Chapter Two

He shrugged, his massive shoulder muscles rippling through the crisp dress shirt material. “‘Cause I hate that goddamn coffee machine, so I acted as incompetent as possible so you’d never let me anywhere near it. That way, I can stick to my beloved instant shit that I just add boiling water to, and you can handle the steam and milk foam and fiddly little capsules and cinnamon.”

Roxanna stared at him, impressed despite herself. “Well played, Griff.”

“Thanks, Roxie,” he said cheerfully. “So… as a peace offering, how about this: I’ll make the coffee when the new client comes in. Deal?”

She gazed at him some more, then she smiled. Griff stared down at her, a bit stunned at the shining glory of that smile.

Roxanna smiled at him rarely and she never smiled at him like this. Griff was amazed at how it changed her face, totally and beautifully – she suddenly looked about six years younger than her thirty-one years, and good God, were her eyes ever gorgeous when they were all lit up and sparkling like that. That smile actually kicked Griff in the chest, and hard, because it was strangely soft, and sweet, and vulnerable… and he’d never have associated Roxanna with any of those words.

It made him wonder, just for a brief, insane second, if he’d had her wrong this whole time. If maybe the woman had a gooey centre hidden under all the sharp cool and remote reserve.

She wasn’t like this around Selena, he knew. With other women in the office, Roxanna was funny, bright, open. Griff had seen her joke and smile with a woman, and then just snap it all off as quick as flicking a light switch when a man came over. She was never straight-up rude and she was never unprofessional… but she definitely wasn’t friendly. So for these few seconds, he just enjoyed this smile, knowing that it was a gift that she was going to snatch back soon.

Sure enough, she caught herself. The smile disappeared lightning-fast and she glared at him crossly. He sighed a bit at that all-too-familiar expression, braced himself for her return to standard form. She didn’t make him wait long and she didn’t disappoint.

“Yeah,” she said brusquely. “You make the damn coffee, Griff, and I’ll get back to work. Congrats again on your return to the field.”

Before he could answer, she spun on her heel and stalked across the large, open-plan space, back to her desk by the front door. Griff watched her go, puzzling – yet again – about the woman’s story. Nobody at Solid Security knew anything about her, not one single personal thing.

It’d be easy enough to find out, of course, since digging up information on people was what they were all about, but Griff’s boss, Dallas Foreman, was militant to the point of lunacy about employee privacy. It was a fireable and ass-kickable transgression, according to Dallas, and he’d upheld that policy more than once when somebody had gotten just a bit too curious about a colleague, for whatever reason.

Sighing and forcing his thoughts away from the infuriating puzzle that was Roxanna Hale, Griff turned his attention to the client notes one last time. He stared hard at Wilbur and Claire Worthington’s wedding picture, wondering how these two smiling people could have ended up defrauding investors and businesses of almost forty billion dollars, at last estimate. Not quite as big as the Bernie Madoff thing – which stood at almost sixty-five billion, making it the largest fraud in U.S. economic history – but pretty goddamn close.

Griff sighed again, then looked up as his boss approached his desk with his usual intent stride. Griff stood, nodded.

“Morning, Dallas,” he said.

“Griff.” Dallas’ normally-mellow Texan drawl had an edge this morning, and Griff went up yet another notch in his alertness. “Is she here yet?”

“No. You want me to call her? Make sure she hasn’t changed her mind?”

Dallas waved a huge hand. “No need, man. The woman ain’t changing her mind for nothing, I can promise you that. She’ll be here, and with a vengeance. She wants the Worthingtons to land in jail cells and for the keys to get thrown into shark-infested waters.”

Griff cracked a grin. “I’ll do what I can to make all that happen.”

“I know you will.” Dallas’ hard blue gaze sharpened now, and Griff glanced over his shoulder. An astonishingly-tall woman with long brown hair was standing there talking to Roxanna, and Griff looked back at Dallas. “That’s Leeza Burns?”

“Yep.” Dallas started over to greet their client, and Griff straightened his tie. “Show time, man.”

Show time, indeed.