Page 85 of Once Upon a Lie

The front of the store is alight with creative energy in even its darkest corners at the back of the bookstacks, but back here, the environment is more clinical, organized with intent, and cleaned within an inch of its life.

I marvel at the sheer volume of ingredients they have stored on open shelves along the back wall—flour and sugar and cornmeal and giant jars of vanilla—and can’t stop myself from making a dirty joke at the stature of the equipment.

“I guess size really does matter,” I say, eyeing the mixer. “At least that’s what I’ve always been told.”

It’s immature boy humor at best, but she still laughs, and because of that, I consider it a win.

She looked so disappointed at the news that she had to cancel our date, and for as much as I am too—I planned a steak dinner at Bourbon Steak, one of the most amazing restaurants at the top of the JW Marriott downtown—this is probably better. I don’t need a three-hundred-dollar bill to fight the FBI for reimbursement for—because they confiscated my personal cards and cash, and this would very much be on them—but I need information. Mike’s getting impatient, and I’m dancing with irrelevancy, like it or not.

If I want to clear Valentina’s name—and have a little more time with her—I’m going to have to start producing something valuable. And I want more than anything to clear her name. This isn’t a woman with a hidden agenda; this is a woman with vats of vanilla.

I don’t know what happens to the “us” we’ve built after that—and call it head-in-the-sand self-preservation, but I don’t want to know. I’m too terrified I won’t like the answer.

“Come on, Funny Guy, the office is back here.”

“Funny Guy? I like Smokin’ Hot Shane better.”

“Yeah.” She laughs. “I’m sure you do.” She pushes open the door to the office and ushers me inside into the dark. For a brief moment, while I can’t see where I’m going, I consider the feeling of doing that as a woman, alone, all the time.

It has to be fucking terrifying. Which only makes me feel more protective.

“I’m glad I came with you.”

Her smile expands. “I am too.”

I chuckle. “I mean, of course I’m glad to be here with you, sharing your company. But I meant because the idea of you here, all alone, this late, doesn’t sit well with me.”

“Oh.” She rolls her eyes. “What’s the difference in being here now, at eight at night, and being here before dawn to prep bagels?”

The question makes me pause. “I guess there isn’t one.” But now that she mentions it, I don’t like the idea of that very much either. Still, I suppose it’s not my place to come out of nowhere and act like her savior. She’s managed just fine on her own thus far.

“Exactly. It’s no big deal. I lock the door behind myself, set the alarm, and I’m not out front where people can see me in here alone. I’m in the back, out of sight.”

“You sound like you’ve made this case before.”

“Only about a million times.” Valentina flips on the office light and tosses her keys on the desk, picking up a shoebox from the corner and setting it next to them. “My dad and brother are on the extreme end of protective.”

It doesn’t happen very often, but I feel myself agreeing with the bad guy. Knowing what I do about Tommy Cordone, though, I’m surprised he hasn’t put a man on her—or ten.

“Maybe they should put their money where their mouth is, then. I haven’t heard you mention either of them showing up to a morning shift to have your back.”

She laughs before going to the filing cabinet and pulling out a folder. “Please, don’t say that too loud, they might materialize—or at least, someone in their stead might. My dad’s been pushing his right-hand man, Leo, on me for ages. If he had his way, I’d have a permanent babysitter.”

I hum through a smile. Yeah, that makes more sense. I also stay neutral because I’ve been briefed on Leonidas Murphy. He’s not the kind of man you want to have as an enemy, but his track record with Teeny has him batting zero. They have no history of dating or romance or anything except him trying to ask her out and her declining time and time again.

The folder’s fat, but when she sets it next to the box and walks away, I start to wonder what the big deal with canceling our plans to gather things is all about.

“Is that it?” I call after her as she walks into the closet behind her desk. She stops, body halfway in and head hanging out to laugh at me.

“That’s a good one!” Retreating into the closet for a long moment before returning with a bottle of wine and a bottle opener in one hand, she wags a finger at me with the other. “Oh, Shane. You sweet, naive little puppy. I should report you to Rita for your innocence.”

I hold out my hands at the evidence in my defense. “Sorry. I just see a box and a folder, and if that’s what you think is a scary amount of paperwork, you’ve got another thing coming.”

In police work, the reports alone on every single case could give you a case of carpal tunnel. I once had to write a fifty-page minute-by-minute recollection of a five-person shoot-out that happened across three blocks, in two high-rise buildings, and ended with a man falling fifteen stories onto a Volkswagen Beetle. It took me two weeks and approximately forty pots of coffee, and Dom ragged on me for days after that for misspelling my name at the top. To be fair, fucking up your own name is pretty pathetic, but it was the last thing I did, and by that time I was cross-eyed.

“Yeah, that’s not it. These are just my physical receipts—unsorted, of course. I still have to pore through all my credit card statements, my bank statements, my expense reports, employee payroll, and I’ve got a minefield of depreciable assets to figure out a value for, along with inventory. It’s going to be a looong night.”

“Oh, well, in that case, I guess we better get comfortable.” Unbuttoning my flannel and pulling it off my shoulders, I do a little shimmy that makes her laugh uncontrollably.