Page 17 of Dragon Charmed

She had insisted on getting her own drink—he didn’t blame her really. He hadn’t roofied her drink, but she shouldn’t accept a drink from a stranger. But hell, she shouldn’t have been following a stranger either.

His brain was going like a hamster on steroids. Who the hell was this John Baker, and why were he and Tessa looking for Mia White? Did John Baker know who he was? He couldn’t be the PI that Tessa was talking about since she spoke to John about it a day ago, not fifteen months ago when Ben had stumbled onto Walter’s cabin. Had he tried to find Mia White in the past for himself? For John Baker?

And what was Tessa’s relationship with John? If John was being overprotective of her, maybe she was more than a friend to him. For some reason Ben didn’t want to ask her that. He felt a headache coming on. Maybe it was his steroid-driven hamster brain that was now running full bore on a squeaky wheel.

He wasn’t sure he could trust Tessa, but he could pump her for information so he had some sort of foundation to start with. This had to be related to who he was somehow.

She walked over with a large coffee and sat across from him.

There was no point beating around the bush. “Tell me about Mia White.”

Tessa set her coffee down but still held the envelope against her chest. “John didn’t tell you about her?”

Shit. He should have, right? But he couldn’t fake his way out of things if he said yes. He knew nothing about Mia White. “Not really.”

She huffed. “That sounds like him. He’s a grouch of very few words.”

“Yeah.”

Her eyes tightened on him.

He was already blowing it! “I mean…I guess I shouldn’t agree since he’s my client.”

The corners of her mouth tipped up. “Probably not, but I would think less of you if you didn’t tell me the truth.”

He reached for his coffee so he didn’t have to meet her eyes. He was a walking and talking lie. But he had to find out who he was before he could know what the truth was.

She set down the envelope and pulled out a stack of papers. “I haven’t had a chance to look too closely at all of this yet, but I can tell you what I know.”

He leaned forward.

“Mia White is a well-known art historian. She was a professor at Vanderbilt.”

That hadn’t been what he was expecting. “Was?”

“Yeah. Four years ago, she quit her job and disappeared. Went off the grid.”

“And what have you found?” He gestured to the stack of papers.

“Nothing about where she is or what she’s doing now.” She set the papers on the table between them. “But this is all we know about her before she disappeared. I’m thinking something in her past might lead us to her.”

“Good thinking.” And way more than he had done.

“I know.”

He looked up from the papers at her smirk. “Confident, huh?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “If you have it, use it.”

He smiled at her confidence. “Right. So how do you want to do this? Split up the papers?”

She nodded. “Makes sense.”

She pulled her purse off her shoulder and dug around inside until she pulled out two highlighters. “My motto is always be prepared.”

He reached for the highlighter. “I thought that was the Boy Scout motto?” And once again he knew that but not his name.

Her denim eyes danced. “I spent time with a lot of Boy Scouts growing up.”