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My shoulders sagged, and Daniel pulled me against him, kissing the top of my head. “Let’s go back to bed.”
“I can’t sleep.”
He kissed me again. “Then I guess we’re on a mission,” he said, resigned. He took the tape player and moved toward a plug in his office. I turned back around, looking at the boxes again.
“What the hell do all these numbers mean?” I picked a random box off the shelf and started rifling through it.
“It’s quite simple—What are you doing?” Daniel pointed to the box, and I held up a receipt.
“This is fourteen years old. Pretty sure you can’t be audited back that far, Princess. You don’t need it anymore.”
“I might.”
I narrowed my gaze at him. “Are you a closet hoarder?”
His lips twitched, a lightness in his eyes that made my heart expand in my chest. “I only keep things I might need.”
“So why do you need the check from a restaurant you ate at that long ago?”
He pried it from my fingers and took a closer look. “This meal was with the vice president of a major company. Someday she might need a reminder that it took place.”
“How the hell do you remember that?”
He tapped his temple. “It’s all up here, Princess.”
“Then use that big brain to think of something to get you out of this shit,” I muttered. “Where’s the box from the year your dad died?”
He flinched, and I regretted having to dig up all this pain. Without a word, he scanned the shelves. In seconds, he pointed to a box sitting up top. “There.”
I made a face. “Where’s a ladder? I can’t reach that.”
“You’ve lived here for eight years. You know where a ladder is,” Daniel pointed out.
“I’m looking at him,” I shot back, and he stifled a smile.
Daniel saton the floor with me as I rifled through the box the autopsy report should have been in. He’d started up Stone Temple Pilots and given up trying to get anything else done since I had to ask him what every little thing was.
“I can’t believe at seventeen you kept all of this stuff.” I rifled through another file. Most of it was meaningless to me.
“Information is powerful, Vivian.”
“No shit. That’s what I’m looking for. But you don’t seem to have what I need.” I slammed the folder shut. I needed something, and it just wasn’t coming to me.
“It doesn’t always come easy,” he reminded me, massaging my shoulders. “You’ve been at it for a while. Take a break.”
“I can’t.” I shoved the file on top of the stack I’d already been through, taking out the brunt of my frustration on it.
The box was almost empty, and I’d come up with nothing. I couldn’t stop, though, so I picked up the next item in the box.
“It’s a passport,” I said, opening the front flap. Daniel’s stony face greeted me. “Look how young you are.” I held it up, but he didn’t even glance at it. “I’ve never seen a picture of you from back then.”
His skin was smooth with youth, but his eyes were hard beyond his years. His face was thinner, but I knew that pissed off look. It was similar to one in his current passport.
“Put that away,” he said, attempting to take it from me.
I held it in front of me and turned to face him. “It’s really not fair,” I complained against his mouth. “Too handsome for your own good.”
His cheeks turned a burnt red. “Enough.”
