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“Yes?” Cara said weakly.
“I know who Brad is. I see him. He’s Roger’s hire, so I can’t get rid of him without cause. And honestly, I don’twantto get rid of him without cause. Life is full of dickbags, and a person has to learn to coexist with them.”
Life is full ofdickbags? This wasTonyatalking?
“But there are dickbags, and then there are criminals.” Tonyasnorted. “I guess I should sayallegedcriminals. What do you need from me?”
“I don’t know, exactly. I think we—Matteo Benz and I—need to go to the king with what we know about Noar and the shares. It’s too big a deal to keep to ourselves any longer, even if I wish we had more information.” She raised her eyes questioningly at Matteo as she spoke.
Matteo nodded as Tonya said, “I agree.”
“I don’t want you to do anything unethical, but I was hoping that since Brad was still out of the office, you might be able to poke around a bit. See if you can find anything about his relationship with Noar.”
“Brad’s computers, devices, and the content of his emails are the property of CZT, so I don’t see any ethical hurdle here.”
“It might all be nothing.”
“And that’s fine. But it might not be nothing. We owe it to our clients, and frankly to ourselves, to find out.”
“But even if he is into something shady, he might not have left a trail. He might be using his own devices.”
“He might. But remember, being a dickbag tends to be inversely associated with intelligence.”
Cara burst out laughing. “I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you. I’m just not used to hearing you talk like this.”
“I guess I’m feeling rather informal today. Let me do some digging. I’ll call you.”
Cara hung up and turned her head to find Matteo looking intently at her. “Everything all right?”
She opened her mouth to reassure him that everything was fine, but the air shifted again. Suddenly, sitting a foot away fromMatteo in bed, everything was very much not fine. It was not fine that his stupid hands were so hot, or that he had made her feel comfortable enough to tell himso muchabout her life. It was not fine that he was turning out to be so smart and so cunning and so capable of using his wile for good.
She was in trouble. There was no denying what was going on here. It made no sense, but there was no denying it: she wanted Matteo.
She’d had Johannes the lonely goatherd and Bashir the handsome principal in her grasp, but she hadn’t been able to get it up—metaphorically—for them because she wantedMr. Benz.
She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to do more than kiss her. That’s why she was fixating on his hands. And his butt.
Dear lord.
Well. You can’t always get what you want. She’d learned that thoroughly and at a young age. So with great effort, she rolled away from him.
Which caused him to roll away, too, and get off the bed.
Which caused things to start feeling awkward.
No. They weren’t backsliding to awkward.
She froze in place half on, half off the bed as a rogue thought arose: Was it possible all that awkwardness between them in the early going had actually been attraction?
“Is everything all right?”
“Sorry, I was taken aback by something my boss said that was a bit out of character, but it wasn’t about Brad, or Morneau, or any of this. She is going to do some digging into Brad.”
He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then shut it. He wandered over to the small bureau at the foot of thebed and picked up her Post-it. “‘Change is the essential process of all existence,’” he read aloud. “From Mr. Spock. You really are a Star Trek fan.”
“I really am.”
“What does it mean?”
