Chapter Four
Darcy watched Micah for minutes after he stood behind his desk and stared at her without a word. His hands were deep in his pockets, and his expression was changing too fast for her to keep up with it. The wheels were turning in that sharp mind, and worry urged her out of the chair and toward the door.
What was he thinking? She shouldn’t have told him what kind of articles she wanted to write, too naïve to consider how it might have appeared like a ploy to gain his trust. Thankfully, she’d left out the part about her own scars, or he might have demanded to see them for himself. It seemed they had two things in common, and beyond that, they lived in different universes.
Her skin turned cold at the thought of him near the scars on her back. The first and last person to touch them had been her ex-boyfriend. They’d been dating for five years before the accident with her grandmother’s horse that almost killed her, and he’d walked away after realizing she was ruined.
Darcy squirmed as Micah continued to stare. “Would you say something? I can’t tell what you’re thinking.” She winced, silently cursing herself for admitting it out loud.
A long, deep sigh leaked out of him as he perched his rear on the corner of his desk. “I have a proposition for you. This is a one-time offer, and it’s only valid until one or both of us leaves this office.”
“Hey, wait a minute. If you’re pulling out the used car salesman tricks before you even tell me what your deal is, then forget it.”
His soft chuckling curled around her, tightening his snare even further. “You’ll say yes. Now, are you going to let me tell you my price for this interview?”
“Oh, hey, if I had a money tree kicking around my backyard, I’d give it a shake, but I don’t have a lot of spare cash.”
“I don’t want your money.”
Then what did that leave? She squinted at his smirk, both enticed and repelled by the direction she thought he was heading. “In case you missed it before, I’m not having sex with you.” What the hell was his problem?
“Oh, lucerito, I like how you think. If you come to my bed, it’ll be because you want to be there and for no other reason. No, what I’m proposing is far more intimate than the primal dance of sweaty, naked flesh.”
What did lucerito mean? It better not have been something insulting, or worse, some corny term of endearment. He must have turned up the thermostat again when she wasn’t looking, despite his claims of preferring a chill in the air, because she was beginning to sweat a little between the girls.
He pressed one hand down on the desk into a pose that made him all arrogant lines and temptation. Darkness shadowed his stare, the kind a man brought out when he was certain a woman’s clothes were about to decorate his floor. “I’m leaving for my cottage up north in the morning. You’ll join me there for a week-long interview.”
What? “No way, I’m not going anywhere with you for a week.”
He went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “I’m offering a double-edged sword, and, as I said, I’ll only offer it to you and just this once. For every question you ask of me, I’ll ask something of you that’s of equal value. The bigger the wound of mine you want to explore, the higher my price will be.” His shoulder raised in an elegant version of a shrug. “It’s a fair deal, and we both win, as you said.”
Oh, hell. This was not what she’d signed up for. “I told you, my personal stuff is none of your business.”
“Spoken by the woman who wants to walk my nightmares with me.” As he moved past her to the door, his smile grew.
“Where are you going? I haven’t agreed to anything.” If he left, the deal would be done one way or the other. She needed time to think about what it meant, and those fight-or-flight instincts were still trying to tear her in two.
“You have agreement written all over you.” Hand on the knob, he turned toward her, that wintery gaze licking her up and down. “Your pupils are dilated, and you’re not telling me to piss off. No, I think I had you the moment you burst into my office. Pack lightly. We’ll be going by boat.”
Mind racing to catch up, she paced back and forth on the carpet, keeping a good distance between them. “Give me a second to think, dammit. Where would we be going? Who decides the value of what you ask me? You have no idea what’s important to me and what isn’t.”
“We’re going to my cottage, as I said. Let me know when it sinks in. And I decide.”
Halting abruptly, she frowned, recognizing her own lines thrown back at her. The thought of exposing anything of herself to this man scared her to the bone.
“No, I can’t do this. I’m not for sale, not even for this.” She crossed her arms to conceal a shiver.
“You’ve got the mind and heart of a journalist, and I’ve just offered you a skeleton key to the forbidden city everyone else has tried and failed to find. How many doors you open while you’re there is entirely up to you, and I think you know how often I give that kind of control to anyone. Your boss will be happy, I’ll be free of the media bloodsuckers, and you’ll have your pick of news to decorate the headlines with.”
“You’re playing dirty.” She met his gaze, knowing she was doomed. Seven days. Alone, with the supposed playboy-turned-savior Micah Laine. She shuddered internally at all the ways this could go wrong.
“No, I’m playing smart. Be prepared to bare your soul”—among other things hung out there unsaid—“because I intend to explore every dark corner of you while you try to do the same to me.”
Would he really give her the gold Sol wanted to print? Was it worth a piece of her already cracked soul to become the professional journalist she’d been dreaming of since childhood? “I have to be back by Saturday night.” What was she saying? Was she really doing this? Her mouth seemed to have decided, because it kept on talking. “Deadlines. My boss is all about the deadlines.”
“Done. Bathing suits are optional. The water feels great with or without one. See you tomorrow.”
Darcy stepped out of the elevator on the twelfth floor, or the top shelf, as her boss Sol called it. Windows along the left wall allowed glimpses into real offices with real doors, all with silver nameplates identifying the occupant. One would soon be hers, finally. Not on the top shelf, because that wasn’t important to her. Any floor above ground level would do, where she could dig her hands into the city’s darkness and bring it into the public light.
In the center of the giant room, a city of cubicles housed editors, graphic designers, and the market data group. Interns scurried along the hallways, running mail and copies from office to office, preparing for the evening production run.
That’s where Darcy had begun while attending U of Toronto in the journalism program, in the basement with the interns, where she still remained as a reporter while most others had gained at least a floor or two. Maybe she’d been a little too eager at times, fighting to bring notice to uncomfortable issues society tended to ignore, but wasn’t that how good journalists made their mark on the world?
Upon graduation, she’d had her sights on a more reputable media outlet, but none of them had been taking interns at the time. Once she’d seen how Sol ran things at Toronto Today, she felt the need to stay, if only to prove that it didn’t take lying, cheating, and destroying someone’s life to deliver stories people wanted to read. It hadn’t worked so far.
She’d begun to think Sol had kept her in the basement to prove a point. Five years later, she had her proof that good journalism didn’t require manipulation.
Sol paced in his corner office, shouting into his Bluetooth headset. The teal dress shirt he wore had more sweat marks than dry material, and his straight, brown hair always hung down to brush his lashes, no longer, no shorter. He was a better-looking version of Larry from the Three Stooges.
When his gaze landed on Darcy looming in his doorway, he groaned and tapped his headset to turn it off. “Christ, what do you want, Delacorte? I don’t have time for your crusader shit.”
“You’d better make time, or I’ll go over to the Star with this one. And believe me, they’ll take my story in a heartbeat, and me along with it.” Dealing with Sol took a bit of artistic flair, and she’d become better at it as the years went on. Darcy wasn’t bluffing—she couldn’t bring herself to lie well enough to pull it off—and when his eyes narrowed, she knew he’d realized it.
“Then talk, but talk fast. I’ve got a deadline.”
She stepped inside his office and shut the door. “Okay, here it is. I’ve been granted a week-long interview with Micah Laine, and I got it by—oh, you’ll love this one—telling the truth and talking to him like he’s a human being instead of stalking him and going through his garbage. I kept my part of the bargain, so I’m going to hold you to yours once I deliver the article.” She left out the details of Micah’s proposal, which Sol would twist into something dirty. Nothing was going to happen on that island except talking.
Sol laughed so hard it forced his head back. “Are the Loch Ness monster and the invisible man meeting you for a beer, too? Cut the shit, Delacorte. I sent you after the one prize I knew you’d never get.”
“That’s because you don’t know me as well as you think you do.” She offered him a business card Maggie had given her. “You’re welcome to call his office to confirm. His lovely British assistant—who’s a huge fan of my blog, by the way—is expecting your call.”
Taking the card, he stared at it, and then at her, his lips parting. “You’re serious.” He cocked his head, his lip curling. “So every other journalist got jack shit from Laine, and you just talked to him, and you’re miraculously in?”
Her mouth bobbed open and shut, and she suffered a pang of doubt. “Well…yeah.” Ignoring his eye-roll, she said, “Before I go, I want your word. If I pull this off, I get to choose what to write and how, my ideas go under my byline, and I want that empty office on the main floor.”
A grin befitting a mad genius took him from ugly to uglier. “You’re finally learning how to play hardball. Maybe you’re top-shelf material after all.”
Seriously? Containing her utter glee by sheer will, she thrust her hand toward him. “So, do we have a deal?”
He studied her proffered hand for seconds before he groaned and shook it. “Get it done, and the office down the hall is yours. You need to want this, Delacorte. You may not realize it, but you must have offered him something nobody else did, something he wants badly enough to spill his guts for. Make sure he gets it. If you fuck this up being a Girl Scout, you won’t have to worry about needing an office here or anywhere else. You get me?”
Screw this up, get fired, and Sol would destroy her reputation as a journalist. Goddammit, she was not sleeping with Micah, if that’s what Sol was insinuating. “You’ll get your story.” My way.