Page 140 of Untouchable

She looked at his face, and her heart melted a little. He’d been worried about her getting to her car, only to find out she didn’t have her keys.

Fuck, she was a bitch. A coldhearted bitch to use him this way.

But maybe what was in these files would finally bring this whole thing to an end.

29

The key thing was strange.

Not that she had left them in his office. That was understandable. But Caleb was sure Kelly had been returning the master key fob to Linda’s desk drawer, although she’d played it off so well he almost second-guessed himself.

But he was sure of what he’d seen, and he couldn’t figure out why she would have wanted the master key in the first place.

It could get her into anywhere in the building, but what could she possibly want in this building? She wasn’t any sort of corporate spy for a different company. It was too easy to track that kind of thing, and her background was all wrong for it. But there was nothing else here. Nothing else a pet portrait artist could possibly want.

Maybe she was arranging some sort of surprise for him.

It was the only explanation he could think of.

The question kept nagging at him though. All afternoon, after Kelly had left, as he tried to focus once again on work. He couldn’t push it completely from his mind.

He’d arranged a phone call in a half hour, so there wasn’t any sense in leaving before then, and he really needed to get throughsome more email before he called it quits for the day. But he just stared at the screen and thought about Kelly, about what she still might be hiding from him.

She loved him. He knew it was true. She felt for him the way he did for her. He wasn’t a fool, and he could tell her feelings were genuine.

Whatever she was hiding wasn’t intended to hurt him.

Maybe it had something to do with her bastard of an ex-lover, whom she still hadn’t opened up about to Caleb yet.

When his phone rang, he grabbed it, glad for a distraction from the direction of his thoughts.

It was Wes.

“Hey, I thought you were flying back today.”

“I am.”

“How’s your mom?”

“About the same. Thanks. How’s Kelly?”

Well, that did nothing to distract Caleb from the focus of his thoughts all day. “She’s fine. Why wouldn’t she be?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Doesn’t anything seem strange to you about her? She comes out of nowhere, and suddenly she’s the most important thing in your life?”

Caleb was silent for a long time. Then he finally said, “Isn’t that how it always happens?”

“I don’t know. It’s never happened to me. But she’s hiding something. I can tell.”

“She has things in her past she doesn’t want the world to know. All of us do.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“Why have you gotten this thing between your teeth? Kelly thinks you have hidden desires for me that go way beyond friendship.”