Twisted Arrangement 2 (5 page)

Ben threw back the last of his coffee. “If you say so. What about the sister?”

“What about her? Did you find anything there?” Josh shoved back from the table and stood. He shrugged into his suit coat and smoothed the lapels down. He motioned Ben in front of him as they strode out of the restaurant.

“Just basic background stuff. So far, she’s possibly the most boring person I’ve ever investigated. She’s never even had a parking ticket. Or a long-term boyfriend.
Or
girlfriend.” Ben grinned devilishly. “I checked, just in case. She doesn’t own any property, pays her taxes on time, and belongs to the library association. Whatever that is.”

Josh clapped Ben on the shoulder. “Fine. Get me a better picture of Carla Fiorentino. I’ve got to go pin Martin down for a powwow.” He opened his car door and rested one foot on the rocker panel.

“I bet he’ll like that.” Ben waggled his brows. “Oh hey, how did it go with Ransler yesterday? Did you get his John Hancock?”

Josh ground his teeth, jaw tight. “I’ve got it under control.”

Ben gave a low whistle. “Man, is he ever making you work for it.”

“Carla Fiorentino, Ben.”

“I’ve got it under control,” Ben shot back with a grin.

Josh slid into the driver’s seat and started the Maybach up. There were a lot of areas in his life where the luxury was just for show, because people expected it. The house, the parties. But Josh spent money on cars because he loved them. And this baby purred. He pulled out of the parking lot with a final nod to Ben and headed home.

A genuine smile spread across his face, the first in a while. Ben was on the trail of his mysterious Madame Butterfly and Josh had just thought of an idea to rope in William Ransler once and for all. The megastar wanted to talk to Josh’s fiancé? Then that’s exactly what Josh would make happen.

Emma hung up the phone and pressed her thumbs against her brow, trying to ease the ache in her head. Todd’s friend Jimmy had been more than willing to talk to her about the mysterious ‘Ben’ who’d been asking about her brother, but he didn’t have much more information than Todd had already given her.

The guy, who Jimmy described as of average height and average looks with ‘average brown hair’ (whatever that meant), had come into the shop asking about dune buggies. At first. But he’d soon steered the conversation to Todd, asking if Jimmy knew him or his whereabouts, how often he saw him, and whether or not Todd had a girlfriend.

When he’d realized Jimmy wasn’t going to rat on his friend, he’d switched tactics and started asking about a woman named Carla Fiorentino. But Jimmy had had no clue who that was, so the guy had left.

She’d been hoping he’d given Jimmy a card, a last name, even a company name, that she could use to track ‘Ben’ down, but she’d had no such luck. Now she was back to waiting to see if the guy came around again. Even though she left firm instructions for Jimmy to call her – not Todd – if Ben appeared, Emma couldn’t decide if she was hoping he would or he wouldn’t. If he didn’t, she feared she might constantly expect him to pop up somewhere else in her life, full of awkward questions she couldn’t answer.

Emma jumped in her seat as her office door popped open. Clarice Davenport’s head poked in, her sleek silver bob swinging with suppressed excitement. “Emma, Joshua Owens is here. He wants to see you
right now
. He’s waiting in conference room three.”

Emma’s heart sank into her stylish low heels. This was it then. He’d found her out. Had he called the cops already? Were they on their way? Or perhaps he was waiting until after he confronted her. She gulped back the bile rising in her throat and climbed to her feet. The backs of her knees felt sweaty and her hands shook. “I’ll head there now.”

She was surprised to hear her voice sound so calm. Clarice gave her a thumbs up. “Good work, Emma. I knew you’d bring him around. You keep him hooked. That one is going to get married one day. Soon. And I want Picture Perfect to be the one planning the event.”

Clarice ducked back into the hall and was gone. Emma stared after her, mouth dry. Josh, married? She imagined herself planning Josh’s wedding to another woman and it felt as if someone had poured boiling water into her lungs.

But she didn’t have to worry about that, because any minute now, she was going to be arrested for robbery.

Best get it over with. Emma squared her shoulders and marched down the hall toward conference room three, her back straight as an arrow. She kept her head high, though her chin trembled. She’d done what she’d done, and she wouldn’t take it back. The Watch was her brother’s. It had been her father’s, and his father’s before him, all the way back several generations. Josh had no emotional claim to it, whether he had a legal right to it or not.

You didn’t forsake your family, no matter what. Aunt Margaret had taught her that. The old bat may not have known how to relate to children, but she’d done the best she could by them. And she’d never been cruel.

At the door to the conference room, Emma took a deep breath and pushed open the door. Her heart, still hiding beneath her heels, skyrocketed into her throat at the sight of him. It was as if each time was the first time all over again. His wavy golden hair glinted in the overhead lights. The fine squint lines at the corners of his blue-green eyes smoothed and deepened with his changing expressions. The deep dimple flashed in his left cheek, and his sensual lips quirked. He was smiling. Not just smiling but
grinning
. Wide and bright. It was disconcerting.

“Mr. Owens.” She swallowed hard. “Joshua. I understand you wanted to see me. Did you have a question about the paperwork after all? It was all in order, I assure you.” Emma bit her lip before she could babble any further.

Josh tapped the conference table. “Sit, Emma. I need to talk to you about something incredibly important to me.”

Could he act this calm if he was going to accuse her of theft? Thinking back on the various phone conversations she’d overheard while planning the ball, she thought perhaps he could. The man could be brutal when needed. And Todd had said he was good at poker, trouncing the other players. Was this his winning poker face?

She sank into the chair opposite him, hands clammy. She wiped them on her skirt beneath the table and waited for him to speak.

He steepled his fingers beneath his chin and narrowed his eyes slightly. “You know who William Ransler is?”

The question was so far off of what she was expecting to hear that it took Emma’s brain several long moments to process it. “The actor?” What did he have to do with The Watch? Emma bit her lip. Perhaps he’d been at the poker game the night her brother lost it.

Josh mimed shooting her with his finger. “That’s him. I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Not many people know it, but I’ve been working on putting this new project together, a biopic, for two years. Only, if I can’t get William Ransler to sign on, I’m going to lose half my funding. The whole thing will collapse.” He slapped his palm against the table. Emma jerked at the noise. “Like that,” Josh continued. “So, I need your help.”

“W-what?” That broadsided her. Josh wanted her help? She felt a tiny trickle of tension bleeding out from between her shoulder blades. If he wanted her help, he couldn’t have discovered her link to Todd yet.

“I need you to help me impress William Ransler. He’s a big proponent of women’s issues. I need to come up with something, some event that will knock his socks off. Then I need to convince him to attend, and make sure he signs on the dotted line. Do you think you can do it? If anyone can, it’d be you.” He leaned back in his chair, blue-green eyes sparkling with hope.

Emma gaped. She’d walked in here believing Josh was about to call her out for being a thief and have her arrested. Now here he was heaping her with praise and begging for her help with another event. An event that was obviously extremely important to him.

Part of her wanted to say no, to keep as much distance from him as possible. Both because she was terrified he’d recognize her somehow and because every moment she spent in his presence made her want to blurt out the truth and throw herself at him. But another part, a calm, collected part that startled her with its sly intuition, told her that this opportunity could benefit her twice over.

Clarice had ordered her to convince Josh to host another event with them, for one thing. This would give her a boost career-wise, certainly. But the second, more compelling reason to agree to it was that if she stuck close to Josh’s side, she could keep an eye on him. Find out what he knew about her brother, and how close he was getting to discovering her identity.

Emma forced her lips to curve up into a smile. She opened her mouth and sealed her fate. “Of course. I’d be glad to help.”

Josh sat in the wicker chair and stared down at the creature, forehead furrowed, as Ben strode away across his lawn. It licked his shoe, then tumbled to the grass in a tangle of ungainly legs. He’d been going over the latest location photos from Max on the side lawn when Ben had arrived with this little surprise, and his papers and notes were all spread over the glass topped wicker table. He rubbed the back of his neck, studying the small beast.

“What am I supposed to do with you?” he asked the puppy. It lay in the shade at his feet, panting, and stared up at him with warm brown eyes.

“I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to feed them. Play with them. Make sure they get enough exercise,” Emma said as she glided up beside him. “It appears to be a puppy, Josh. Not a terrorist. Why are you glaring at him?”

He gaped as Emma folded to her knees on the grass, heedless of her sleek black skirt. The puppy, obviously sensing a soft touch, threw itself into her lap. Its short trail whipped back and forth as she rubbed its head and belly.

“I’m not glaring. I’m contemplating. Forming a strategy.”

Both her brows crept up her forehead as she continued to lavish attention on the dog. “Why do you have a puppy when you are so clearly not excited by the prospect?”

“I don’t have a puppy.” Josh flicked a glance back over his shoulder. He caught the look she shot down at the wriggling ball of chocolate brown fur and shoved a hand through his hair. “He’s not mine, I mean. My friend,” He jerked his thumb at Ben’s retreating back, “is going out of town for work. I get stuck puppy-sitting.” He grimaced.

Emma’s lips twitched. “Why you? No offense, but I’m sure your friend could find someone more suited to the task.” She bent forward and kissed the little beast right on his nose. “Someone who’d love having this sweet boy around.” The puppy slobbered on her cheek. Emma laughed. Josh blinked slowly, feeling warmth spread through his abdomen.

He’d never seen Emma this playful and relaxed. She was always a little reserved around him, very business-focused. But she hadn’t brought up the event yet, despite that being the reason for her visit. And she was staring at him, her head tilted at an angle.

“Um,” he paused. She’d asked why he was watching the dog. “Oh, well, Ben’s working for me so he figures it’s only fair.” Josh shrugged. He was pretty sure that Ben had agreed to foster the pup to impress a girl – the reason Ben did most things non-work related – and was just happy to have the thing out of his hair for the time being.

Emma had dropped her eyes back down to the puppy, who had begun to chew on one of the pearl buttons of her blouse. She extricated the button from the dog’s mouth and reached up to snag the stress ball sitting on the table at Josh’s elbow. “Oh? What kind of work does Ben do for you?”

She shook the ball in front of the puppy’s nose, then tossed it a short way away on the grass. The dog leapt up and gamboled after the ball, all ears and much-too-long legs. He had to admit, it looked kind of funny when it ran. “He gets me information.”

“About locations you’re scouting?” Her fingers curled into the grass beside her knees. The puppy snatched up the ball and ran back to collapse in Emma’s lap again. She wiggled the ball free of its jaws and tossed it a little further this time. It took Josh a minute to remember he’d told her he was up to his ears in paperwork for location scouting. It was the reason he’d asked her to meet him here at the house, in fact. To save him some time.

He rubbed a finger along his nose uneasily. He hardly wanted to bring up Madame Butterfly or the theft around Emma. The situation was embarrassing enough to talk to Ben about, and Ben was his best friend. Admitting he’d been seduced and tricked by a mysterious and beautiful woman to the calm, collected Emma was out of the question.

“Yeah. The locations, the crew I’m hiring. Any information I need, he gets it.”

She squeezed the stress ball briefly in her hand before tossing it for the puppy again. “What’s his name?”

“Who? Ben?” Josh frowned. She shot him a quick look from beneath her lashes.

“The dog.”

That made more sense. Josh chuckled. “I don’t suppose he has one yet. He was abandoned in a dump. Ben’s fostering him, but he just brought him home yesterday and then got a lead he needed to follow.”

Emma struggled to wrest the ball from the puppy’s mouth, but he was gnawing it in earnest this time. “How long is Ben going to be gone?”

“Just a few days. Unless it snows. Is it still snowing in upstate New York this time of year, do you think?” He’d heard plenty of horror stories about snow in May and even June up in the mountains.

She finally got the ball free and tossed it for the pup to chase. “I don’t think so. But the poor little guy can’t just not have a name for days. What are you going to call him that whole time?”

He flipped through several of the location photos that Max had sent him. “Why would I call him anything? It’s not like we’ll be having conversations.”

Emma raised wide green eyes to his face. “You’ve never had a pet before, have you?”

Josh hadn’t. His father was terribly allergic to both cats and dogs, and as a child he’d been too shy to broach the subject of a less conventional pet. By the time he was out on his own, he’d reconciled himself to the fact that he would never have one. The thought hadn’t even entered his mind until now.