on the docks at all.
Or interact with customers.
Mitchell didn’t blame her. He actually admired her for being there at all. And appreciated her attention to detail when her focus was needed.
But while she didn’t go outside, he, on the other hand, spent a good bit of his time on the docks. He’d dressed accordingly, in jeans and a flannel shirt, rather than the suit he’d worn his first day of lawyering at St. James Boats. Hard to believe that only a few days had passed since then.
In some ways he felt like a completely different man. Freer. Which made absolutely no sense, so he pushed the unusual contemplation aside. Disregarding it as woo-woo, a result of the company he’d been keeping, not based in his own reality.
He spent a couple of hours taking a much deeper look at Whaler’s books—finding the accounting to be nothing like he’d seen before, but once he figured out the old sea captain’s process, he found the entries to be in fairly good order. Consistent.
The business was dying a slow death. But a clearly delineated one. So seeing, he was quickly able to ascertain weaknesses and formulate possible solutions.
If Whaler made it back and got sober, he could have the place running a profit in very little time. Two very bigifs.
Neither of which were looking to be likely possibilities.
The better bet would be to get the place in shape, to show its profitability and then put it up for sale. With the hope of finding a buyer who wouldn’t be intimidated by Brad Fletcher. A conversation he intended to have with Dove over lunch.
Because there was long-term good news in there. And he was particularly eager to give it to her. The woman took on so much. Tried so hard.
And was holding on by a thread—made clear to him by the conversation she’d instigated after his apology in the kitchen that morning. Capitalizing on the change of topic from threats and possible death to a topic that often resulted in extreme pleasure.
Could be she’d been messing with him to cover up her embarrassment.
Or, more likely, she had been using the momentary, very unfortunate lapse of protocol between them as a distraction from the terrifying disappearance of her father.
Either way, it was up to him to make certain that he was never again in a position where he was turned on by her. And absolutely not when he was underdressed enough for her to pick up on that fact. He was the lawyer. The man she was in the process of hiring to help straighten out a very grim situation.
She was the victim.
He’d rather go off the grid and never have contact with another human being for the rest of his life than take advantage of a woman who’d come to him for help.
To further victimize Dove St. James in any way.
Stepping outside the office just after eleven to take a call from Stuart, his loyal and hardworking paralegal, he walked up to the parking lot in front of the marina so he could discuss other clients without being overheard.
And was just in time to see a man getting out of an expensive-looking sedan and then, glancing in Mitchell’s direction, get right back in and pull off the lot. The man had been dressed in fishing gear.
It was possible he’d just forgotten something. Or suddenly taken ill.
Mitchell’s mind was heading loudly in another direction. Telling Stuart he’d call him back, Mitchell pressed the contact icon on his screen for his brother and asked for an image of Brad Fletcher to be sent over to him. It arrived almost immediately, with Eli still on the line, and Mitchell was almost certain Brad was the man he’d seen.
The car had been at a wrong angle for him to have gotten a look at the license plate. He hadn’t been thinking along those lines at the time, in any case.
“I’ll get with Welding, find out what’s going on with the team watching Fletcher,” Eli said and then, telling Mitchell to stick close to Dove in case Fletcher tried to contact her again, he quickly rang off.
Eli had problems of his own, Mitchell knew. His cousin Spence and Hetty Amos, a sea pilot for the Colton family adventure business, had stumbled over a dead woman in the woods, only partially buried, with her hair and her left hand wearing a large diamond engagement ring still visible. Eli had been assigned the case, and so far, other than being certain the woman’s death had been no accident, he had nothing substantial to help him solve the murder.
