Page 12 of The Mood Board

Chapter 6

Bailey

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“HAVE THE LAWYERS FOUNDanything yet?”

It had been a week since I’d received the letter in the mail, and nothing had happened. I should have felt calm about the entire thing with the thought that whoever it was had gone away since we hadn’t responded. Surely, other billionaires had much more fodder for blackmail than Liam Bradford.

But instead of settling down, the stretching time had only ratcheted up my anxiety. I felt as though I were on the edge of a cliff or the moment when the world became still before the storm broke. It affected my sleep, and I went through the day in a fog. Following Jordan’s ritual, I had downed a double espresso just to get me through the evening’s dinner party to welcome Janelle to the company.

“Not yet.” Liam extracted himself from the fridge with a head of lettuce in one hand and several condiments for a dressing in the other. “So far, all our records are clean. The FBI hasn’t been able to trace the letter, either. It was printed with a normal printer on normal paper with normal ink. They found no fingerprints or DNA on the letter or envelope.”

On the advice of the company’s lawyers and Liam’s personal counsel, they had turned the letter over to the FBI. It wasn’t exactly a dangerous threat, but it was a threat nonetheless.

Not that giving it to the FBI had helped at all, apparently.

“So we’re still at a dead-end?”

The suspense was starting to kill me. I wanted—I needed—answers. The waiting for something to happen was too much.

“We’re in a holding pattern,” Liam corrected me gently, placing the lettuce and condiments beside a bowl and jar. “Nothing is happening right now, and it might not ever.”

In other words, we didn’t know what was going to happen, so there was no use worrying about it.

Right. If only it were so easy. Or, rather, as easy as it was for Liam.

Annoyance tightened into a ball in the center of my chest, and I clamped my mouth shut before I could say anything I would regret. I pulled the bread from the oven with a little too much force, and it nearly toppled from the baking sheet. The image flashing through my head of the fresh loaf on the floor covered in dirt was enough to cool my mood, and I transferred the sheet carefully to the counter.

It was a sight to behold, even if the design I had cut into the top was slightly skewed and the loaf itself faintly misshapen. From barely being able to cook pasta to making a golden-brown loaf that I knew was crusty on the outside and soft on the inside, I had come a long way.

“It’s beautiful.” Liam grinned at me over his shoulder, shaking the dressing ingredients together in the jar.

The compliment replaced the last of the annoyance with warmth. “Thanks.”

Janelle probably made her own gourmet yogurt.

“Stop it,” I muttered to myself. I was tired of feeling jealous and comparing myself to the woman. I didn’t have to, anyway. I had no reason to feel threatened or less than.

“Stop what?” Liam looked up from tearing the lettuce, head cocked in confusion.

“Not you,” I sighed. “Just my head going again.”

Liam gave me an understanding smile and put down the head of lettuce. “Are you okay? Do you want to cancel?”

Canceling was the only thing I really wanted to do tonight, but I knew I couldn’t. One, it was much too last minute, and I couldn’t be rude like that. Maybe if it had been just Tom and Bianca, but not Janelle. I was trying too hard to make a good impression. And second, I had a feeling that whatever excuse Liam gave her, she would know I was the one who had called it off and why.

I had to push through this. I had to get a handle on my self-esteem, or lack thereof. This wasn’t me, and I needed to prove that to myself—it was everything happening at once and throwing me off balance.

“No.” I knew I wasn’t at all convincing, and Liam’s expression said precisely that. I tried a smile that felt like a poor imitation of the real thing. “Really, I’m okay. It’s just stress and being tired.”

“You keep saying that.” Liam leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms as he watched me. It almost seemed he was searching my face for something, but I didn’t know what he saw. I wasn’t even sure what I had seen in the mirror lately.

When he pushed away from the counter and came toward me, it was with an expression of empathetic concern. His hands slipped around my arms, and I had to lean my head back to look up into his face.

“I’m worried about you, Bailey,” he said as he had repeated so often lately. “I’m worried you’re pushing yourself too hard. I know you work hard, but you’re not yourself lately.”

I didn’t know how to answer because what he said was true: I wasn’t myself. I had kept all my spinning plates in the air and maintained a calm, cool head about it until that damn letter. And then Janelle’s arrival only a short time later. Now they all seemed to be crashing down.