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This was no spot-check. Something was up. She was about to refuse more forcefully when he jerked his big head toward the steps that led to the mezzanine, inadvertently giving her the chance she’d been waiting for to get closer to the VIP lounge. She gave him a blazing smile. “Right, then. Let’s move along and settle this.”
He grunted.
At the top of the mezzanine steps, a pair of bronzed pillars marked the entrance to VIP, but as they got close, he grabbed her arm and herded her around a corner and through a plain door off to the left.
It was an unimpressive office where folding wooden shutters covered the lower half of a pair of windows, and a wall-mounted television silently broadcast ESPN. An iMac sat on a streamlined desk across from a two-cushion couch. Above it was a framed Chicago Stars jersey with the name Graham on the back. The Stars aqua-and-gold team colors had always looked girly to her in comparison to her beloved Chicago Bears no-nonsense navy blue and orange.
“Wait here.” The goon stepped out and closed the door behind him.
VIP was only a few steps away. She counted to twenty and reached for the doorknob.
The door swung open in her face. She tripped backward, focusing so hard on keeping her balance that the door shut again before she realized who’d walked in. A whoosh roared through her ears.
Cooper Graham himself.
She felt as if she’d been struck by a supernova, and she hated that. After following him for six days, she should have been better prepared. But seeing him from a distance and being ten feet away were completely different experiences.
He’d sucked up all the air in the room, and the good ol’ boy grin he turned on his customers was nowhere in sight. This was his face at the line of scrimmage. One thing was certain. If Graham wanted to see her, this wasn’t about a simple ID check.
She mentally ticked off the possible reasons she’d been detained and decided she hated every one of them. But she told herself Graham wasn’t the only one in the room who knew how to fake a play, and unlike him, she had everything at stake.
Even though her heart was pounding so hard she was afraid he’d see, she tried to look as if this was the thrill of her lifetime. “Brilliant! I say, I’m quite gobsmacked.”
His eyes, a shade darker than his burnt-toast hair, swept over her, taking in her long wig, pushed-up breasts, and okay legs. She wasn’t a beauty, but she wasn’t a dog, either, and if she had a shred of vanity, she would have been demoralized by his obvious disdain. But she didn’t, and she wasn’t.
She dug her toe-numbing heels into the carpet as he came farther into the office. His thick brown hair was a little disheveled. Not fashionably rumpled—more the dishevelment of a man who couldn’t be bothered with bimonthly haircuts or a shelf full of grooming products.
Stay calm. Keep your focus.
Without warning, he snatched her clutch away, and she gave a little hiss of dismay. “Bugger!” she cried, a few beats too late.
She stared at his oversize hands—ten inches from thumb to little finger. She knew this because she did her homework. Just as she knew those big hands had thrown more than three hundred touchdowns. The same hands digging in her clutch and pulling out her fake green card.
“Esmerelda Crocker?”
A good investigator had to improvise, and the more detail she could give, the more convincing she’d be. “I go by Esme. Lady Esme, actually. Esmerelda is a family name.”
“Is that so.” His voice rolled from his lips like deep water over a parched Oklahoma prairie.
She gave a shaky nod. “Passed down through the generations to honor the second wife of the fifth Earl of Conundrum. Died in childbirth, the poor cow.”
“My condolences.” He looked inside again. “No credit cards?”
“They’re so vulgar, don’t you think?”
“Money’s never vulgar,” the cowboy drawled.
“How very American of you.”
He began rummaging in her clutch again, something that didn’t take long, since she’d left her wallet safely stashed in her car—a wallet that held her fresh new private investigator’s license as well as half a dozen business cards.
DOVE INVESTIGATIONS
Est. 1958
Truth Brings Peace
The original business cards had read: “Truth Brings Piece.” Her grandfather had been a brilliant investigator, but a lousy speller.
