“If I’m ready, I’ll leave you a message. I really think I’ll be ready.”
“All right then, talk to you tomorrow.” As she hung up, Kip could hear the other woman saying something about dinner.
Was it Diane Morales? And if so, what did she and Tamara have to talk about again?
Stop it, Kip, she told herself. You are getting needlessly paranoid. Tamara and Diane must have a thousand things to 66
discuss about business. If they were colluding Tamara wouldn’t be so foolish as to let you know she was in touch with Diane.
Besides, there was the no-fraternization rule, and they would both be violating it. Well, if they were embezzlers, why would they care?
She was officially spinning in circles. She was momentarily too dizzy to stand up. Too much data, too much pressure. It was terrifying, after her years of experience, not to know what to do next.
Tam surreptitiously glanced at her watch. She didn’t know how Diane could stand small talk. She’d been the picture of congeniality last night at the library donor cocktail party and tonight she was glad-handing as successfully as Ted with Seattle’s top financial managers. Two nights in a row standing around being polite, but she looked as if she was having the time of her life. Mercedes, who had planned the client appreciation event, was also making effortless chitchat with clients, and if her feet hurt in those elegant suede pumps it didn’t show.
Everyone, in fact, looked as if they were enjoying themselves.
She hoped that her own morose frame of mind was going unnoticed. She couldn’t concentrate on peeled shrimp and eight kinds of artisan cheese.
Diane had found that both the Los Angeles and Chicago offices had had mysterious cancellations but, like Hank, she had so far been given no real answers as to why. Tamara knew it had something to do with the embezzlement and she longed to tell Diane about it, but she knew it compromised Kip’s effectiveness and would rob her of the focus from her primary goals: recovering funds and identifying the thief. Tam had only her own suspicion, even if the link seemed obvious to her.
She touched her face, far less swollen this evening than on Sunday. The bruising was hidden by more makeup than she would normally wear in a year. She trusted Kip Barrett, maybe 67
because the blow hadn’t been a limp slap but an unvarnished, honest message: respect me or pay the consequences.
Kip had sounded tired and tense when she’d spoken with her.
She had put a heavy burden on such petite shoulders but every time she wondered if the burden was too much, her face told her that petite didn’t mean weak.
She pulled her thoughts up short. Kip was an employee, and on assignment. She thought of Kip far too often in other ways, including those brief moments in the elevator when petite was the last adjective she would have used. Others were much better, like warm and strong. It wasn’t the thing to do just because she was bored stiff and she longed for a good night’s sleep. A wrong number had woken her up last night at two in the morning. After that she’d kept startling awake, thinking the phone was ringing again.
“Tamara, sweetie, who is she?”
Nadia Langhorn slipped into the circle of Tam’s arms, leaving Tam little choice but to look down at her. She was aware that the brilliant blue eyes that were the most arresting feature in a delicate, heart-shaped face owed some of their luminous quality to tinted contact lenses, but that was Nadia. She gilded her lily beautifully.
“Who’s who?”
“Ted saw you on Sunday. Don’t be coy.” She looked up at her with a toss of her lustrous black hair. “I was going to ask last night, but not in front of the library people, of course. He said it looked as if you’d been with some snow bunny for the weekend.
Did you take her up to your office to impress her? What else did you do up there?”
Tam hid her relief that Ted hadn’t recognized Kip. “It would be exceedingly ungallant of me to discuss it.”
“You and your pigheaded chivalry,” Nadia said. “I hate you for it, you know.” Her tone was casual, but she leaned into Tam’s side and an affectionate stroke of Tam’s face became sudden pressure on her bruised cheekbone. Tam jerked her head away from the jab of pain.
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“I didn’t get a chance to ask you about that, either, last night.
Did she do that to you? Are you into that sort of fun now?
Dungeons are all the rage. You should come out as a bondage devotee. Sex always trends on Twitter.”
She extricated herself from the entangling arm with a frown of annoyance. “There are clients here, so please stop the snuggling act. No wonder those rumors about us never stop. The bruise was an accident.” That was true enough. She had had no idea that if she grabbed Kip Barrett she’d get punched. Next time she’d get permission first. Next time? What was she thinking about?
Nadia brushed nonexistent lint from the shoulders of Tam’s jacket. “Come back, come back, wherever you are,” she said.
“Sorry, I was thinking about how much I don’t want to be a trending topic on Twitter.”
Nadia pouted. Sometimes Tam didn’t like Nadia at all. But their bond made liking or not liking each other irrelevant.
“Get me something to eat while I powder my nose, would you?”
Tam bowed meekly and headed for the buffet table. She was aware that Nadia’s perfume clung to her, and she found it more cloying than usual. Kip Barrett didn’t wear perfume. She smelled like...Kip.
She drew her breath in sharply. These thoughts had to stop.
Diane appeared at her side, and she swatted the shoulder where Nadia’s face had rested. “She got makeup on your jacket.”
“It’ll come out,” she said.
Diane wrinkled her nose. “Thank goodness. I know she’s not under your skin. She just acts like she is and that annoys me.”
Diane was giving her a speculative look, her gaze focused mostly on the well-hidden bruise. Before Diane could do any more speculating about it, Tam quickly said, “Let’s focus on the clients.”
Nadia arrived to claim the drink. She and Diane made polite small talk that didn’t really hide the fact that they didn’t like each other and quickly moved away in opposite directions. Thank goodness, Tam thought. She was tired of both of them giving her 69
too much scrutiny.
She sipped her drink and took a deep breath. Time to clear her mind of Kip Barrett. She even went so far as to picture putting thoughts of her in a safety deposit box and throwing away the key. Not that it helped.
Having a large double-shot mocha may not have been the wisest decision, given that Kip was already jumpy as heck, but tipping in just the right amount of sweetener and nonfat milk, stirring, tasting, adding a dusting of cinnamon followed by more stirring and tasting all served to calm her nerves. It was likely to be the closest she came to cooking anything all day.
She told herself it wasn’t so much that her stomach clenched every time she considered that Tamara Sterling might be playing cat and mouse with her, but rather that she couldn’t put together any kind of decent report for her very important client. Hours of work and she still didn’t have a sound ETO formulated, plus she had no plan on what to do next other than involve more people.
But she didn’t have to feel so desperate, did she?
But wasn’t desperation a path to inspiration? Desperate measures and all that?
Well, if she was desperate there was one phone number to call, that is, if it still worked. She never knew with Buck.
He answered on the seventh ring. “I’m busy, Barrett.”