The Charmer (Harbor City 2)

As she sat down in front of him, she couldn’t help but notice the way he fiddled with the cardboard sleeve around his hot coffee and the noticeable muscle tic in his jaw. He was nervous. Of being with her? Of what he was about to tell her?

Finally, he looked up, his blue eyes staring directly into her. “I don’t even know where to begin with this.”

Her pulse went into double-time. “Start anywhere.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding his head with firm determination. “I need help with something a little sketchy, but I promise it’s not illegal.”

Not exactly a will-you-go-out-with-me answer.

The sip of green tea in her mouth lost its taste, and she forced herself to swallow past the disappointment blocking her throat. “That’s comforting because I look like crap in orange.”

He toasted her with a slight tip of his coffee to-go cup and a half-hearted smile, but it was obvious his mind wasn’t on her but on whatever plan he was working on this time to make the world bend to his will. “I need some information about one of the museum’s patrons.”

“What kind of information?” she asked, the green tea sloshing around in her stomach as it knotted itself.

“If they’re still donating, and if so, if their donations have changed over the past year.”

Okay, not exactly public information but not the nuclear codes, either. Still, she knew Tyler. There was more to this than idle curiosity. “What’s this all about?”

He shrugged. “I’m just filling in some blanks on a financial profile I’m putting together.”

Uh-huh. Right. “So why not ask the client yourself?”

“Not possible.”

That was it. No explanation. No cajoling. No Hudson-like teasing that had Team Annoyance and Team Anticipation facing off against each other inside her. Just an unspoken black and white, will you or won’t you, hanging in the air between them.

“I don’t even have access to that information,” she said, sounding wishy-washy even to herself.

He leaned forward, intensity burning in his blue eyes. “But you could get it.”

“Maybe.” Okay, yeah, she could get it. Her boss would love for her to take a greater interest in pumping the museum’s patrons for money. But to reveal private information about a donor… That was iffy territory.

“Come on, someone in the business office has to owe you a favor or need one,” he said. “Whatever it is, I’ll make it happen.”

“It’s that important?”

He nodded. “I believe someone is lying about their finances and could end up harming thousands of employees if it’s true.”

Shit. This was definitely not where she thought this conversation was going to go. If she had, she sure as hell wouldn’t have told Hudson about it. The very last thing she wanted was to hear him laugh at her misreading of the social cues—again. Tyler looked at her expectantly.

Her phone buzzed against her ass. Relieved at the interruption, she pulled it out of her back pocket.

Hudson: What do you call two teenage ants running to Vegas? Antelope.

“Important text?” Tyler asked.

“No,” she said, putting her phone down on the table next to her tea just as another message flashed across the screen.

Hudson: What’s the difference between writing your will and owning an ant farm? One is a legacy, and the other is a sea of legs.

That was awful. Horrible. She didn’t know what dark corner of the internet he’d found that so-called joke, but he needed to back away. Fast. Still, she was smiling, and her gut had stopped churning her tea. By the time she looked up at Tyler again, her logical brain was back in the driver’s seat.

“Are you sure?” Snoop that he was, Tyler glanced down at her phone as he asked.

Now it was her turn to shrug as if it wasn’t important. “It’s just Hudson.”

He straightened in his seat, his broad shoulders going stiff. “Hudson Carlyle?”