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“No, between all of us. All of my father’s offspring,” Marlowe clarified. “Not to mention that there were more than a few times when she subtly tried to get us to turn not just against our father but against each other, as well.
“And,” she said, continuing with her thought, “I have no doubt that Selina has whispered in my father’s ear and tried to get him to turn against us wholesale again.” She didn’t know if it was another wave of morning sickness or thoughts of Selina that were making her stomach suddenly churn, but she was feeling sick again as she shook her head. “I have absolutely no idea why he insists on keeping that woman around.” She frowned as she looked at her new confidant. “Dad says she’s good at her job, and I have to admit that she is,” Marlowe said honestly.
Being honest was almost a curse at times, she thought darkly. But Selina Barnes Colton was not exactly a wizard. If she wasn’t there tomorrow, someone else would come along to fill the vacancy and do just as good a job—if not better—without secretly attempting to pit them against one another.
The benevolent giant looked at her thoughtfully. “Perhaps there is something that Mrs. Colton is holding over Mr. Colton’s head. Blackmail is a very powerful, dangerous tool in the wrong hands,” he told Marlowe.
The point had already crossed her mind more than once. She remembered saying as much to Callum when they had discussed the power Selina seemed to wield over their father.
She closed her eyes. Something else to worry about, Marlowe thought.
* * *
True to his word, Bowie called Marlowe to check in on how she was faring with his bodyguard the moment that his own meeting was over.
“Would you mind if I dropped by?” he asked Marlowe.
The very sound of his voice had her brightening. She tried to upbraid herself for her reaction, but it had no dampening effect on the way she responded to him. The plain truth of the matter was that hearing his voice made her smile. She called herself a fool, but it didn’t change anything.
“When?” she asked.
“I was thinking now,” he answered.
She could feel her heart racing and called herself an idiot. She was acting like a simpering teenager, not the president of a high-powered oil company.
“Sure. I’ve still got a few things to finish up.” It was a lie, but it was all she could come up with on short notice.
“Be right there,” he promised. When Bowie arrived at Colton Oil within the half hour, he got right down to business. “So, is everything going all right?” he asked Marlowe, clearly referring to Wallace.
“Well, I hate to admit it,” Marlowe told him, “but it’s going better than I thought it would.”
“Then I was right?” he asked innocently, glancing over toward the bodyguard. “Bigelow is blending in, becoming part of the furniture?”
Deliberately turning her chair away from Wallace’s general direction so that her voice didn’t carry, she told Bowie, “He’s a little too big to be an ottoman, but yes,” she said, giving Bowie his due, “you were right. Wallace does seem to have a knack for blending in.”
Bowie all but beamed. “Told you.”
The man was obviously pleased with himself. That made her a little leery. She didn’t want him thinking that she was handing him free rein over her.
“Oh no, you’re not going to be one of those men, are you? The ones who say ‘I told you so’ every chance they get?” she asked. Marlowe was only half kidding.
“Only if the situation calls for it,” he told her with a grin. “All right, I won’t say it—this time,” he added after a beat.
“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Marlowe went on to say.
“Good thinking or bad thinking?” Bowie asked.
“Well, I don’t know how you’re going to view this. What I do know is that to implement this I’m going to have to leave Wallace behind,” Marlowe told Bowie, warming up to her subject.
He cut her off before she could say any more. “Not doable,” Bowie replied.
Marlowe pushed on, curbing her very strong impulse to inform Bowie that he was not the boss of her and she was only going along with his providing her with a bodyguard because it suited her purposes. At the moment, however, it didn’t, and she wasn’t going to allow Bowie to stop her from doing what she felt might be the only course of action available to her.
She talked right over him as if he hadn’t said anything. “I want to follow dear old Selina the next time she leaves headquarters, and I can’t do that with Wallace shadowing my every move. Selina will see him coming from a mile away, and whatever I’m hoping to catch her doing won’t happen. I have to go alone,” she insisted.
“No,” Bowie contradicted her calmly, “you don’t have to go alone.”
Marlowe could feel her temper fraying, just like that. “Look, Robertson, I’m not going to argue about this,” she informed him.
