The Case of the Missing Secretary

But Dane only grinned. “No problem,” he said. “I’ve got a contact in San Antonio who owes me a favor. This will be a great time to collect.”

“Will I need to go out there?” she asked hesitantly.

“Of course not. Logan only wants to know where she is. We won’t be obliged to follow her. Not yet, anyway,” he added with a knowing smile.

Kit was given a new assignment, one which wasn’t quite as interesting as trying to find an elderly needle in a haystack. A man wanted his wife followed to see if she was two-timing him. This was relatively easy for Kit to do, especially since the woman seemed bent on a shopping spree.

Staying a little behind the woman, Kit was just congratulating herself on her stealth when Logan Deverell loomed up in her path and brought her to a standstill.

“Where is the Dawson file?” he demanded. “Some private detective you are, you can’t even put things in their proper place!”

Kit could have hit him. The woman she’d been shadowing couldn’t possibly have missed hearing her loud ex-boss denouncing her. Sure enough, the woman gave her a startled glance and dived toward the nearest cab.

“There, look what you’ve done,” Kit cried, exasperated. “I’m on a case! I was shadowing a client, for heaven’s sake…!”

“I want the Dawson file,” he said. “None of those would-be secretaries have any idea how to find it. You’ve got to come back with me. I’m going to lose my most influential client if you don’t.”

“I should care?” she burst out.

He glowered down at her. His dark eyes narrowed with irritation. “You’re costing me time,” he muttered, slamming back the immaculate white cuff of his shirt so that he could see the gold watch embedded in the thick, curling black hair on his muscular wrist.

“I was on a case,” she pointed out. “You hijacked me. Speaking of hijacking—”

He was pulling her along as she spoke. “Can’t you be quiet for two minutes running?” he asked conversationally. “All you need to do is find a file. What’s so difficult about that?”

While she was trying to formulate it in words of one syllable that he might be able to understand, he helped her into his gray Lincoln.

I’m crazy, that’s what I am, Kit thought as he got in under the wheel. He’s blown an assignment for me, fired me, humiliated me and here I am letting him lead me to his office to work for him on my own time! Well, actually, she admitted it was on Dane’s time.

“Have you found my mother yet?” he asked as he pulled away from the curb.

“We’re working on it,” she said.

He cocked a busy eyebrow. “I thought you were in charge of the case?”

“I am. But I lost her at the bus station.”

He chuckled. “My mother wouldn’t be caught dead on a bus.”

“She would and did, to escape surveillance. Doesn’t she have a relative named Emmett in San Antonio?” she persisted, remembering only then that Chris had warned her never to mention him.

“Oh, yes,” he said with a vicious glare. “Emmett lives in San Antonio, as near as not. But I guarantee she wouldn’t go there. Nobody in the family will go near the place. You’d have to be out of your ever-loving mind to want to go and see Emmett, even if you were hiding out from the police!”

The man must be a holy terror, she thought. He was Logan’s cousin, of course. Probably it ran in the family.

“Where does he live?” she asked, and whipped out a pad and pen.

“I told you, she wouldn’t go there!”

“Humor me.”

He shrugged. “His name is E. G. Deverell.” He gave her the address. She jotted it down and stuck the pad back into her purse. Now she had something concrete to go on. She felt like a real detective.

“You can’t really like following people around for a living,” he said. He glanced at her and back at the road. “I’ve bought a new computer for the office. It’s got a sixty megabyte hard drive and all sorts of software, including a user-friendly word processing program. I bought a laser printer, too,” he added. “And the system does forms.”

She’d been begging for that sort of system for over a year. He’d argued that it wasn’t necessary and he had better ways to spend his money.

“How nice,” she said. “For your new secretary. Secretaries, that is,” she added with a spiteful smile. “Three, isn’t it?”

He made a rough sound under his breath. “I don’t see what your problem is!” he raged. “I’ve lost my temper with you before. You never walked out on me!”

“You never allowed one of your women to treat me like an indentured servant before,” she countered.

He shifted uncomfortably. “She asked for a cup of coffee.”

“Excuse me,” she said. “She demanded a cup of coffee, and then threw it at me because it was too strong. When I suggested that she might like to go to the restaurant on the first floor and get a cup there, she flew into a rage and called me several names that I won’t repeat. Then, the minute she saw you coming, she dissolved into helpless tears.”

“She said you threw the coffee at her,” he returned, narrowing one eye. “And you aren’t the most even-tempered of women.”

“Oh, but I am, as long as I’m not within half a mile of you,” she replied venomously.

He had to stifle a smile at the way she was looking at him. How he’d missed these bouts with Kit. The three women he’d had to hire to replace her were frightened of him. Poor Melody was hopelessly intimidated by spelling and her distant cousin Logan. She could type very quickly, though, and she was efficient.

Harriet, the tallest of the three, could file and do payroll accounts, but she hated everyone in the office and smoked like a chimney.

Then there was Margo, who spelled like a dictionary and wanted nothing more than to seduce him.

Logan, though, had eyes for no one except Betsy, who made his blood run hot and wild through his veins. He didn’t want to get married, but it was the only way he was ever going to possess the delectable Betsy. So he’d given in, against his better judgment, and nothing had gone right in his life since he’d proposed. He was no nearer to coaxing Betsy into his bed and he’d lost Kit. Amazing, he thought, how empty the world was without Kit in it. He had no one to talk to anymore. Betsy hardly listened to him, and certainly paid more attention to where they went and who they saw than what they did.