“What if I tell you I’ve changed my mind? I don’t think you should doit?”
She regarded him for a moment. “I’d say you were toolate.”
She was so blind, so completely pigheaded, that he snapped. “Don’t come crying to me if the job bores you into acoma.”
She stared at him speculatively, a secret little smile curving her lips. “Don’t worry,” she said in a soft voice. “I’ll come to you forexcitement.”
A woman rarely rendered him speechless, but this one just had. She’d conned him and twisted his reasoning until he couldn’t think of anything useful except escaping from her as quickly as possible, before he gave her more excitement than either of them needed rightnow.
“I’ll see myself out,” he snarled as he stomped to thedoor.
“Don’t be a stranger,” she called softly behind him, and damn if he didn’t hear a smile in hervoice.
“CHOPSTICKS.”
“Chopsticks?” Cynthia tried not to let disappointment creep into her tone. Neville Percivald was giving her a tour of his company himself. Not only was she flattered that he was taking the time from what must be a busy schedule, she was determined to use every opportunity to pursue her secret agenda—gathering information that could be valuable to the FBI. “All those crates containchopsticks?”
He chuckled without opening his lips, in a terribly refined, British sort of way. “Not all of them. No. But we do import chopsticks used in many of the Oriental restaurants in the PacificNorthwest.”
She gazed at the rows of stacked crates on the cement loading dock. “That’s a lot of chow mein.” She smiled up into Neville Percivald’s guileless blue eyes, reminding herself she was Cyn, undercover agent to the drug and possibly chopstick trade. For all she knew those boxes didn’t contain chopsticks at all. They could be loaded with little packets of white powder. She pictured herself sneaking down with a crowbar, cranking open a crate, slitting a packet of white powder and tasting it. Then her fantasy abruptly dissolved. What did drugs taste like, anyway? Would she get intoxicated from tasting them? And who knew what kind of germs they harbored; she very much doubted there were health inspectors at drug packagingplants.
“Is something wrong, MissBaxter?”
“No, no,” she assured him as inspiration struck. “I’m just not looking forward to counting all those chopsticks.” And checking all the packaging, searching for false bottoms in the crates, accidentally cracking one open to see if it washollow.
He did that closed-mouth chuckling thing again. “Don’t worry, Miss Baxter. You won’t get your hands dirty. You merely reconcile the shipping tallies with the packingslips.”
He was looking at her like she was a bit dim for a CPA, which was just fine by her. Among her professional colleagues there were several bean counters who were missing a few beans of their own. If Neville Percivald and his colleagues thought she was one of those, all thebetter.
The more the top mucky-mucks at Oceanic discounted her, the more they’d let slip, and she definitely planned to be picking up every dropped clue that came her way. Accounting had a pretty bad rap in the excitement department, but it had its moments. She reminded herself that it was accountants who’d brought Al Caponedown.
When you followed the trail of money, you could find out a lot about a person and an organization. If Oceanic had any dirty little secrets in the financial department, she’d findthem.
Maybe she was a late bloomer, as a woman and a spy, but she was determined to make up for lost time, in bothdepartments.
While she’d been plotting his downfall in her head, Neville Percivald had let his gaze stray, and he was checking out her body in a manner that struck her as immensely foolish in the age of sexual harassment charges. Ooh. This was good. If her boss thought his new bean counter was a bean-brain and a bit of a floozy, he’d soon be putty in herhands.
She swept him a look under her lashes that said,If this was a singles bar, and not the loading dock of your company, you might get somewhere.At least, she hoped that was the message she was telegraphing. She’d never actually tried to communicate such a thing before, with or withoutwords.
He was getting some kind of message from her, in any event. His chest puffed out under his navy, double-breasted blazer, and he sent her a smile that didn’t seem particularlyprofessional.
He conducted the rest of the tour walking a little closer than was absolutely necessary, and she reveled in her success even as she tried not to get creeped out that a possible drug smuggler might have the hots forher.
Nobody in her life had had so much as the lukewarms for her. Now she had two men giving her smoldering glances. Well, Neville Percivald was too refined to smolder, but his gaze certainly seemed warm when it rested onher.
Now Jake was a man who smoldered. And it wasn’t just his glances. His kiss had nearly melted her on the spot. Mmm. She felt warm just thinking about it. For some reason, he’d no sooner convinced her to take this job than he’d started trying to talk her out ofit.
Fat chance. He’d recruited her for this spy mission at a time when she was desperate for some excitement in her life. There wasn’t an argument he could make that would convince her to give up the most fun thing she’d ever done—before she’d even doneit.
She’d love to discover valuable information on her first day, simply for the pleasure of making him eat hiswords.
By the time Neville Percivald left her at what he euphemistically termed the “accounting department,” she’d met most of the staff and toured the entire building. Everything seemed perfectly legitimate and innocent. She tried not to feel discouraged, knowing her sleuthing talents would best be used here in accounting. It was a very small department; there were only two of them. Herself and Agnes Beecham, thebookkeeper.
Agnes terrified Cynthia. She was of an indeterminate age somewhere between fifty and retirement. Colorless from the washed-out gray hair coiled neatly on the top of her head to her sallow face and tired eyes, right down to the flesh-colored support hose and beige walkingshoes.
To Cynthia, she was right out of Dickens. Cynthia’s own personal Ghost of Things to Come. This woman was herself if she’d stayed on the path she’d been traveling; she was certain ofit.
In her soft, monotonous voice, Agnes explained the systems they used and showed Cynthia the files she’dneed.
