“Too bad. Is everything all right?” Jack sounded just a little concerned.

She knew he thought she was stupid for doing this. He’d told her in no uncertain terms the last time they’d spoken. But she already knew it was stupid. That was hardly the point. It was still what she needed to do.

“Yeah. I’m fine. I just needed to know if you’ve found out anything that will help me.”

“Not much. You’re not in his computer yet, are you?”

“No. I don’t know how I’m going to manage that. The man must suffer from paranoia, with all the security he has in place. Plus, he doesn’t trust me yet. I’ll need more time.”

Jack muttered something inaudible, and she didn’t ask him what he meant. Whatever he’d said, it was disapproving.

“Anyway, I need some direction—at least something to be looking for, other than the name of the project. Please tell me you’ve got something.”

“I’ve got some people who might have been involved. I’m going to read their names. You ready?”

She had nothing to write them down on, and she couldn’t risk that anyway, so she focused carefully on the five names he gave her until she’d committed them to memory.

“Has he introduced you to anyone? Do you hang out with his friends?”

“I honestly don’t think he has any friends. He doesn’t do anything but work and—”

“Spare me the dirty details. Please. What is your situation like? Can you get away if you need to?”

“It’s a little hard to manage, but it’s possible. He thinks our fictional mobster is after me, so he’s got a bodyguard tagging along after me, but I’m shopping now. I’m sure I could slip away if I needed to. Or, if necessary, I could tell him I was leaving. He’d let me go, but I’d have no chance of getting in with him again. Why?”

“I was just checking. I might have something to show you in a few days, but it would have to be in person, unless you want to risk me sending it to your phone.”

“No.” Her heart jumped at the thought. “I don’t trust him not to look at my phone. Don’t send anything by phone.”

“Okay, then. Well, if necessary, maybe you could arrange another shopping trip, and we could find a way to meet up quickly. I’ll let you know.”

“Okay.” The thought made her nervous, but she dismissed it as irrational. Caleb was neither omniscient nor omnipresent. She had to be careful about the bodyguard, since he would report back to Caleb, but there would be ways to work around that.

She was in control here. Not Caleb. No matter what he thought.

“Anything else to report?” she asked, deciding she better end the conversation soon before the bodyguard got nosy.

“Well, I just got a new receptionist,” Jack grumbled. “And she can’t even make decent coffee. I’ve been drinking this swill for a week now. It’s becoming a nuisance, but I’ll be damned before I pay three dollars for a cup at Starbucks.”

Kelly couldn’t hold back a laugh. Jack was obviously competent at his job, and he was also kind of funny. “I’ll be greatly disappointed in you if I find out you’ve caved and forsaken your principles for the lure of good coffee.”

“So far, I’m managing to stay strong. I’ll be in touch.”

She hung up, feeling strange and a little relieved, like there was a whole world outside Caleb’s sanctum.

She’d been starting to feel like there was nothing in the world but him.

—

On Friday of the following week, Kelly was still at Caleb’s house outside of the city.

He kept asking about her old lover, and she’d refused to tell him a lot of details—just a few breadcrumbs for him to follow that wouldn’t take him anywhere. Her reticence clearly frustrated and puzzled him. But his curiosity was good. It would hold his interest, even if he started to grow sated with the sex.

There was no sign of that happening yet.

He needed to trust her—at least enough to let his guard down around her. He wasn’t a fool, and he wasn’t going to give her access to incriminating information this early in their relationship. His office at home was always locked. She knew this because she’d checked it. Even if she could get in, it wouldn’t do her any good unless she could get onto his computer.

So he worked all day, and they would fuck in the evening. Nothing really had changed, except she was getting used to having sex with him, so it wasn’t quite so traumatic.

Given his history with women, it was a miracle he was still interested in her at all.

She needed to use that while she could, so she brainstormed all Friday morning until she came up with an idea for sex that evening.

She wanted something hot, exciting, different, and the only inspiration she could come up with was pulled from her own fantasy life.

Since she normally only had casual sex with strangers, she’d never had the chance to live out many of her sexual fantasies before. Caleb was here—a willing and able partner for anything she suggested. She might as well use him to give her body the kind of pleasure she’d only imagined until now.

It would be yet another tool she could use.

She planned things out purposefully, waiting on the window seat in her room until she saw his car approach. She grabbed her robe and hurried up to the master suite, where she started to draw a bath in the tub.

She figured she had enough time to fill the tub before he got into the house.

When it was full, she turned on the jets and got in, being careful not to submerge her hair in the water. She was wearing two pigtails. She’d braided them for strategic effect.

She thought she heard him enter the room a little while later, but he didn’t come into the bathroom. He had to know she was here.

She’d thought he might come in to see her, but it didn’t matter whether he did or not.

He might think it was some sort of surrender, like entering the bathroom would break a kind of stalemate and give her the advantage.

Their relationship—even on the surface, without any knowledge of her true purposes—was as much a duel as anything else.

She took her time in the bath, even though she was dying to finish up so she could find out what Caleb was doing. It made her feel vulnerable, not knowing.

So it was almost thirty minutes later when she came out of the bathroom at last, wearing a little pink satin robe and her braids.

He was sitting in a chair near the window, working on something on his tablet.

He glanced up casually at her presence.

She felt an immediate quickening of her heartbeat and breath at the sight of him, sexy and well dressed in a ridiculously expensive suit. He didn’t have that impotent prettiness of a lot of young men. He looked his age. Experienced. Jaded. Powerful, inside and out.

He’d earned that presence from years of taking anything he wanted, no matter what the cost to others.

She stopped short, as if surprised by his being in the room.

“Oops.”

His eyebrows arched, as she’d known they would. “Oops?”

“I didn’t realize you’d be back already.”

“Right.” He obviously didn’t believe her for a moment. She’d never be able to get away with the little manipulations that women often played with men. He’d been around the block too many times to pull them off.

But deeper manipulations—those that took everything from both parties. No one could be prepared for those.

“How was work?” she asked.

“It was work.”

He obviously wasn’t one of those men who spilled a lot of trivial details about their days to any conveniently open ears.

She gave him a slightly annoyed look. “Okay. Well, I’ll see you later.”

Let him think she was frustrated by his closing down polite conversation. Let him have a reason for following her.

He didn’t follow her, and she was starting to completely rethink her plan. Damn him. Why did he always make things harder for her than they needed to be?

She had an empty wineglass with her, from the drink she’d had in the tub, so she went to the kitchen to put it in the sink.