Fuck me a thousand fucking times.
For the next few hours, Dakota had to man up and manage through this. He couldn’t let his anger at her, and himself, get in the way of protecting his daughter, clearing his name, and figuring out who was blackmailing him. “Looks like someone’s got some explaining to do.”
“It would appearyoudo,” Providence replied, crossing her arms.
Providence crossing her arms wasn’t helping. But he did not glance at her breasts.
“I’m getting coffee.” He opened the conference room door. “You want a cup?”
“Whatever.” They walked down the hall in a frigid silence. He couldn’t deny that being around her was intense and exciting, yet infuriating as hell.
He filled two mugs while she went hunting for what he assumed was milk.
“In here.” He opened the refrigerator door and pulled out a carton of creamer.
“Uh-huh,” she grumbled.
They returned to the conference room. Dakota shut the door, sat at the head of the table. They sipped their hot drinks and glowered at each other. The standoff continued while they drained their mugs.
“Do you always sleep with your targets?” he bit out.
“We didn’t sleep. There was zero snoozing.” She flipped open her laptop. “I don’t much like this, either. I get plucked from my job and forced into an organization I didn’t know existed two hours ago. Now, I’m tasked with protecting you. Oh, yeah, and if you get arrested, I probably will, too. No fuck is worth that.”
With his thoughts pinging from problem to problem, he unearthed his laptop. “The quicker we can move forward, the faster we can end this partnership. I don’t trust you, but I’m out of options.”
She shook her head, blew out an exasperated breath. “At least you’re not pretending you like this, and you’re certainly not kissing my ass.”
“No, I already did that.” He stared at her, wishing she wasn’t so beautiful, especially when she was madder than hell.
“My job,” she began, with a cutting edge to her tone, “is to find the person or persons trying to frame you for murder. Since I know next to nothing about you, I’m going to have to start at the beginning. The more information you provide me, the more we have to work with. There are clues everywhere, so we can’t overlook anything. Nothing is insignificant. Nothing can be assumed.”
Dakota might be pissed as fuck, but she was right. They needed to stay ahead of the police so they didn’t get arrested.
“I sat next to Hastings at the banquet,” she continued. “He admitted to me that he’d taken kickbacks before he got completely trashed and told the entire crowd. Is that why you fired him?”
He appreciated that she was jumping right in. There was no long, drawn out conversation, no getting into the weeds about who did what to whom. No flinging words about who screwed who over. The fury that had overtaken his thoughts stood down and he took a calming breath.
“My business partner, Juanita Goode, found out he was taking kickbacks from a mortgage banker, so we fired him for cause the day of the banquet. I could have pressed charges or reported him to the national realtor association, but I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Everyone deserves a second chance. He could have made a good living without the kickbacks, but he got greedy.”
“Do you think the hit was real estate related? Had Matt pissed off a client? Maybe the president of the mortgage company wanted him dead so he wouldn’t talk.”
“Possible, but doubtful. Once that video went viral, an opportunist wanted Matt dead. There’s been too much happening to me to make me believe it’s a coincidence.”
“What else is going on?”
He dropped the envelope on the table. “Blackmail letter.”
She glanced around the conference room. “I need gloves.”
“In the lab.” He rose. “Have you seen the facility?”
She shook her head.
“I’ll show you around.”
