Chapter Three
“Well, I’m waiting,” Micah said, entirely befuddled by the woman spinning slowly in the chair on the far side of his desk. If she wasn’t doing that, her knees jumped up and down, or her gaze bounced around at every detail of the room.
Maggie wasn’t kidding about Darcy being unusual. She bordered on fascinating.
“I want to know why you’re really here, and I expect an answer.”
Her sneaker-clad feet dragged on the carpet, and she stopped, her flirty haircut throwing a few strands forward onto her pink cheeks. Trying to use her cuteness factor against him. He hated to admit it, but it was effective. Maybe it was because he’d been without the naked company of a woman for so long. Yeah, that had to be it.
“So, here’s the deal,” she said finally, tugging at her beige Sherlock Holmes T-shirt that was too large to reveal much about the body beneath. “I figure we both have something the other wants,” she continued. “As for me, there’s a specific sort of news I want to cover, and my douche of a boss won’t let me near it unless you to talk to me.”
That husky voice of hers rushed his ears like audible candy. He imagined how it would sound in the dark as she rode him into oblivion. If nothing else, she’d give him a fantasy or two. “What sort of news?”
“Your foundation gives a voice to those without one, and I want to do the same, only here in the city. In case you haven’t noticed, Yonge Street is full of kids with nowhere else to go. A lot of them are getting picked up by the drug cartels as mules, according to my source. They’re lost, invisible, and their stories need to be told so they can find their way home, too.” She sat back abruptly, as if startled by her own fervor.
Was it rehearsed or genuine? Micah was beginning to understand how she’d won Maggie over. “So what are you proposing, exactly?”
Her pupils dilated, darkening the shade of her eyes. “Let me write a feature piece on the foundation, including only enough details about what happened to you in Colombia to make sure everyone reads the article, hopefully stopping the water-cooler speculation about it. And believe me, there’s a lot of speculation. Show them the man; direct them to your cause instead of to the pain you’re entitled to deal with in private. If I get it right, you get your life back. And if you’re the guy I hope you are, maybe we can be allies in this fight.”
He didn’t trust what she was telling him despite some distant part of him beginning to want to. “That actually sounds like the truth, and I can sniff out liars better than most—a necessary business evil—but reporters lie for a living. Are you a master manipulator? I’m asking because you’re not what I expected after skimming through your articles this afternoon.”
She slouched back and dropped her gaze to her fingers. “I’m a terrible liar, thank you very much. I open my mouth, and unedited truth comes out. One of the reasons I’m still in a basement cubicle.”
All at once, he felt like a bastard. Her tone hinted at a raw nerve he’d poked his clumsy fingers into. “If that’s true, you must have a hard time keeping friends.” He spoke from experience. He’d never dealt much in truth, because lies got him everything he wanted. In that prison camp, he’d made a vow to change that aspect of himself.
“Other than a couple of lifelong besties who appreciate my candor, I don’t do friends.” As her gaze lifted, her lips parting and cheeks flushing, she added, “I should probably mention that I don’t do acquaintances either, or rich playboys, no matter how charming and pretty they happen to be.”
“You say that like I invited you to help me test the sturdiness of my desk.” He patted the surface, spreading the few items to the edges to see what she’d do. Like her, he could read people and play them to his advantage. “You’re flirting in your own way, even as you insinuate the opposite.” If she’d seen the extent of his scars, she’d have changed her tactics.
“I am not flirting.” For moments, she watched his movements, her green sneakers clicking their heels together. “I’m just making it clear that I’m not interested in becoming another nick on your bedpost.”
Something more was going on in that head of hers than she let on. She was playing him, and he’d make her admit it by pissing her off—something he was a master at. “Tell me,” he said, making no attempt to flatten the condescension from his tone, “do you avoid makeup and high fashion to protest the era of plastic women, or because you don’t know how to wear it?”
Her mouth opened before it clapped shut. “This is me, take me or leave me, you big jerk. I’m not out to impress anyone with what I look like. I’ll make my mark on the world through my actions and values.” She settled back in her chair and crossed her arms. “How will you make yours?”
He frowned, studying her set mouth and raised brow, hating that he scrambled for an answer to her challenge. “I thought that would be obvious.” She was bold and tenacious—two qualities he didn’t often find in the opposite sex.
Stroking his thumb over his mouse, he imagined Darcy’s delicate fingers in its place. They held the power to destroy him through a few key presses, but maybe if he dusted off his charm, they’d scratch the sexual itch eating at him since she’d walked in the door instead. And the allure of a paparazzi-free life was too large to ignore. Maggie thought this woman could make it happen. He’d be free to host foundation events as he was supposed to. Nobody knew how to make the rich part with their money like he did, and it took a lot of cash to support his staff of foreign investigators.
“Before I decide whether or not to grant this interview, I want to know a few things,” he said.
“Sure thing. Fire away.” Instead of fidgeting harder, as he expected, Darcy drew up her knees and hugged them, the heels of her sneakers perched on the edge of her seat. A strange thing for a grown woman to do. It amused him to know he made her nervous.
“You said people speculate about what happened to me. I want to know your theory.” A journalist would have a wilder imagination than most, and he needed to know if she had any facts mixed up in her fiction.
“I’ve been trying not to speculate,” she said, but he didn’t believe her. “You went to Colombia on a business trip and got snatched up. I’m thinking wrong place, wrong time.”
He flattened his hands on the desk as she leaned toward him, staring harder than he liked, as if trying to crawl into his darkness with him. “And then what?” he said, an angry waver in his voice.
Lids falling low, she shook her head, as if seeing his memories and fighting them off. “Then you saw something, did something, or something was done to you, and it made you look long and hard at the man you were. Instead of cowering in the corner and waiting to die the way most of us would have, you grew some major balls, grabbed all of your fellow captives, and got the hell out.”
She tilted her head, scrutinizing him from a different angle. “I don’t know who came back from that trip, but it wasn’t the guy who has more conquests than Alexander the Great and used to frequent the club scene with a hot blonde in one hand and a bottle of booze in the other. Before you left, you had a questionable moral code in business and pleasure, and now all your energy goes into helping others. My theory, Mr. Laine, is that you’re Iron Man without the spiffy red suit.”
Trying not to crush his own fingers in his tightening fists, he said, “I’m no hero, so if that’s the story you’re after, you won’t find it here. Nobody could possibly understand what really happened that day, especially not you.”
“That’s why I’m here, to understand.”
Needing an escape from her patient scrutiny, he spun his laptop on the desk for her to see, her blog page still open. “You’ve given me your theories about me, so now it’s my turn. I’m trying to reconcile the woman in this picture with you. Innocent, carefree smile, a sense of optimism. I spent the ten minutes before you arrived flipping through your posts. Four years ago, you talked about dreams and books. Your more recent articles are heartfelt and insightful, but there’s a period in the middle where you wrote about how modern communications are chipping away at the pillars of society.
“I’m quite sure the one titled, ‘Disposable You,’—a cynical rant about society’s growing need for instant gratification and inability to keep long-term relationships—was directed at me, since you used one of my photos from a gala event I attended. Something happened to you between when this photo was taken and now. Someone disappointed you, broke your heart, maybe. Was it a man who shook your faith, Miss Delacorte? I don’t think it was me, because I would have remembered being with someone as energetic as you.”
Although she gave him a blank expression, she tore her focus from him and put it back on the photos along his wall. “I told you to call me Darcy, and I think you’ve failed to grasp how this works. I’m the journalist, and you’re the man of mystery. My personal issues are not on the agenda.”
Perhaps this would work after all, and she’d given him the insurance he’d need to make sure she didn’t pull any underhanded shit on him. “Oh, but they will be if you want anything from me. I’m trying to figure out if you’re genuine or a brilliant manipulator. I have no use for the latter, but if you really are what you claim, then I’ll consider your offer.” He mulled over what he’d said, then added, “With limits.” If he hadn’t lost his charm, they’d enjoy each other’s company for a while, too, hopefully between the sheets.
“What do you want from me?” Fear clouded those sunny eyes now, but behind it, that same intense wonder simmered.
Secrets to hold you to your word.
“It seems rather convenient that I’m the stepping-stone for you to cover the local fallout of the drug trade after I was also a victim of it. That’s a pretty narrow focus for a journalist. Are you trying to manufacture common ground between us?”
“I swear I’m not. That’s not my only interest, just the first item on my agenda and has nothing to do with your experience.”
“Uh huh.”
She came to the edge of her seat, wringing her hands together. “Let me write this story. You have final say on what goes in and what doesn’t, and if you’ve read my blog, you know I’d never use another person’s wounds as a rung to advance my career. I really believe we can help each other.”
So stubborn, with a drive to match his. Maggie thought Darcy could pull off an article without ruining him, and it wasn’t like he had to share anything but sugar-coated bullet points from Colombia. The image of the tiny brown-eyed girl from the case file haunted his mind again. For her, for all the others out there waiting, he had to do this. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t make Darcy work for it.