“Right.” Chuck pulled the door shut behind him.
After it clicked into place, Luke leaned his palms on the surface of the desk, which made his shoulders look even more muscular. “So you don’t know where your brother is right now?”
“I assume he’s with your sister.” She noticed he hadn’t asked her to sit down. “Where is she?”
A trace of vulnerability touched his blue eyes. “I don’t know.” Then he covered that immediately with bravado. “But my people are on it.”
“I see.” She wasn’t fooled. Worry for his sister was tearing him up inside, but he didn’t want her to know that. “Do your people have a plan of action, then?”
“Of course.” His gaze didn’t waver.
She doubted that he had everything under perfect control or he wouldn’t have made his earlier comment about hoping she’d have some insights. But he was a poker player, and a damned good one, apparently. Aside from that first unguarded comment, he wasn’t going to let her see him sweat.
The truth was that she needed this guy and his people, whoever they might be. Although Vaughn was sympathetic to her situation, Bryce had hooked up with a Dalton. At this point, no Cartwright, including Vaughn, was particularly enthusiastic about saving Bryce from himself, and they were thrilled that Luke’s little sister was causing problems.
Giselle decided diplomacy might be the right way to go. “Look, you obviously have resources and connections that I lack. I’m very eager to find my brother and convince him to come back to San Francisco with me.”
“Then our purposes are aligned, because I want him on the next plane bound for ’Frisco. I think he’s responsible, directly or indirectly, for this latest move of Cynthia’s. He’s a bad influence on my little sister.”
Diplomacy might not be the answer, after all. “It takes two to tango, Mr. Dalton.”
His glance was assessing. “Do you tango, Ms. Landry?”
“Some.”
“Then you’re aware that the man leads and the woman follows.”
He’d hit upon one of her pet peeves about ballroom dancing, the tango included, but she managed a comeback anyway. “That presumes she already knows the steps.”
His gaze locked with hers. “Ah, but an experienced male dancer can encourage an inexperienced female dancer to try things she’d never attempt on her own. How old is your brother, Ms. Landry?”
“Thirty.”
“What a coincidence. So am I. So I can speak with some authority when I say that your brother’s experience with the dance between a man and a woman is far greater than that of my little sister, who is only twenty-two. He has an unfair advantage.”
Giselle fought to control her temper. “My brother would never try to convince your sister to do something she didn’t want to do. If she’s pulled a vanishing act, then it was entirely her—”
“Who told you that?”
She’d prefer not to reveal her connection to the Cartwrights, but neither did she want to get caught in a lie. And Luke Dalton had people, so eventually he’d learn where she was staying and figure it out. But she’d postpone that moment as long as she could. “It’s all over town,” she said.
“Is that so? When did you arrive?”
“Today.”
“Then you must have been swinging on that grapevine from the moment you hit the tarmac at McCarran. Come on, Ms. Landry. You have a connection here in town, somebody who gets the local dirt and filled you in. Who is it?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“That’s up to you, but I’ll find out sooner or later. You’ve implied that we might want to join forces, and being evasive with information isn’t a good way to build trust.”
That made her laugh. “You aren’t about to trust me. You’re convinced my brother’s leading your sister astray, so don’t make it sound like we’re going to take some Fellowship of the Ring oath of solidarity.”
A flash of amusement transformed his hard features for a brief moment and gave her a glimpse of someone else, someone she might like much better. But then it was gone and the poker face reappeared.
“All right.” His tone was mild, but the look in his eyes was intent. “Maybe it doesn’t matter how you found out about my sister’s plans.”
Oh, yes, it does. But if he was willing to let it drop, great. Time to go on the offensive. “Why did she decide to disappear?”
That seemed to take some of the wind out of his sails. He started to sit down and stopped himself, as if only then realizing that she remained standing. “Please, sit down. I should have invited you to do so earlier.”
“Perhaps you weren’t sure whether you would end up having me thrown out.”
He sighed and gestured to one of two upholstered chairs in front of his desk. “I would like to think I haven’t descended to that level.”
She took the right-hand chair. “What level?”
“Throwing a woman out of my office.”
Her feminist instincts wouldn’t let that pass. “Have you ever thrown a man out of your office?”
“Once or twice. But—”
“Then if I offend you, feel free to throw me out. I’d consider it a matter of principle and would be upset if you didn’t.”
He stared at her as if she were speaking in tongues.
She groaned. “Lord help me, I’m dealing with a throwback. I should have realized it when you started describing the whole dancing routine. You truly believe that men were created to lead and women were created to follow, don’t you?”
His poker face disappeared. “No, damn it! I was just trying to explain how a guy of thirty could easily influence a young woman of—”
“Have you seen the research on maturation, Dalton? Females mature much faster than males. I’d say a twenty-two-year-old female is operating about even with a thirty-year-old male, if not slightly ahead of him.”
Abandoning his stoic expression completely, he leaned across the desk and pointed a finger at her. “Screw your research. I know my sister, and she’s not all that worldly. She may be a semester away from graduating magna cum laude, but she doesn’t know squat about—”
“Magna cum laude?” Giselle realized she might have to take this potential matchup more seriously. Bryce loved brainy females. “From where?” She hoped it was some no-name college with a total enrollment of five hundred.
“Yale. But that’s beside the point.”
“Actually, it’s not beside the point at all.” Giselle became more worried by the second. “She must be very goal-oriented.”
“Trust me, she is. Her goal used to be graduating with honors from Yale so she could make our father proud. Now that he’s gone, she doesn’t want to go back. She says that was his dream for her, and even attending classes there now would be too sad and painful.”
“Poor kid.”
“That’s what I thought, too! I was ready to cut her some slack. I figured if she gave it a few months, she could manage to go back for the fall semester. She was so close! But she said no, she wasn’t going back at all.”
“She could change her mind.”
He shook his head. “I doubt it.”
Giselle made a calculated guess. “You’re thwarting her new goal, aren’t you? And that’s why she’s disappeared.”
He looked as if he’d been Tasered. “My God.” His voice dropped to a whisper as he stared at a point beyond her left shoulder. “That’s it.” Slowly his gaze returned to lock with hers. “Thank you.”
She shrugged. “Good guess.”
“Brilliant guess. You don’t even know her, and you’ve hit upon the most important part of her personality. What are you, a shrink?”
“Accountant.”
His eyebrows lifted. “No kidding? You don’t look like—”