Page 32 of Dark Secrets

James dropped his phone onto the counter and looked into her eyes, cupping her cheek in his palm.

“If you’re about to apologize again, please don’t,” Delaney said when he opened his mouth to speak.

He smiled. “I was going to say I didn’t invite you to stay here as some kind of master plan to kiss you or…”

“Or?” she prompted.

“Or get you into my bed.” He glanced over her shoulder to steady himself and blew out a breath. “I want you to stay, Delaney, only so I know you’re safe. But if you want to leave, then you should do that. I won’t stop you or try to talk you into doing anything you don’t want to do.”

“I think…I think I’ll stay. For a little while longer.”

He nodded, pressing a lingering kiss to her forehead because he didn’t trust himself not to drag her down to the kitchen floor if he kissed her anywhere else. His phone signaled an incoming message. A shipment had arrived and was being loaded for delivery to one of their warehouses.

“I have to go to work.”

“But the pub is closed today.”

He eased himself away from her and tucked his phone into his pocket. “My cousin is Declan Callahan.” He figured she already knew that; she was likely to have done her research. “Callahan Corporation is kind of a family thing. Are you okay here on your own today?”

She turned to watch him cross to the door. Wrapping her arms around her waist, she nodded.

“If you want to go out, don’t worry about locking this.” He gestured to the front door, stuffing his feet into his boots and bending to tie them. “No one should be coming by today anyway, and the kitchen door downstairs is secure enough. I’ll be back later tonight. I’ll bring something for dinner.”

He lifted his coat off the rack and jogged down the stairs before he changed his mind and tasked someone else with handling the shipment. Plenty of men were just as capable as he was of logging inventory. At least this way, with a little distance between them, he could pretend he wasn’t already planning on sleeping with her. Consequences and unspoken rules be damned.

ChapterFourteen

“Excuse me, I hate to trouble you, but have you seen this woman?” He flashed the homemade missing persons poster and offered what he hoped was a sad, endearing smile.

The old woman slipped bifocals out of her front pocket and held them up to her face to glance at the photo. “No, sorry. Can’t say I have.”

When she turned to walk away, he jogged after her. “Are you sure? She would have been here around the end of November. Maybe she worked for you?”

The woman didn’t even give the paper in his hand a second look. “She definitely didn’t work here. We’re full up with college students that time of year. Sorry.”

She turned to help a nearby customer, and he had to force himself not to crush the paper into a ball and lob it at the back of her head. This was his fifth business just today, and still he was getting nowhere. Either the bitch had gotten herself a new face, or the client’s information was bad, and she’d never been in Ann Arbor in the first place.

He pushed out of the yuppie clothing store and hunched into his jacket against the wind. It didn’t help that the weather in this godforsaken state made pounding the pavement with her photo absolutely miserable.

The last two shops on this block were equally unhelpful, though one man did click his tongue and offer up some sympathy for his pretty young wife. It had been a trial not to roll his eyes at that. People saw what they wanted to see, though, and the more sympathetic he could make himself, the better.

Climbing back into his truck, he folded the flyer and shoved it into his pocket. When he arrived, he started with the businesses closest to the spot his client gave him, showing her picture to all the store owners and managers in the vicinity. He’d come up empty.

It hadn’t been that long since she’d been there according to his client, only a little less than two months. But it was a busy college town, and with the holiday rush and people’s memories notoriously shit at things like this, nothing was popping. After the first few days, he’d drawn a grid over the area and meticulously visited each shop and restaurant, trying to find someone who recognized her.

If this was where she was spotted on foot, odds are she was coming from somewhere nearby. If he went with his gut—which he often did because it rarely steered him wrong—he would hazard a guess that she worked in one of these shops. He’d find her eventually.

Pulling away from the curb, he kept his eyes peeled for a place to eat. He needed to cool his heels somewhere with a cold beer and a good burger and regroup before he tried again this afternoon.

On the corner of the next block was a bar and grille, and he pulled his truck into a parking spot between a Prius and an ugly orange hatchback with bumper stickers likeSave the Earth: She’s the Only One We Have!plastered on the back.

His lip curled as he got out; it took every ounce of willpower he had not to ding the door. No need to draw attention to himself just because he was frustrated. Jumping the curb, he held the door open for a couple coming out and claimed a seat at the bar.

While he waited for the barman to finish up with a group at the other end, he dug a map out of his inside pocket and spread it out on the bar. As convenient as people said GPS was, it got him lost more often than not. He preferred working with a hard copy map and finding his own way around.

He used a red pen to tick off the stores he’d struck out on today. The list was dwindling, and he really didn’t want to go home to his client empty-handed. It wasn’t a fucking option.

“What can I get you?”

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