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Selby stood up and folded her arms over her chest. “That’s not how it works here, Ms. Greene. If you want to see him, you’ll have to deal with me.”
Austin kept staring at Jessie, until nervousness had her wringing her hands. Without turning to his secretary, he ordered, “Sit down, Selby.”
The woman slammed back into her chair, frowning.
“Good.” He smiled, and everything went woozy inside Jessie. “I’d like to spend more time with you, too.”
Jessie needed to clear her head. Think about work. Think about the investigation. It helped, and her mind snapped back to the here and now. “Trust me, Mr. Wilde. My investigation will get to the bottom of these accidents.”
“I like your tenacity. My mind was on a bottom, too, though a very different one.” He looked at her as if he could read her thoughts.
Her insides felt like popcorn, and Austin was the microwave. “So, I’m ready to get started right away.”
“You’re going to be trouble. I think I need to reconsider how to handle your visit to Wilde, Ms. Greene. Perhaps I’ve been going about this all wrong.”
Chapter Six
Jessie sat alone in one of the outside buildings that doubled as a kind of waiting room for the mine, talking on her cell phone to her ex.
Michael had called her twenty minutes ago, and she hadn’t been able to get him off the phone. She tried to sound relaxed and calm, but her insides were still quaking from her meeting with Austin Wilde. The guy had pushed all her buttons, even some she didn’t know she had. It was like he knew what she was thinking and was planning what to do next to keep her jumping.
She must make sure when they met again that Austin knew she wasn’t a pushover. With him, I just might be. Damn it! Well, better to fake confidence than to let him see her unnerved like she was now.
“What are you worried about, Michael?”
Phoenix had promised to take her back to the Hotel Cactus, and she expected him to be back any moment. She wanted to be off the phone before the sexy cowboy showed.
“Plenty, Jessica. You up and leave DC without a word to me. What if I had headed down there and found your apartment empty?”
Michael didn’t work. He lived off a massive trust fund from his grandparents. More carefree than anyone else she knew, he jetted around the globe, enjoying the upper tier parties with other elite Peter Pans.
“I’m fine. It’s my job.”
“When are you going to stop being silly? All you need to do is give in to your dad, and your trust fund opens up to you. You could come to Belize with me next week.”
Michael had never seemed to understand her desire to work, to hold a job. Her trust fund wasn’t quite as large as his, but big enough so that she’d never have to work should she choose. Her father managed her money and made it very clear that if she wanted to have a job, it would be with his firm. When she hadn’t applied to law school, he’d told her how displeased he was at her decision. Then her father had frozen her monies.
“You know I’m not going to cave to my father. He thinks he knows what’s best for me, but he doesn’t. I’m proud of what I’ve done, and no matter what he says or does, I’m going down the path of my choosing, not his.”
“You’ve always stuck to your guns, Jessica. You’re really something else. I couldn’t have done what you did. How long did you work at that restaurant as a waitress?”
“You know, dummy. The entire time I was in college.” With her part-time job and some student loans, she’d paid for her undergrad and then her engineering degree. It had been the first time she’d ever gone against her father’s wishes. As hard as it had been, it had felt liberating. But now the distance between her and her father seemed limitless.
“Remember the time I almost got you fired there?”
“How can I forget? You came in with the entire cast of that off-Broadway show wearing lampshades on your heads. You made such a fool of yourself. What did that end up costing you?”
“Ten grand for the damages, I think.”
“You almost got me fired.”
“You sound different. I know something is up. You can’t lie to me, Jessica. I always can tell. So fess up.”
On the night Michael had told her that he was gay, she pushed down her own feelings. He needed her. She supposed they had always been friends, more than lovers. Obviously. They fooled around, sure. But his refusal to have intercourse, claiming he wanted to wait until their honeymoon, should have been clue enough. But it hadn’t. He was so sweet, tender, and doting. He lived across the hall from her from grade three on. He’d been the one she turned to when she learned her mother had cancer. During that time her father had instructed her that she had to have a brave face. She was never allowed to cry in their home. It had been Michael who let her cry on his shoulder. He knew her better than anyone.
“I don’t know where to start.” Could she really tell him the truth? What would he think about her having sex with not one but four sexy cowboys?
“So you’re in this itty-bitty town working on an investigation at some mine. Start there.”
