It was definitely the storage room. The room was filled with packed boxes and enormous file cabinets.

The drawers were labeled clearly, so she easily found the one marked PERSONNEL and started looking through the tab identifiers as quickly as she could. There was nothing on Sean Moore or Caleb. These records went back farther than them, she assumed. She found the file with the name of Thomas Earnest, the former CEO, which Jack had wanted. It was enormous, which meant looking through it and just taking pictures of certain documents was impossible, so she pulled out the file and put the whole thing in her bag.

It was dangerous, but there was nothing else she could do.

She zipped her bag and then closed the cabinet drawer. She hurried to the door, peeked out at the hall, and then closed and locked the door behind her.

Not until she was back in the elevator, heading up to the top floor again, did she finally take a full breath.

She seemed to have made it. No one had stopped her. Now all she needed to do was return the key.

To her relief, the executive suite was still empty and Caleb’s door was still closed when she returned.

She opened the drawer and placed the key back where it had been, but she gave a gasp when Caleb’s door started to open.

She closed the drawer as discreetly as she could and forced her panic back down.

Caleb’s brows drew together as he saw her, obviously confused.

Flustered and terrified, she still managed a casual smile. “Sorry. I left my keys on the floor in there, so I had to come back.”

“I know.” He smiled at her and held up her keys. “I just found them.”

“And you were going to bring them down to me?” She took the keys, hoping he wouldn’t notice that her bag was a lot fuller than it had been when she’d arrived. That file was really weighing it down.

“Of course.”

She looked at his face, and her heart melted a little. He’d been worried about her getting to her car, only to find out she didn’t have her keys.

Fuck, she was a bitch. A coldhearted bitch, to use him this way.

But maybe what was in this file would finally bring this whole thing to an end.

Chapter 6

The key thing was strange.

Not that she had left them in his office. That was understandable. But Caleb was sure Kelly had been returning the master key to Linda’s desk drawer, although she’d played it off so well he almost second-guessed himself.

But he was sure of what he’d seen, and he couldn’t figure out why she would have wanted the master key in the first place.

The keys could get her into anywhere in the building, but what could she possibly want in this building? She wasn’t any sort of corporate spy for a different company. It was too easy to track that kind of thing, and her background was all wrong for it. But there was nothing else here. Nothing else a pet portrait artist could possibly want.

Maybe she was arranging some sort of surprise for him.

It was the only explanation he could think of.

The question kept nagging at him, though. All afternoon, after Kelly had left, as he tried to focus once again on work. He couldn’t push it completely from his mind.

He’d arranged a phone call in a half hour, so there wasn’t any sense in leaving before then, and he really needed to get through some more email before he called it quits for the day. But he just stared at the screen and thought about Kelly, about what she still might be hiding from him.

She loved him. He knew it was true. She felt for him the way he did for her. He wasn’t a fool, and he could tell her feelings were genuine.

Whatever she was hiding wasn’t intended to hurt him.

Maybe it had something to do with her bastard of an ex-lover, whom she still hadn’t opened up about to Caleb yet.

When his phone rang, he grabbed it, glad for a distraction from the direction of his thoughts.

It was Wes.

“Hey, I thought you were flying back today.”

“I am.”

“How’s your mom?”

“About the same. Thanks. How’s Kelly?”

Well, that did nothing to distract Caleb from the focus of his thoughts all day. “She’s fine. Why wouldn’t she be?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Doesn’t anything seem strange to you about her? She comes out of nowhere, and all of a sudden she’s the most important thing in your life?”

Caleb was silent for a long time. Then he finally said, “Isn’t that how it always happens?”

“I don’t know. It’s never happened to me. But she’s hiding something. I can tell.”

“She has things in her past she doesn’t want the world to know. All of us do.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“Why have you gotten this thing between your teeth? Kelly thinks you have hidden desires for me that go way beyond friendship.”

Wes snorted. “Nice. She’s good at deflection. I’ll give her that. But there’s something weird about her past. It’s too well hidden.”

Caleb’s whole body tightened like a fist. “Have you been investigating her?”

There was a moment of silence. Then, “Why would I bother investigating some random chick you happen to be screwing?”

Caleb took a breath. Controlled the surge of resentment at this reference to Kelly. “I don’t know why. But you’ve been overly curious about her. And you’ve been asking far too many questions.”

“Of course I’ve been asking questions about her. She’s, like, this gorgeous, unsolved puzzle. Any man would be curious about her.”

“What the hell are you thinking?”

“You know me, Caleb. I have many, many thoughts. And no man in his right mind wouldn’t have X-rated thoughts about Kelly. Just her hair alone makes me want to—”

“Do not finish that sentence.” Caleb’s hand was clenched, and he stared down at his whitening knuckles. He knew Wes was doing it on purpose. Trying to rile him up so he would reveal something.

“Why should you get all the best girls?”

Caleb knew Wes wasn’t being serious. Until the last couple of months, they hadn’t spoken in more than a year, but they would always be friends, and Wes would never poach on his territory. “Well, you’re welcome to make a play for her if you’d like,” Caleb said drily, feeling more like himself when the primal instincts had settled back down. “But I don’t know why you would, since you seem to be convinced she’s up to no good.”

There was a slow exhale on the line. “It’s not that I assume she’s up to no good. But she’s hiding something, and it’s not just the normal kinds of things that women hide. My instincts tell me there’s a secret here. And it has occurred to me that she might be after something other than the obvious with you.”

Caleb didn’t like that clench in his gut as his friend’s words confirmed his own belief that Kelly was hiding something. “The obvious?” he prompted curtly.

“The obvious reason women go after you is that you’re rich and powerful.”

Caleb bristled again. Spoke without thinking. “Because no woman could ever actually want me for me.” He practically bit his tongue trying to hold the thoughtless words back, but they were spoken before he realized it.

What the hell was wrong with him? This kind of vulnerability wasn’t like him. It had never been like him before.

Before Kelly.

This time there was a very long stretch of silence on the other end of the call. Then a softly spoken “Damn!”

And Caleb knew he’d given something away. Something important. Something he couldn’t even admit to himself.

Covering his brief vulnerability, Caleb gritted out, “Is there something you wanted to say?”

“No.” The answer came quickly, the matter-of-fact tone shifting the tense, awkward mood. “But I genuinely think she’s hiding something. She puts on a good show of being innocent and sincere. But there’s something about her. The way she looks at you, the way she moves, it’s like…”