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Damn it. She would bet on the admin. It hadn’t taken her long to start looking into the new girl. The question became was Deanna protecting her boss or her own turf? It would make a big difference in how she handled the woman.

She needed to pick a couple of dresses and get back to the office. The office would be an excellent place to hide from JT. She might even be able to hole up in one of the offices and get some advice from the ladies on how to lose a guy she really, really didn’t want to lose.

Of course, if she went back to the office, the PI would know something was up. It made perfect sense to go there once. Her fake fiancée’s brother worked there. They could play it off that way. But spending hours up there on her own would be suspicious.

Things had gotten much more complex. No one would have thought about David Malone’s assistant. She would have been one more worker. As JT’s fiancée, she would be center stage.

Should she pull out?

“You doing okay in there?” JT’s deep voice came through the door of the dressing room.

“It depends,” she whispered. “Do you know a man named Howard Benson?”

“The private investigator?”

She opened the door because this was a conversation they needed to have very quietly. “Yes. Why do you need an outside private investigator? You have a whole firm of them.”

He walked in and closed the door behind him. “I didn’t hire him. Deanna did during her divorce. She didn’t want to use McKay-Taggart because they’re damn expensive. I offered to help pay for it, but she can be stubborn. She thought her husband was cheating. He was. On her and his girlfriend.”

Well, at least she knew who’d hired the PI and why Deanna was so touchy. “He’s the man following us. Are you sure your relationship with this woman is strictly professional?”

His eyes had gone innocently wide. “I’ve never touched her. Not once. I don’t think I’ve ever even helped her out of a car.”

She stared at him.

“I’m serious. Never touched her. Never been anything but professional with her. She’s abrupt but effective,” he explained.

“She’s rude.”

“She’s direct. I wanted to fire her in the beginning and my dad took me aside and asked me why. I told him she was abrasive. He asked me if I would say the same thing about a man in her position. I gave her more time and looked at her differently. She’s good at her job. I don’t care that she’s not what a female assistant is supposed to be. If I asked her to get my coffee there would likely be poison in it, but if I direct her to push through a multimillion-dollar deal with a jackhole who’s trying to tie me up in red tape, she gets it done. I can get my own coffee.” He seemed to deflate. “All that said, she did seem jealous today.”

She’d seemed more than jealous. “I think we can assume she set the PI on us. Have you talked to your parents? Would she call and ask about me?”

“Turn around.”

“Why?”

“Because you still need to buy swimsuits,” he said. “Let me help you try these on.”

She sent him a pointed look.

“I’ve already seen everything, and we should talk about this in private in case the PI is lurking.”

He was right. And he had seen everything. She turned and let him deal with the zipper she always struggled with. “Fine. Talk.”

She could see him through the mirrors. All three of them. She watched as he smoothed his hands across her shoulders before he slowly eased the zipper down.

“I called my mom earlier today,” he said. “She’s been sent a bunch of information about you and how we met. She and my father will support the cover. If they get reporters calling, they’ll hold the family line of ‘we do not discuss our personal lives in the press.’ They’ll move on very quickly because there are far more interesting people out there with even more money. We’re boring.”

His fingers skimmed along her skin, making her shiver. “Good. I think it’s safe to say Michael is on board as well. Are the two of you okay?”

“Can I kiss you? I have the wildest urge to put my lips on the back of your neck.”

She wanted that more than anything. “It would be a mistake.”

He touched a place between her shoulders that made her want to melt. “What you’re telling me is I can do this job, or I can have you? Is that what this is about?”

She was going to have to live up to her name and be blunt with him. “I don’t fuck where I work. I learned that the hard way. And you’re avoiding the question. I asked about your brother.”