Page 33 of Ghost

I didn’t know much about motorcycle clubs, but I had already learned he kept any information that didn’t touch my family’s business or me to himself, so I wasn’t surprised he ended the call.

Putting the spatula down, he slid an arm around my waist and pulled me in for a deep kiss. “You were supposed to stay in bed.”

“I didn’t know that.” I shrugged. “And I smelled coffee.”

“Was gonna bring it to you.”

I grinned up at him, loving the idea of breakfast in bed with this sexy man. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“I’ll be clearer tomorrow.”

He kissed the corner of my mouth, steered me to the table, and set a mug in front of me. He must have paid attention because it had the perfect amount of cream.

Then he went back to cooking like my kitchen was his. Except for the one time he opened the wrong cabinet.

It probably should’ve been surreal to have this dangerous man cooking my breakfast the morning after taking my virginity, but it somehow felt disconcertingly natural.

After setting a plate in front of me and sitting down with his own, he explained, “They’re still working on the warehouse. Building’s not ready for a full crew.”

As we ate, I thought about the altered reports and finally remembered the copies I’d kept of my earliest field sheets. I had kept them because I was so proud when my dad first trusted me to supervise displays.

“I have files here. Personal copies from the first jobs I led.” Swallowing the last bite on my plate, I thought about everything I’d kept. “Some of them even have photographs of the equipment before and after each show. They’re in the closet in the guest room.”

“That’d back up exactly what you recorded before the reports passed through the operations office.”

His confidence had me jumping to my feet to grab those boxes.

I headed down the hall, and he followed. “I can find a box without protection.”

“I’m not protecting you from the closet,” he retorted with a grin.

“Then why are you following me?”

“To carry the box.”

I laughed. “I can carry a box, Gavin.”

He opened the closet and looked at the stack on the top shelf. “But can you pull it down without a ladder?”

I gave him an exasperated look and watched him easily snag the box that would’ve been a struggle for me to reach. When he set it on the bed, I opened it and only part of the paperwork was there because I had split the field sheets from the photos.

I pointed at the box behind the one he’d brought down. “Can you get that one too, please?”

“You said one box,” he murmured as he reached for it.

“I was estimating.”

He arched a brow. “Dangerous habit in your profession.”

I pulled a stack of binders from the second box and shoved them into his arms. “Fortunately, none of these have a fuse.”

He carried everything into the living room, then sat on the edge of the coffee table and watched me sort. The complete early files were in there. Handwritten field counts. Photos from setup and breakdown. Return forms signed at the site. Notes I had written when I still felt like I needed to prove I deserved my dad’s trust.

I leaned back against the couch. “My counts matched the pictures, and the site returns matched my totals.”

“Any discrepancies must have been introduced after the material returned to the warehouse.” Gavin bumped his shoulder against mine. “You knew you counted them right.”

I nodded. “I did.”