Page 91 of Protecting Love

She smiled, the wariness no longer behind her eyes.

It’d been a few weeks of nothing at this point. He didn’t think West was going to keep him on this much longer.

There wasn’t much more he’d been able to come up with that stood out enough. He was still tracking down where the rat came from, but that had been a dead end.

No one was talking in Chinatown just as he expected.

“I do,” she said.

“It looks nice. You worried for nothing.”

“I know. London said the same thing. It’s almost as if it always belonged there.”

“Did you think otherwise?”

“No. Come back and I’ll get my stuff.”

“Night,” Molly said.

He nodded to Molly and followed Paris’s ass down the hall. A young man caught his eye in another office.

“Ryan, this is Fletcher Wilcox. He’s the Head of Security for the building. I have to show him something, but you’re good for the day. Hope it wasn’t too chaotic for you.”

“No,” Ryan said, shaking his head. “I’m learning a lot already. I’m going to dive into MHT tomorrow now that you sent it all over.”

Fletcher waited until Ryan left, heard the bell go off again, then asked, “Why is your new hire going over an old project?”

It wasn’t lost on him the name of the company.

“I’m training him. Best to have him go through start to finish and see how we operate and what we look for.”

“True. But hadn’t you said that was your first strategic planning project? I thought you did a lot more lean consulting.”

“Wow, you really do know your job.”

He reached for her arm and yanked her to his chest. Maybe he wanted the kiss as much as she was eying him to give it.

“Don’t underestimate me.”

She wiggled her eyebrows. “Never.” Then she pointed to her lips as if he didn’t want to place them there himself.

They landed hard, quick, and with little heat.

She crossed her eyes at him.

“That was more than I thought I’d get here. And as for why Ryan is doing that, it’s because I had a conversation with Debra. A lot has popped up today and I glanced back quickly at things and want a second fresh set of eyes to do the same thing.”

“He looks like he just learned to shave last month.”

“Yes,” she drawled out. “He’s young and inexperienced. But I’ll only have him double-check simple things. Like what I did today and noticed a double file.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that after my conversation with Debra earlier⁠—”

“Why are you still talking to her?” he interrupted.

“She called me. Let me explain.” He listened while Paris went over the conversation. “Then I decided to just look through my files again. This woman was completely different months ago.”