LITMIR.BIZ

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liked to win. The score between her and Mallory wasn’t quite even—she remained one up due to her flanking maneuver with the photograph—but he’d certainly narrowed her lead.

      He was an annoyingly observant man, though. That was a good quality in a detective, she conceded privately as the elevator carried them to the fifth floor. But tricky in an opponent.

      Fortunately, Nicholas wasn’t in a meeting or otherwise unavailable. Claudia had very little time to chat with his assistant before they were told to go on in, which was probably just as well. Mrs. Peabody was trying to give away puppies.

      Claudia liked Nicholas’s office. The window-walls made it sunny when the weather was clear, and even on a gray November morning like this they imparted a spacious feeling. Nicholas was seated when they entered, a big, dark-haired man with what Claudia liked to call laser eyes—sharp and keen as a scalpel.

      At the moment he was looking decidedly wary. He stood and walked around his desk, holding out his hands. “I’m delighted to see you, of course, but…you haven’t decided Baronessa needs your attention, have you?”

      She chuckled as she took his hands, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek. “Don’t worry. You’ve done too good a job here. There’s nothing for me to fix. Aside from the problems we discussed the other night, that is. Nicholas, this is Ethan Mallory.”

      “Ah. The detective.” Nicholas nodded, but she noticed he held on to her hands long enough to make it unnecessary to shake Ethan’s. “Mr. Mallory. You’re here with questions, I assume.”

      “That, and a request.” He slanted Claudia an amused glance. “Properly vetted by the family’s tame dragon, here.”

      Nicholas smiled. “Don’t bet on the ‘tame’ part.”

      Claudia had no objection to being called a dragon. They were beautiful, powerful beasts, after all, highly intelligent and, in Chinese folklore, the repositories of wisdom. But she didn’t care for tame. “I am civilized, I trust, but tame implies a certain subordination. While I’m perfectly capable of working with others—”

      “Ha,” Nicholas muttered.

      “I’ll admit I have trouble working for others. Shall we sit down to discuss Ethan’s request, or are you on a tight schedule this morning, Nicholas?”

      Nicholas waved at the visitors’ chairs. “By all means, sit down. I can give you a few minutes.”

      They all found their places—Nicholas behind his desk, Claudia and Ethan in the cushy chairs opposite. Nicholas tented his hands on his desk. “So, what is this request?”

      “Two requests, actually,” Ethan said. “First, I need to talk to a few of your people about how the tasting was arranged. Claudia assures me she can get me in to see them, but I figured I should clear it with you, too. Maybe you can answer some of my questions. You must have ordered an internal investigation.”

      Nicholas met her eyes for a moment. She knew what he was thinking—Derrick would be furious if his competence was questioned. Especially by Nicholas. “We did perform an internal investigation. My time’s a little short this morning. It would be faster for you to read a copy of the report.” He buzzed Mrs. Peabody and told her to pull it and make a copy. “If you still have questions after reading that,” he said to Ethan, “you may speak to anyone Claudia approves. I trust her judgment.”

      Ethan’s fingers tapped once on the arm of the chair. “Thanks. I also need to see the personnel file on a former employee—Ed Norblusky.”

      “Norblusky,” Nicholas repeated thoughtfully. “Why?”

      Ethan repeated what he’d told Claudia about Ed Norblusky. Claudia listened with half an ear, willing to let him make his own case and intervene only as needed.

      She should have told him it was no business of his how she smiled. Good grief, most people had a whole wardrobe of smiles—grins, grimaces, openmouthed laughter, polite smiles, wry little twitches. Crinkly eyes probably caused wrinkles, anyway.

      She certainly wasn’t so petty as to begrudge her cousin his good fortune. Nicholas been through a rough time, first with the girlfriend from hell, then learning—two years after the fact—that he was a father. He deserved the happiness he’d found with Gail.

      And their couple-ness did not make her feel left out. Not really. Maybe there was a twinge of discomfort now and then. Just because one was strong didn’t mean one wanted to be strong every minute, or alone every night…but she’d learned her lesson. When a woman of twenty-eight couldn’t sustain a relationship past the four-month mark, it was obvious she had a serious flaw.

      Claudia believed in facing her own deficits straightforwardly. After her last romantic disaster—the one with Drake—she’d done quite a bit of soul-searching. In the end, there had been only one possible conclusion: her sexual antennae were tuned to the wrong channel.

      Strong, take-charge men revved Claudia’s motor. Men who ran businesses or rose to the top of their chosen fields, deliciously male beings who could match her wit for wit, strength for strength.

      Men who didn’t want her back.

      It had come as a shock when she finally accepted that the kind of men she was attracted to were in turn attracted to female pillows—soft women, squishy and delicate. Women who, by contrast, made their men feel even more hard and strong and male. Exceptions did exist, but were so rare as to be statistically negligible. Look at Tony’s new wife, or either of Max’s wives—the one he’d been rebounding from when he and Claudia were together, or the one he married a month after they broke up. Then there was that bit of fluff Hal had been sleeping with on the side…no, she couldn’t count that. Hal belonged outside her test sample. Infidelity was the symptom of a weak character, not a strong one.

      After Hal had come Drake. She’d been in recovery from that humiliation when she’d finally woken up and smelled the testosterone. All of Drake’s other romantic liaisons had been Pillow Women. Every one except her. That should have warned her, but she hadn’t wanted to see the truth until she’d overheard him at a party.

      He’d been planning to dump her. He’d laughed at her with his friend, and said horrible, humiliating things about her lack of femininity, her—well, never mind. She’d been particularly foolish about Drake, but she’d learned her lesson.

      The men she wanted sometimes did want her back, but they got over it. This made for a pretty good-sized flaw, but she had a plan. She—

      “Claudia?” Nicholas waved a hand back and forth. “Where did you go?”

      “Oh. Sorry.” Frantically she cast her mind back over the last minute or so and grabbed a wisp of memory before it evaporated. “Respecting an employee’s privacy is all very well, Nicholas, but this is a criminal investigation.”

      “Yes, but Mr. Mallory is not the police. As I just pointed out.”

      Whoops. She’d missed that.

      Ethan was leaning back in his chair, his legs outstretched, as at ease as if they were talking about football. Or traffic. It was not the reaction most men had to Nicholas. They were such muscular legs, too…. Behave, she told herself firmly.

      “I can give you my word,” Ethan said, “that nothing I learn from a personnel file will be used unless it bears directly on the crimes I’m investigating.”

      Damn that deep, rumbly voice of his. It seemed to vibrate things inside of her. “That seems reasonable, Nicholas.”

      His brows twitched up. “Trust him, do you?”

      “Oh, no. I’m sure he’s a good liar. He would have to be, in his profession, wouldn’t he? But what earthly use could he make of Ed Norblusky’s employment history outside of this investigation? I don’t think we need to worry about him selling the man’s phone number to a telemarketer.”

      “No telemarketers,” Ethan said dryly, “I promise.”

      Nicholas

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