Page 9 of The Arrangement (Executive Suite Secrets #3)

ROME ASHbrIDGE

Two weeks after my interesting encounter with Liam at the library, I found myself at Union Terminal with a smirk and a wicked plan. If the man was going to harass and stalk me at work, why shouldn’t I return the favor?

The shouts and laughter of a few hundred children echoed off the high, arched ceiling of the main rotunda as the various groups gathered for this somewhat impromptu school field trip.

Through my connections at the library, I was familiar with several elementary schoolteachers in the region.

It had taken little coaxing for them to pull together a spur-of-the-moment field trip to see the dinosaurs and other science exhibits at the Museum of Natural History and Science.

Especially if I was the one footing the bill for the school buses, museum tickets, and lunches for the kids and the chaperones.

It was an expense I was all too happy to pay if it meant happy kids, education, and the chance to make Liam Rose squirm in his own domain.

Yes, after he’d shown up at the library, I’d gone out of my way to find out exactly what he’d been doing for the past several years.

Of course, thanks to the internet and social media, the search took all of five minutes to discover that Liam had a PhD in paleontology, which was just the nerdy kind of thing I would have expected him to do, and that he was now employed at the museum as one of their researchers.

There were also pictures of his wife.

He’d gotten married.

She was pretty. A petite brunet with a heart-shaped face and wide smile. She looked as if she were the perfect match to Liam’s reserved and somewhat goofy appearance.

I didn’t know why her picture made my stomach sour and a cold sweat break out across my body. What did I care if he was married? If that was the case, maybe I should have a talk with his wife about keeping a better leash on her husband. Not let him run around harassing his old “friends.”

It didn’t matter. By the end of the afternoon, I planned to have some answers to my most burning questions.

Sending a few hundred grade schoolers through the museum was only the beginning.

When I’d scheduled this field trip with the museum, I’d specifically asked that Dr. Rose be on hand to answer the children’s questions about the dinosaurs.

There were three hundred and forty-two kids spread out across several groups, not to mention teachers and parents acting as chaperones.

They all had to pass by Dr. Rose. He would not escape me.

And the best part—I had no doubt he had been told who’d arranged this expedition, so he was going to be sweating all day, knowing he would have to face me, eventually.

This wasn’t stalking. Oh no, this was payback.

My hands stuffed into my pockets and a secretive smile on my lips, I walked along with Mrs. Elizabeth Gunthrie’s third grade class.

She had a total of thirty-two students, but she’d divided them up into four groups of eight, a parent attached to each.

I stuck close to Mrs. Gunthrie since I knew she would have the tightest handle on her students, and she was happily married.

It also didn’t hurt that she was also about sixty.

I didn’t have to worry about her wandering eyes and insinuations the same way I did with those hopeful single parents.

The various groups and classes began in different directions.

Some began with the dinosaurs and worked through the Ice Age exhibit, while others went to the model train exhibit of the city of Cincinnati during the early twentieth century.

This way, all the groups didn’t get clogged up in a single location.

Our group was starting at the opposite end with the Cincinnati History Museum, which was dedicated to the history of the city, with a replica of a paddlewheel riverboat the kids could walk through and a cobblestone street with a variety of shops they could enter.

Of course, this area didn’t hold the attention of the kids for long.

It was history, and a history without dinosaurs or robots was boring.

I did what I could to help keep the kids on target, but it was a losing battle that Mrs. Gunthrie well understood.

From that section, we moved to the Children’s Museum, which was filled with hands-on activities to teach them about animals, nature, and their own bodies.

She gave them thirty minutes to run wild—which they did—in the closed-off area before he had to move on to eat our early lunch.

I wished I could have enjoyed the chaos more. However, my mind was already counting down the minutes until I’d get to see Liam. At that moment, he should have been talking to the first group of kids about fossils and dinosaurs. I would reach Liam and his dinosaurs after lunch.

While the day stretched on, the little ones were good at breaking up my scowls and watch-checking with their questions. Soon enough, I found myself lost in talking to them about crazy things, trying to teach them things with the same energy I used during story time at the library.

By the time we were strolling past the enormous tyrannosaurus skeleton at the entrance to the Museum of Natural History and Science, I’d lost most of my excited buzz and was worn-out.

My back ached, and my knees throbbed from the constant squatting and standing on the linoleum floors.

I was weary to my bones. These munchkins were fucking exhausting.

How did people stand to have more than one of these?

I was trying to keep up with eight, and a fucking pro was at my side all day.

Serious props to Mrs. Gunthrie for managing thirty-two of these rabid demons five days a week.

We needed to pay teachers way fucking more.

However, as soon as we turned the corner and I saw Liam standing there with a grinning but tired face, dressed in a white lab coat and a bow tie, all my aches and fatigue washed away.

The best part was when he lifted his eyes as he scanned the newest group of schoolchildren, and he focused right on my face.

My expression was joyously innocent. I loved the way his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.

I could almost feel his panic, and it was so fucking sweet.

Liam’s smile didn’t waver as I ripped his gaze away from me and stared at the kids who gathered around a replica of a giant trilobite they could run their hands over.

“Has everyone been having fun at the museum today?” Liam called out.

“Yeah!” the kids shouted back, but it was with decidedly less enthusiasm than they’d shown all day. It had been a long afternoon, and their group was one hour away from climbing on their bus to return to school. I wouldn’t be surprised if half of them fell asleep on the bus.

“Does anyone have a favorite part of the museum?”

There were a couple who called out that they liked the trains and another who talked about the miniature robots that were replicas of the robots that had been sent to the surface of Mars. Many of them exclaimed about the giant T-Rex skeleton they’d passed on their way to reach Liam.

He nodded, his expression growing more relaxed. “Those are some of my favorites too. Well, my name is Dr. Liam Rose, and I’m a paleontologist here. Does anyone know what a paleontologist does?”

“You study water pails?” I yelled, making all the kids giggle.

Liam held on to his smile, but his eyes narrowed at me in silent warning. “Not quite.”

“You’re a dinosaur doctor!” a girl with braided pigtails answered.

“Very good! That’s exactly right! I am a doctor who specializes in dinosaurs. You see, I dig in the dirt, looking for?—”

“Treasure!” I hollered, sounding like a pirate.

The kids laughed, but this time, Mrs. Gunthrie directed some stink-eye my way, and I bit my tongue. It was one thing to make Liam’s life more difficult, but I shouldn’t mess with the education of the kids.

“That’s true. It’s treasure to me. I’m searching for fossils. Who knows what fossils are?”

“Bones!” someone shouted.

“What else?” Liam prodded.

The kids fell silent until he tapped a finger on what appeared to be a fossilized nautilus.

“Shells?” another kid called out.

“Yes!”

“Plants?” a third added.

“That’s right. Even plants can be turned into fossils. What a paleontologist does is they dig up these fossils and clean them so we can study the dinosaurs. That way, we can better understand all the amazing creatures who lived on the Earth millions and millions of years ago.”

From there, I stood in a kind of silent awe as I watched Liam talk to these kids—not about the cool dinosaurs they were all accustomed to seeing in the Hollywood movies, but about the tiny fish and invertebrate creatures that swam in the oceans that covered the world millions of years before those enormous behemoths.

He passed around small, fossilized shells and other creatures for them to touch and examine.

These creatures were important because these were the precursors to everything.

Not to mention, these were the fossils that were most common in this region and were the things they were likely to find in their own backyard or while hiking in the woods.

Sure, uncovering the femur for a T-Rex would be awesome, but locating bits of shells and coral from millions of years ago was more likely and could spawn the next generation of scientists.

After a brief talk, Liam led them through the rest of the exhibit, explaining more about how there wasn’t just one mass extinction that wiped out the giant dinosaurs, but there were five mass extinctions.

I hated to admit it, but I actually learned a stunning amount of information about the dinosaurs and the types of marine life that once swam in this area.

Almost thirty minutes passed before we reached the end of the dinosaurs, and the kids were handed off to another museum docent who specialized in some of the other research that was being done with animal genetics in the area.

Liam waved at all the kids as they passed by.

The moment they were gone, his shoulders slumped, and he closed his eyes, appearing utterly drained.

He opened his eyes again, and I was standing in front of him with a bright smile.

Liam jumped and shuffled away from me. He glared, sending tiny lines out from the corners of his eyes. Without a word, he hurried to a niche where he pulled out a half-empty bottle of water. He swished a mouthful and swallowed it.

“I’ve been talking almost nonstop since 9:00 a.m.,” he stated. Now that he wasn’t attempting to project his voice over the other crowds of talking people, I could hear that he’d grown hoarse. “How many freaking kids did you shuttle here?”

“More than three hundred. Almost emptied one of the grade schools,” I replied with my chest puffed up.

“Asshole,” he muttered in a voice so low I almost didn’t hear him.

I made a show of gasping and pressing my hand to my chest. “What? You didn’t appreciate the chance to get all these kids excited about the museum?

How many junior scientists do you think you nurtured today?

Not to mention, you could be winning over new patrons.

Many of these kids could rush home tonight and demand that their parents bring them back to the museum. I thought you’d appreciate that.”

Liam stared at me as though he wanted to rip my eyeballs out and bounce them off the walls of the museum. “We need to talk. Are you almost done here? Do you have to leave on the bus with the kids?”

“This group was the last one to go through the dinosaur exhibit. And no, I don’t have to leave on the bus. I drove separately.”

“Good.” Liam grabbed my wrist, the heat of his hand burning through the thin cashmere to scorch my flesh as he pulled me through the exhibit. He paused at a secured door and waved his badge in front of it, unlocking it.

Finally, we were going to get to the heart of the matter.