She glared up at him, seeming to be a constant state of anger and frustration when she was around him. “I understand that you’re finally going to help me find Gary, but the rest is definitely not going to happen.”
He watched her fired up expression and smiled. “We’ll see.” He stepped back and indicated she should precede him back into the building. “Tell me what you know about this guy. Start from the beginning.”
Claire followed him into the elevator, telling him everything she knew about him, or at least everything she assumed to know about the man she’d dated for two months. As she listed the information, she realized that she didn’t really know a whole lot about him. And the things she knew, weren’t very important. She knew he loved Italian food but wasn’t a huge fan of hamburger joints, preferred red wine over white, he loved to watch the late comedian shows but she had the impression he rarely got to view the shows at the normal time period. She wasn’t sure why, but she suspected that he recorded the shows and watched them at different times but couldn’t remember any specific reason why she thought of that detail. She also knew that he rarely wore anything other than slacks, was quick to laugh and was a wonderful listener.
“Is that it?” he asked as they stepped back through his office doors. He hesitated beside his assistant’s desk to say, “Could you cancel all of my appointments for the next few days? I’ll be out of the office helping Claire with a situation.” Turning back to her, he said, “Tell me why you thought he worked here,” and closed the door behind the two of them.
Sitting at his desk, he tapped out several pieces of information on his computer as Mitch continued to interrogate her about Gary’s favorite color, what he liked to eat, his favorite restaurants or where they had gone out to eat, where he would meet her for dates or if he picked her up, the times he would agree to meet her versus the times he called to make arrangements or just to talk. All of the information seemed very arbitrary until he turned one of the monitors around and showed her a map of the areas she’d mentioned. The map showed a very distinct radius, indicating a possible time table where Gary might work and live in order to reach his workplace, his home and the various places they would meet for outings. She was so impressed with his deductions that she simply stared for a long moment, wishing she’d thought to do this kind of mapping.
Mitch interrupted her thought, asking, “Brothers? Sisters? Where was he born?”
Claire sat on the edge of a black leather chair that was facing his desk and bit her lower lip. “I don’t know.”
“Are his parents alive?”
She sighed. “I don’t know that either.”
“What did you talk about?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Stuff,” was all she could come up with. “I can’t remember the details too much but he was just nice and fun to talk to.”
“In other words, you did all the talking,” he said with an overbearing masculine acceptance that women were chatterboxes.
“No! Just the opposite in fact. And I resent that misogynistic attitude of yours.”
He turned from his computer and leered. “I don’t hate women. In fact, I love women. Which is exactly why I’m helping you find this idiot so you can forget him and I can get you on your back where I want you. All to myself.”
“That’s not…”
“Don’t make promises you aren’t going to keep. That you don’t even want to keep, Claire,” he admonished, then turned back to his computer.
“Where did you meet him?” he asked. And for the next hour, he asked her questions and she concentrated carefully to answer them as fully as she could, understanding better where his questions were leading. But it was embarrassing that she knew so little about the man she claimed to want to find and had a real connection with.
By mid-afternoon, he stood up and came back around the desk to pick up some papers he’d printed out. “Okay, let’s go,” he said and took her hand to pull her out of the chair. He lifted her so quickly, that she flew out of the seat, falling against his hard body where he immediately wrapped his free arm around her back, his mouth descending for a quick, hard kiss. Before she could respond, or even protest, he released her and was guiding her out of his office, one hand on the small of her back, the other grabbing his jacket, tossing it over her shoulders.
“Allison, I’m going out. Any issues with the cancellations?” he asked.
“Some objections, but I handled it all.”
“You’re a wonder,” he said and winked as he left her office area, pulling Claire along behind him.
Claire had to hurry to keep up with his longer legs but she didn’t mind. The rush helped her mind to focus on something other than the heat coming from his hand touching her back. “You didn’t have to cancel your meetings. Why don’t you just give me whatever information you’ve found and I’ll follow up on the leads tonight once I’m off work.”
“Because I don’t trust you.” He pressed the elevator button and turned to watch her reaction. He loved watching her back get all stiff and her eyes shoot fire at him. He thought she was especially sexy when she was angry and it made him hot to know he could get that kind of a reaction out of her. One of many reactions he liked.
“That’s a horrible thing to say!”
He laughed softly. “Claire, you’ve broken into my house, convinced my dog that you’re friendly and hacked into my company’s computer system. Would you trust yourself after all that?”
Claire thought about it from his viewpoint and conceded. “Okay, you have a valid point. But I haven’t done anything since I’ve been working here.”
“Except break into my house the other night. Which I didn’t mind, as you well know.”
“You didn’t mind because you knew I was coming!” she grumbled. “And you still haven’t explained how you knew. Do you have any idea how frustrating that is?”
“Yes.”
She fumed for all of five seconds, trying desperately hard to hold her tongue. But she was just too furious to stop herself. “And besides me breaking in, I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve been the model employee, getting good results on the project you assigned me to.”
He chuckled. “I know.”