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I blink, hoping he doesn’t notice, but I can’t unsee it. Will Leblanc doesn’t belong in an office. Or the office is what doesn’t match. The top-of-the-line furnishings and lemon-fresh scent are a sleight of hand. They’re meant to make people think he’s not deadly.
This is probably my last chance to run. To get up out of the chair and bolt for the door.
It seems like the right idea. The way to save my life.
I know it wouldn’t. He’d catch me, even if I ran. He’d send people after me. I stole fifty thousand dollars from his company, and from the certainty in his eyes, he knows it.
Oh, I could run. And I’d spend the rest of my life wondering when he’d find me.
My chest hurts by the time he speaks. My hands are clenched in my lap.
“The coffee was fine, Ms. Anderson. It tasted delicious. But then, we both know that’s not your weakness. That was your strength. It was a distraction. Good, but not good enough. Your father should have taught you better than that. You tried to con the wrong man.”
7
WILL
Bristol Anderson stares at me,wide-eyed, hardly breathing. Her smile sticks on her face, but it’s about to die. It’s about to falter. There’s no way she can keep it up now.
The silence hangs between us.
I don’t even know what I planned to do when I finally had her in here. I’ve had more than an hour to think about it. To be furious. To fantasize.
I imagined calling the cops. I imagined waiting at the front doors of the building and firing her on the sidewalk. I imagined waking up the woman who owns the temp agency at three in the morning and causing chaos.
Those weren’t the worst things, though. Those weren’t the scenarios that kept me in my office. Those weren’t the scenarios that kept my teeth gritted with tension.
I imagined letting Bristol Anderson get away with it.
I imagined knocking on her door with a check for fifty thousand dollars. From mypersonalaccount, not the business. I imagined pressing it into her hand, no questions asked.
I imagined asking a million questions. I imagined getting all the answers. I imagined listening to her admit to me, in her sweet, pure voice, why she’d stooped to this level.
I imagined hearing the answer and feeling something for her.
I imagined wrapping my arms around her and holding her close.
I imagined telling her that she didn’t have to do it, not ever again, because I would fix it. Whatever the problem was, I would fix it.
They were unhinged thoughts. I would never. Not Bristol Anderson. Not anyone.
It made me twice as furious to think about comforting her.
It made me a hundred times as furious that I don’t understand.
What would drive a woman like Bristol Anderson to steal? What would possess her to steal from me? Her father? What did he do? What threats did he make? What danger could she possibly be in?
I want to kill whoever it is that made her feel desperate enough to steal. I want to beat the shit out of whoever made her feel so alone that instead of asking for help, she put in a fake purchase order.
It would feel even better to solve a problem for her. Solve it permanently.
That urge is balanced out by several darker ones.
Things I’d like to do toher.
It would feel good to stop pretending. It would feel so fucking good to let people understand who I am.WhatI am.
She must see that in my expression, because her eyes get wider. The tension gets thicker. I’m seconds away from vaulting over the desk and—
