Eve pulled out her phone while Mitch stood in the eerie blue light in front of the windows of the dolphin tank at the aquarium. He was lost in a completely appealing, childlike wonder at the swooping and darting of the creatures.
“Dylan,” she said when he answered, “I need you to do something for me on the qt.”
He didn’t even remind her that it was Saturday and he would have been completely within his rights to ignore her number on his digital display. “Sure. What’s up?”
“I need you to get the home number of a docent who works at a plantation called Mirabel. Ever heard of it?”
“I’ve been there, yeah.”
“You have?”
“My senior thesis was on representations of slave culture in the cinema. I’ve been to every place open to the public within about fifty miles of Atlanta.”
No kidding. The things she was learning about people this weekend. “You probably talked to this lady, then. Her name is Adele and she’s a volunteer with the Ashmere Trust.”
“So you need home phone and address?”
“Just phone. I think she has some information for me, but I want to talk to her in private.”
“Am I doing this clandestinely or as a rep of the show?”
“Use whatever method gets you that number.”
“Copy that, boss. I have thumbscrews and cuffs in my date book. Agent Moore out.”
With a smile, she hung up. She’d lobbed him some pretty weird requests since he’d come to work for her, and only once had he come up empty-handed. Of course, as it turned out, that particular member of the state senate had been arrested for shoplifting shortly afterward, so maybe it was just as well she hadn’t had him on the show.
It took Dylan less than half an hour to call her back. “I’ve got your number,” he said without preamble. “Got a pen?” He dictated it, and she wrote it on the notepad she kept in her handbag for this kind of thing.
“How’d you get it? Or should I not press you to reveal your sources?”
“It was easy,” he said with a touch of pride. “I just explained to the girl at the trust’s switchboard who I was and hinted that Adele might be on the scope for the show, and she was happy to give me her phone number. She probably would have given me the lady’s address and all the names of her kids, too, but I stopped her in time.”
Eve thanked him and disconnected. Now what should she do? Call Adele and arrange a meeting so she could force out of her whatever she was hiding? Or come at it in a more circuitous way and hope she let something slip?
Ha. Adele was a Southern lady. No manipulation would work on her. Honesty was the best approach.
“Have you been here so many times that you’re bored silly?”
Mitch ambled up to her, his presence like a breath of air in the stifling confusion of her own thoughts.
“No, actually, I’ve never been here. It’s kind of fun being a tourist in your own town.”
“Forgive me for noticing, but you’ve spent more time on the phone than you have looking at the fish.”
Speaking of honesty…
“I’m still bugged about that photo. I had Dylan track down Adele’s home number so I can talk to her about it some more.”
“Seems to me you’d be better off talking to someone in the family, like your grandmother or your uncle,” he said reasonably. “Up until today, you never even heard of Adele.”
“I’m going to do that, too.”
“Are you sure you want to?” He took her hand and began to walk slowly toward the exit. “I mean, look at it from their point of view. You turn up on their doorstep asking a bunch of questions about a casual photo taken thirty years ago. All weirdness aside, how can it matter now?”
She exhaled, a long breath that acknowledged he was probably right. “I know. I can’t argue that. Maybe it’s just some compulsion inside me to connect with the past.”
“Brought on by what?”
She glanced at him. Was the timing right? “I don’t know. Maybe because I’ve spent the last couple of weeks thinking about the future.”
“I hear you. I have to admit this deal is consuming most of my waking hours, too.”
Now, what had happened here? She’d given him a classic opener to have a conversation about whether this was only a fling, or whether it could be something more, and he’d sent it swerving back to her. She didn’t want to talk about business. If the truth were told, she was sick of thinking about the lawsuit and the station and the show and everybody’s expectations.
Eve wanted to talk about them. She’d spent the last three years talking about relationships, while her personal life was as bare as a winter field. So how long could a person talk about something without really experiencing it?
If she were really honest with herself, maybe she’d been happy that way. If you became an expert on something, you could control it. You could live it in a surface kind of way, without risking your emotions and your vulnerabilities. The time had come to delve below the surface. To experience something so deeply that it might change her forever.
A deeply frightening thought.
But a challenge, too. And who had learned to be good at dealing with those over the last three years?
“I didn’t mean the deal. I meant my personal future.” She took a breath and plunged, feeling like one of those dolphins landing in the deep end of the tank. “And yours. Do you mean to tell me you haven’t spent your waking hours thinking about me?”
As they went outside, the late afternoon heat clamped down on them like a smothering blanket. Eve hurried her steps as they made their way back to the car.
“Let me rephrase that,” Mitch said. “Thinking about this deal means thinking about you. At night I dream about you. I wake up aroused, which means I start the day thinking about you. I’ve come to the conclusion I must be some kind of obsessive personality.”
Well, there was nothing wrong with that. This was more like it.
“Have you given any thought to what happens when the deal is done?” she asked carefully. “About where this affair of ours might be going? Or if it’s going anywhere?”
He pulled onto the freeway and she realized he was taking her back to her place.
Ooh. Maybe they could shower the sweat of the day away. Together. She had some beautiful European soap that would suds up nicely and-
“Are you always this forthright?” he asked.
“I like to be honest. I think we fell into this out of sheer sexual chemistry, but the more I do goofy things with you like going to the aquarium and the mall, the more I like being around you.”
“I like being around you, too. And I really like being in bed with you.”
“Yes, I noticed that you’re taking me home.”
“Only to drop you off, I promise. I’d like to go back to the hotel, grab a shower and take you someplace nice to eat before I take you to bed.” That grin and those eyes were so wicked that Eve felt her body respond with enthusiasm.
“Any suggestions?”
What a beautiful mouth he had. And what a skillful tongue. Those alone were worth taking a risk for. “About what?” Maybe she could convince him to skip the hotel and have his shower at her place.
“Eve,” he teased. “Focus. About food.”
“Oh. Sure. Southerners love to eat, remember. It’s just a matter of picking a place.” It took them nearly the whole way home to settle on a restaurant, with Eve thinking all the while about a way to steer the conversation back to what she really wanted to discuss: themselves.
Finally she concluded there was nothing for it but to dive right in. “Are you sure you have to go back to your hotel?”
“Patience,” he said as he pulled into her driveway. “Anticipation adds spice.”
“Is that so.” She watched him put the car into Park and then leaned in for a kiss. “How long will you make me wait?”
Ha. There was a reason she’d worn this white cotton confection. A girl used the gifts she was given. She’d seen him heroically keeping his eyes on her face while they’d been rambling through public places today. Even though he’d asked her to be a little risqué for him, he was too much of a gentleman to do more than sneak an occasional peek. And she was happy about that. She had no desire to be embarrassed in public.