Flirting With Disaster (Camelot 3)

He threw back the covers, grabbed the jeans he’d been wearing off the armchair where he’d left them, and pulled them on over his boxers, keeping his back turned so Katie couldn’t see the grin that kept tugging up one corner of his mouth.

Within fifteen minutes, they were on the road.

Chapter Nine

Katie swiveled in her office chair and picked up the fax that had emerged from the machine.

Scrawled in large black letters, one word was repeated over and over again: Please please please please.

He’d sent her an MP3 file of the song just ten minutes ago. It would seem this was the follow-up fax.

Smiling faintly, she balled it up and threw it in the recycling bin just as the office phone began to ring. She picked it up and the sound of Judah begging—with backup singers—came over the line.

They actually sounded like real, live backup singers. She remembered the recording studio in his apartment. Had he hired people to come over at eight in the morning to sing James Brown to her?

It was a great song.

He wrapped it up with a flourish of drums that made her realize he not only had backup singers, he also had musicians. Lord, rich people were crazy. “I never would’ve thought you could pull off soul,” she said. “I didn’t think you had one.”

“Oh, honey. The things you don’t know about my soul could fill an encyclopedia.”

“Name three.”

“It’s so huge, Katie. Huge and … powerful. Frightening, really.”

“I think you’re getting your soul confused with other body parts.”

“You think? I could’ve sworn that was my soul.”

Katie laughed. “You know this is borderline stalking, right?”

“Now that would make a good headline. ‘Judah Pratt Stalks Secretary.’ ”

“I’m not a secretary. I’m a field agent.” Or she might have been, if it weren’t for the man on the other end of the phone.

He’d been calling her four or five times a day since she got back from Louisville, texting and emailing in an attempt to charm her into driving to Buffalo next weekend. Every time she asked him why, he said the same thing he’d said in Louisville. I like you. I have a feeling about you. I need you.

But he wouldn’t tell her what he needed her

for, and he wouldn’t apologize.

Katie worried about him. How could she not? He was obviously troubled, and troubled people sucked her in like magnets. She wanted to attach to their sides, to be a useful fifth limb that could help them rescue themselves from their troubles. She’d spent far too many idle moments in the past week fretting about Judah, wondering if he was okay, if he really did need her for something. If she could help him.

That kind of attitude got her into trouble.

What can I do for you? had been her constant refrain at Wild Ride. Levi was the river guide, the expert hiker, the wilderness guru. Katie ran the office and schlepped the packs. She asked What can I do for you? and fixed snacks, smiling until her cheeks hurt.

“I need a cup of coffee,” she declared.

“Let me take care of that for you. I’ll have it delivered by courier. Do you prefer a Colombian or an Ethiopian roast?”

“I’d prefer that my brother get off his ass and make me a cup,” she said, loudly enough for Caleb to hear it through the open door of his adjacent office.

“Make your own,” Caleb called back. “I got mine at Ellen’s.”

“He always gets his at Ellen’s,” Katie grumbled, and Judah laughed.

“You have such a dirty mind,” he said.