Twenty-nine
The next day after breakfast, they went to the library for their usual morning debrief. Nadine adjusted the strap of her sundress, which kept falling down. She wouldn’t say she’d worn it because it was the cutest dress she’d brought, but it was exhilarating to see how Wes swallowed hard every time it dropped low on her shoulder. He was wearing a very thin black V-necked T-shirt. If he’d chosen it to be as distracting as possible, that was a sly move she wouldn’t have expected of him.
Poor Wes. He’d gone almost purple the day before when he’d slipped up with the L-word, and they’d barely talked the rest of the day. However, she’d spent the night alone in bed thinking. If mistakes were on a spectrum, surely having sex with Wes was more on the oops-I-bought-the-wrong-brand-of-noodles end rather than the I-crashed-the-car end. That meant it was okay to do again, right? If they were both willing.
She looked over to where he sat with his neck bent over a shelf as he checked through the books. She, for one, was definitely willing. They were in this house together without a lot of amusement after all, and they were getting along and clearly attracted to each other. It was logical. It made sense. He ran his hand over his stomach, rucking up his shirt, and she made her decision.
“Wes?” Her voice came out louder than she planned, and Wes jumped.
“What’s up?”
She summoned up all her bravery. After all, he’d said they should concentrate on work, not that they should focus entirely on work. There was some room for discussion.
“I have a proposal.”
“I preemptively refuse any rules change,” he said. “I got first in points fair and square.”
She felt there was an argument to be made here but decided to keep on target. “I want to talk about the other night.”
Wes turned away slightly. “What’s to talk about? You said it was a mistake.”
“ You said it was a mistake,” she corrected.
“I actually didn’t,” said Mr. Eidetic Memory. “You finished my sentence, and I wasn’t going to argue with you.”
“Okay.” She tried to keep her heart rate down when she realized that Wes might not have meant what he’d said in the kitchen, and she’d jumped in with assumptions. “I was wrong.”
***
Nadine looked cute like this, thought Wes as she went red after basically declaring she wanted to sleep with him to the library, Octavia, and him. Her hair was down and tucked behind her ears, and the dress she wore made him unable to stop staring, with its flowy skirt and tiny ruffled straps. He remembered how the light had played on her face when she’d stood in front of the kitchen window yesterday.
Right before she’d gutted him when she called their night together a mistake. He didn’t want to screw up this opportunity, if opportunity it was. But it was better to be sure.
“I don’t want to pressure you,” he said carefully.
“Wes. I am literally standing here asking you to have sex with me.” She ducked her head down a bit and mumbled the last words. She looked up. “We can be adults about this and continue to work together.”
“While indulging ourselves? Friends with benefits.” He pretended to think about it, like he wasn’t mentally on top of her, smoothing his finger across her hip to see the skin pebble before flattening his hand across the warmth of her stomach. “Say it again.”
She stood to her full height. “I, Nadine Barbault, was wrong to say having sex was a mistake. I said it to try to make things not weird between us, not that I had any regrets. I would very much like to do it again, and preferably more than once. We don’t have to make a big deal out of it. It can be totally chill.”
“Shit, then yes, I agree.” Distantly, he recalled his usual stance against casual sex, then decided screw it. He would worry about that later, when Nadine wasn’t standing there looking like she’d already undressed him. He put down the book he was holding and came over to her, swearing when he nearly stepped on a cat. “Come here.”
***
An hour later, they were dressed again and back at work like the professionals they were. It had been an extremely fun break, and as a reward-oriented individual, Nadine was looking forward to the repeat Wes had promised later that night once they’d finished their daily search goals. This friends-with-benefits thing had been one of her better ideas.
Wes looked at her phone, and she knew what he was thinking, because he’d asked the same thing over and over since they’d found the letter yesterday. Then he said it.
“Has Monica replied yet?” he asked.
She’d sent Monica Olway a message after they’d found her email. They hadn’t been able to track down a phone number.
“For the eleventh time, no, and for the twelfth time, yes I am checking.”
“I wasn’t asking…” He saw her face. “Sorry. I’ll lay off. I’m getting antsy. We’re running out of time. We only have nine days left in the house.”
They separated to search the house as usual. Erma followed Nadine to the game room and hissed at Sidonie-Gabrielle, who woke from her nap on the billiards table before disappearing in a flash. A small patch of matted fur showed it was a favored location for sleepy felines. Nadine absentmindedly picked up the darts to toss at the board as she thought about where Wes might have missed looking in his first pass. They’d decided to search the rooms the other had done to see if a second set of eyes made a difference.
If she was doing Dot’s obit today, would she include the darts? The cats? That must be the biggest struggle, to decide what in forty or sixty or a hundred years of living was the core of a person’s story.
Feeling empty, she sat on the curved blue couch and pulled out her phone. Her heart dropped to see a message from Lisanne, which was in turn depressing. She didn’t want to avoid her friend, but she couldn’t bring herself to be normal about this whole work thing. Was she that petty? That self-centered?
Looked like yes, but she would try to be a better person.
I’ve got something for you , said the message from Lisanne.
Cool , she texted back. What’s up?
You know that story I’m working on?
Nadine stuffed the how can I not deep, deep down. Of course!
It’s bigger than I thought. I could use some help on the political side and Daniel said he’d give you a byline. Thought I’d give you a hand getting back in the game.
Nadine felt her face tighten, then her entire body. She didn’t need Lisanne’s pity or help. Sorry , she wrote back. I don’t think that will work for me.
The reply came in seconds. What? I went on a limb to ask Daniel.
Nadine flushed. I never asked you to.
No but you need a push. You can’t duck out of every opportunity because you’re a little anxious. I’m trying to help.
Lisanne had some nerve. I don’t need your help, thanks.
You do because otherwise you’ll hide away on the night shift for the rest of your career.
Nadine didn’t answer. She turned off the notifications and put the phone face down as Wes came in.
“Nothing in the upper library,” he reported, switching on the fan and angling it toward her. He stopped when he saw her face. “What happened?”
“Work.”
He grimaced. “Want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Too bad. I claim question privilege.”
She knew if she pushed back, he’d be sensitive enough to let it go, but Wes had shown that he understood her stew of nasty emotions. She told him about the conversation and Lisanne’s big chance, keeping it vague because she couldn’t leak Lisanne’s story to a reporter for the Spear , no matter how upset she was.
“I get it,” said Wes cheerfully when she finished. “You wish it was you.”
Nadine was astounded. “What?”
“Come on, Nadine. You tried to beat me for a decade. Do you expect me to believe your competitiveness shuts off like a tap?”
“Fine.” She bit her lip. “Part of me does. I would never say it to Lisanne because it would make her feel bad for being awesome, and I would look like the world’s worst person.”
“I think it’s fairly common, but no one likes to admit it.” He gave her a look. “That’s not all though.”
“Isn’t that enough?” she asked morosely. “Plus how do you know?”
“You talked about how you felt about putting yourself out there when we were getting heartburn at the diner.”
“Worth it.”
“Nadine.”
She snorted. “I’m not worried about working on the story if that’s what you mean. I just don’t want her success rubbed in my face, and I don’t want her thinking I need her help.”
“ Nadine .”
“What?”
“Don’t lie to yourself. You’re scared to take on a story that sounds like it’s going to generate a lot of commentary.”
Nadine shot to her feet. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she snapped. She stood up and grabbed a dart to throw at the board. How dare he? “It has nothing to do with being scared,” she called over her shoulder, throwing another dart.
“Sure.”
“What do you mean, ‘sure’?”
“I don’t believe you.” He said it like a fact, not a challenge.
She came around the couch, crossed her arms, and stared at him. “It doesn’t matter what you believe because I know. It’s not the story for me, okay?”
Murasaki came up, and Wes ran a hand down her back, not saying anything. The cat’s contented purr filled the space between them as Nadine glared at the wall, half-acknowledged thoughts tumbling through her head. She didn’t want… It was all Lisanne’s… It wasn’t like she…
Then she threw herself on the uncomfortable couch and kicked out her legs.
“Fine. I was jealous and then I was mad she had the nerve to say I needed her help and under it all I was scared and I took it out on her rather than admit it.” Each word came out faster and faster until by the end she was stumbling over them.
“Makes sense,” Wes said.
“Does it?”
“Yeah.” Wes snatched his hand away as Murasaki tried to bite him. “Like, you’re not winning any friendship awards here, and it’s not fair to Lisanne, but it’s a natural reaction. I get it.”
“It’s all on me. She’s trying to help, and I’m being a jerk about it.”
“It’s not help if it’s unwanted, and you went through a bad situation,” said Wes. “She’s trying to fix something that’s not her thing to fix.” He looked as if his own words surprised him.
Nadine sat up. “It sounds like you have experience with this.”
Wes shrugged uncomfortably. “What are you going to do?”
Nadine didn’t press, not wanting to put him on the spot. “Leave it for now, because we have work to do here.”
“You’ll have to talk to her sooner or later.”
“Later.” She didn’t want to lose Lisanne’s friendship, but she also didn’t want to deal with it until she was calmer.
Nadine’s phone buzzed before he could reply, and she looked down to see who it was.
***
When Nadine glanced at the screen, her eyes widened, and Wes did his best not to react when he remembered what they were doing the last time she wore that expression. While he appreciated the new shift in their relationship, he had to admit it was a little distracting.
“Monica emailed back with her number,” she said.
That wiped the dirty thoughts out of his head. Or mostly until she tugged her sundress back in place. “Let’s figure out what we want to ask so we’re prepared,” he said, eyes on her bare shoulder.
It took them ten minutes to hash out their questions, but when Nadine dialed the number, it was to find that Monica Olway had little patience for a soft approach.
“The man is a worm,” she said bluntly after Nadine explained who they were and a bit about what they were looking into. Monica had agreed to be on speaker with Wes but didn’t allow them to tape or put anything on the record, claiming she’d been burned before.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Nadine asked. Wes leaned forward, eager to hear Monica’s story.
“I was his executive assistant for a year,” Monica said. “And yeah, I got the job because I exaggerated on my résumé, but who doesn’t? I was good. Ask anyone. Anyway, I was working late one night, and he comes up and he says to me, ‘Monica, you know Ian Ali,’ and I say yes, because he’s in accounting over at procurement, and I knew everyone. Excuse my bragging.” She took a breath and kept going. “So he says to me—Senator Wilson, not Ian—he says to me, ‘Monica, I want you to follow him and see what he does.’ And I say, ‘Why?’ because that makes no sense, right? And the senator, he says he thinks Ian is stealing and giving the money to someone, and he wants to know who. And I say, ‘Ian?’ And he says, ‘Yeah.’”
“Why did the senator want to know?”
Monica snorted. “Because he’s a worm. It’s not his business. He could have told Ian’s manager to take care of it. He wanted dirt on that poor man, probably to threaten him the same way he did me. I don’t know how he found out about my résumé thing.”
“What happened next?” asked Nadine.
Wes made the mistake of looking into her eyes and immediately lost his train of thought. He knew the mechanics of a crush. The embarrassed excitement. The increasingly fantastical mental scenarios where you ended up kissing at the top of a volcano or something. He also knew they eventually dulled and were forgotten.
Whatever he was feeling showed no signs of fading, and this morning had not helped. But Monica was talking, and he needed to pay attention.
“He told me if I didn’t, he’d have no choice but to let me go without a reference because I exaggerated on my résumé. He knew I needed that job, right? My husband had left a few months before, and it was hard to make ends meet with my kids and all.”
“Yes,” said Nadine in sympathy.
“I also don’t like being bullied, so I told that son of a bitch to go fuck himself. How dare he threaten me. You know what kind of man he is?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll tell you what kind of man he is. He’d make me order catering for meetings from Peter and Co., the most expensive racket in town, and then he wouldn’t let me put the leftovers in the employee lunchroom. Bastard insisted it all be thrown away. The cookies were even individually wrapped. Individually wrapped! It’s like he didn’t think we were good enough to eat them.”
Wes despised the man on principle because of this.
“What happened after you said no?” asked Nadine to get them back on track.
“He fired me, and my lawyer said I didn’t have a chance in hell because I had exaggerated slightly on my résumé like everyone does , and I didn’t have any proof of his threat. So I say to myself, the hell with that, and I go by the Herald to talk to a reporter. Next thing I know, I’m getting smeared in national media and accused of blackmail. I never blackmailed nobody.”
“What happened to Ian?” asked Wes.
“I gave him a heads-up, and he quit to work in tech.”
“Who was the reporter you talked to at the Herald ?” asked Nadine.
The answer was prompt. “Irina Skoll. She said without proof, she couldn’t do much, but she must have blabbed to someone if Wilson was ready to take me down before I told my story.”
“Was there anything else about John Wilson we should know?” asked Nadine.
There was a pause. “A lot of stuff that added up to shadiness. He always had meetings that were off his calendar. Once, I heard a woman crying in his office late at night when I’d forgotten my wallet and had to come back. He took fancy vacations he wouldn’t let me book although I booked all his other stuff. Also, like I said, he’s a worm.”
After she disconnected with Monica, Nadine looked at Wes and counted off on her fingers. “Fancy vacations, blackmail, and off-the-book meetings.”
“Don’t forget overall worminess.” Wes tapped his leg as he thought, taking comfort in the rhythm. “Not looking good for the senator.”
“We should go over what we have in detail,” Nadine said. “This might help us figure this out.”
Wes shivered with nervous anticipation. “We’ve gone from a rumor that one of Dot’s books was based on a politician to the possibility that a senator is potentially blackmailing people.” He thought it over. “It could be big, especially given John Wilson’s influence over the years. He was considered a rainmaker despite losing that leadership bid that could have made him prime minister.”
She nudged him. “Big but good?”
“Yes.” He kept the as long as I’m working with you to himself.