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Technically, all of Steeple’s reporters were investigative. Each tended to have a niche, but given the right story and enough faith, Steeple allowed a lot of latitude.
“Won’t I read it in the paper tomorrow?”
“No,” she said. “These meetings are private.”
Though her life was becoming more public by the second.
His ease cooled. “There are two ways to do this, Miss McLeod.”
And his expression said he’d be okay with the hard way too. So she wasn’t going to her meeting… but she would be going back to Stag that night. No way this could continue. Ire had to call his people off. They wouldn’t take the order from her, but they would from the man at the top.
CHAPTER FOUR
DALY DIDN’T ASK questions when she came down from her apartment in a hunter-green bateau-neck cocktail dress at eleven p.m. Much later than she would usually go to Stag. With the McDades on her curb, the Manzanis would hang back. She guessed anyway. Maybe after a month of her not being home, they’d given up.
Though the flowers at the office suggested Evander wasn’t completely over it yet.
Daly opened the back door of the Bentley and closed it once she was inside.
Her day had been surreal. After skipping the meeting, she sat at her desk with Daly loitering nearby the whole time. That meant she couldn’t fill Steeple in about what the hell was going on even after the meeting was done. So she sent a vague email and put a story together using the police dailies and interviews by phone. Not her favorite way to do her job.
She shouldn’t be mad. The McDades were protecting her… weren’t they? It felt like control. Was a family like the McDades capable of altruism? No. Perhaps. They weren’t her area of expertise… yet. So much about them was myth and with what happened recently… Was it anger that churned up inside her? Maybe. But the questions were driving her crazy. She needed to know. She needed to ask. To get answers. Not knowing drove her nutty.
According to Daly’s tight lips, the only way she’d get answers was to go to the top. And that was exactly her intention. Not that she’d told her bodyguard.
No, she waited until they arrived at the club and he’d let her out of the car onto the sidewalk. It helped that he opened one arm to her and the other to the VIP entryway. No more lining up behind a rope. No more tickets or metal detectors. The zip of a thrill at her new status may have bedded deeper if it wasn’t for her determination.
Security stepped aside, and she went in. After a few feet, she stopped. At the curtain over the stairway. The two security guards didn’t move; they kind of peeked at her and then each other. Well, if she wasn’t always surprising McDade muscle.
“I want to see him.” Both guys in front looked over her head. Daly. She spun on the spot to address him. “I want to see him.”
“Alotta people do.”
“You told me Ire was the only way.”
For a second, he said nothing. Was he going to give? It wasn’t like she could fight her way past the hulks behind her. Daly gave the guards the nod.
When she turned again, security stepped aside to let her ascend the enclosed staircase. That it was only maybe four feet wide would’ve been fine if it wasn’t for the goons loitering at regular intervals, sucking in all the oxygen.
Adrenaline crept in as her heart sped up and she climbed higher. With thirty or so stairs, this Ire really did lord over his empire. The door at the top of the stairs didn’t open for her as it had the previous night.
Without even thinking about what she wanted to say, she turned that handle and strode inside.
“I don’t know who the hell gave you permission—”
Three men in suits sat at the desk with Ire McDade. Obviously, he was in the position of power; solo, dominating his side of the desk. As for the trio opposite him? The two naked blonde women kissing and groping each other on the chesterfield distracted her from scrutinizing them.
Naked. The bare beauties caressed each other like lovers completely alone in their intimacy.
“Men,” the Irish overlord said, “you know Miss McLeod.”
It took a second to drag her focus back to Ire. The other guys were glancing back and forth. Frowning. All but one of them anyway.
That guy stared. Gawped. “Wait, she’s…”
“McLeod?”
“She’s the…”
