Page 158 of Untouchable

“I noticed that.”

They didn’t speak for a minute. Just gave each other sheepish sideways glances.

Finally Kelly turned to look at the man beside her. He was big, competent, decent, attractive, and as normal as any man she’d ever met.

And she’d dragged him into her twisted world.

“Jack,” she began, feeling compelled to reach out and put a hand on his arm. “Jack, maybe we should clarify the nature of our working relationship.”

He turned toward her, his mouth twitching up in surprisingly ironic amusement. “You think?”

And, despite herself, Kelly couldn’t help but like the man.

“My mom hired you originally, and now you’re working for me. I’m paying you to do certain jobs that I’m not capable of doing or that I don’t have the resources to accomplish. But that doesn’t give you any responsibility for me or any say about what I do on my own. You’re not my bodyguard.”

“Yeah,” Jack muttered, pushing a hand through his thick, dark hair. “Maybe we should talk about that.”

Her brows drawing together, Kelly said stiffly, “I don’t want a bodyguard, Jack.”

“I know. That’s not what I meant. I meant maybe we should rethink our working arrangement.”

Feeling a sudden stab of fear and the strangest kind of disappointment, Kelly mumbled, “Oh. You don’t want to work for me anymore?”

With a textured sigh, Jack admitted, “Kelly, I don’t know if I can. To say my professional objectivity has been compromised when it comes to you would be the most massive kind of understatement.” Giving her another dry smile, he added, “I’m having a hell of a time not just storming in and beating Marshall to a pulp—purely on principle.”

Kelly’s heart lurched. “Jack, that wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“I know,” he replied, rolling his eyes a little. “I’m not going to do it. I’m just saying.”

Gripping his arm a little harder, Kelly said faintly, “I see your point. But… but I still need you. I don’t trust anyone else.”

She wondered when she’d started to trust him.

Jack let out his breath in a hoarse gust, almost like a low groan. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

She knew she should let him go. It was selfish and heartless to keep involving him in this crazy mess, and it couldn’t lead to anything good for him. But he was her last hope of finally bringing this whole thing to a close. “Please, Jack. I know it’s gotten complicated, but it will just be a little while longer.”

He shook his head. Then his arm went around her in an incongruously friendly gesture. Pulling her against his side in a casual embrace, he murmured, “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Then she remembered why they were here.

“So did you really discover something?” she asked, straightening up and pulling away from him. “Or did you just call me here to yell at me for circumventing your manly prerogative?”

Picking up the file he must have dropped on the table earlier, he opened it up and continued. “We found something. Things are finally starting to come together. I never would have believed it when your mom originally contacted me.”

Feeling her heartbeat accelerate again—this time for a completely different reason—she tried to peer into the file. “What did you find?”

“The personnel files was mostly just useless stuff, except for Vinnie’s. Some personal documents must have been moved into his personnel file when he died. It’s got to have been intentional. I’m assuming it was Arthur Marshall, holding on to them as leverage or a safety precaution.”

Feeling almost dizzy, Kelly tried to wrap her mind around this new information. “What documents? About my father’s death?”

“Some of them were about other things. He was protecting his back on several fronts, it looks like. But there was something that’s important to us.”

Kelly stared at Jack, who was looking at her with a strange kind of intensity. “What?” she asked.

Jack pulled a few pieces of paper out of his file and handed them to Kelly.

She stared at it blankly, not able to process what she was looking at.