“Don’t even joke about that.”
“I swear I’m not.” He held up his hand, palm outward. “They dunk a slice of fruitcake in funnel cake batter and deep fry it.”
“Why?”
“There’s not much that can’t be improved by a few minutes in a deep fat fryer.”
Kristen leveled a look at him. “You’re going to try some, aren’t you?”
Mitch grinned. “Hell, yeah.”
Sagging, she closed her eyes. “I give up.”
“Hey, just because somebody’s skirt is getting tight is no reason to make all of us suffer.”
Kristen’s eyes popped open in horror. “It’s supposed to be tight!” She looked down at herself. That was fabric pooching over her lap and not her stomach, right? Right? Cautiously, she extended her index finger and pressed, relieved when the extra poof deflated. Not disappeared, she had to admit, but at least it moved.
She looked up to find Mitch regarding her. His lips barely curved upward in that quiet way he had that made him look very attractive, as though he’d decided to ravish her, knew she wanted to be ravished and that it was only a matter of picking his moment.
Which was exactly the case. Furthermore, she’d tossed any number of moments his way and he hadn’t caught any of them.
She was about to lob another but stopped when she saw the expression in his eyes. Fond amusement, that’s what it was. Fond. Amusement.
Okay, so this wasn’t the place for barely restrained lust, but banked desire would have worked. Would have worked big time, thank you very much.
She sat up straight and automatically sucked in her stomach and then, angry with herself, let it out again. “I hadn’t realized that you—”
“Kristen!” Mitch laughed. “You look—”
“Stop.” She glared at him. “Think very carefully about what you say next. Because if you’re going to say I look ‘fine,’ you should be aware that I consider fine several levels beneath me.”
“Okay.” He gazed his lunch. “Let’s say you look—”
“It better not be ‘healthy.’ Healthy is another word for big, and that’s just another way of saying fat.”
“But women are supposed to have—”
“If you are about to say ‘curves,’ don’t. ‘Curves’ is code for big hips, meaning fat.”
Visibly exasperated, he asked, “Then what’s fat the word for?”
“You think I’m faaaat?” Kristen wailed.
“I think I’m going to eat my lunch.” Mitch ate two dripping pieces of sushi as Kristen sat there.
He squinted off into the distance. “You know, even the Japanese like to deep fry stuff in batter. They call it tempura.”
“Okay, okay.” She waited. “You aren’t going to tell me what you were going to say, are you?”
“Nope.” Mitch picked up another piece of California roll. “My mother is on her way over here. Try to look like you’re enjoying yourself or she’ll think something horrible has happened.”
“I am enjoying myself.”
He smiled down at her. “So am I.”
That was better. The fondness had definitely warmed to affection. And if she was not mistaken, it was simmering its way to attraction.
Mollified, Kristen finally captured the slippery strands of her salad.
“Hi, you two,” Patsy greeted them. “Nora and I are going to have lunch at the mall and pick up the sponsor booklets from the printer.”
Nora Beckman was gazing up at the Santa Claus. “Wow. And I thought last year’s was big.”
Patsy cast an assessing glance at the float. “Are you sure this will be done in time, Mitch?”
“Are you asking as my mother or as the parade’s supreme commander?”
Concern crossed her face. “Are the answers different?”
“No, I just wondered whether or not to salute.”
“Don’t get snippy with me, Mitchell Donner.”
Kristen snickered.
“You see what I put up with?” Patsy said to Nora, who was smiling.
“Yes, Mother, the float will be finished in time,” Mitch assured her.
“Good. We’ve hired extra security this year, but we think the crowds are going to be even bigger than projected. You should talk to Sparky about keeping a watch on this.”
“We’ve got it covered. We’re setting up video surveillance so that whoever is inside here working the controls can monitor outside activity. And we’re also going to have two ways in and out.” Mitch pointed to a four-foot opening in the side of the platform. “That’s going to be a doll house, but the door will really work. There will also be a utility opening where the power cords come in.”
Patsy nodded and made a note in her binder. “I hate that we have to think about the possibility of vandalism, but the parade draws so many outsiders.” Her lips tightened. “Though we know that not everyone living in Sugar Land can be trusted, either.”
Mitch and Kristen exchanged looks.
“Well, we’re off.” She glanced at their food. “That looks yummy. What do you think, Nora? Should we go for Japanese or stick with the Texas burger, home fries and eggnog shakes?”
Mitch whimpered and Kristen nudged him with her elbow.
“We ought to take advantage of those eggnog shakes while we can,” Nora was saying as they walked off. “They’re seasonal, you know.”
Mitch stared after them.
Kristen sighed. “If you want an eggnog shake, I will go get you one.”
“I do, but I wasn’t thinking about that. Mrs. Beckman should stop blaming herself.”
“People are always blaming themselves for stuff that isn’t their fault,” Kristen said.
“I hope you’re not including me.” Mitch poked at his seaweed salad.
“Of course, I’m including you!” She leaned over to see that he was basically moving the salad around in its compartment. “Eat that. It’s good for you.”
Mitch stabbed a forkful of salad and held it up. “Why is it that slimy green stuff is always good for you and crisp brown stuff isn’t?”
“Bran,” Kristen retorted. “Crisp and brown.”
“Bran is not crisp. Bran is chewy.” But he ate his salad.
“Speaking of things not your fault, have you heard from Jeremy?” She’d hesitated to ask, but the party was in three days and Jeremy had said he was leaving after that.
Mitch shook his head and withdrew his phone. “But I expect to. Let me check my e-mail.” He stared at the tiny screen. “Nothing yet. Maybe he’ll call.”
“Why? What have you done?”
“What makes you think—okay. I logged into our office files using Jeremy’s password when I found out mine no longer worked.”
“Why would you think your password would work? They kicked you out.”
“Actually, they didn’t. I left because Jeremy thought it would look better. It was near Thanksgiving, so I went home. Which got me to thinking.”
This looked like it was going to be a long story. “Before you think—do you want your pickled ginger?”
“Take it.”
“Thanks.” Kristen speared it with her fork. “Okay, what were you thinking?”
“It’s been weeks. Why haven’t I been arrested? They tipped their hand by impounding all my stuff.” Mitch reached into the cooler and withdrew the bottles of tea, twisted off the caps and handed her one. “They haven’t even brought me in for questioning or whatever.”
“My dad thinks it’s because they didn’t find what they expected to.”
“I’ve got a theory.” Mitch took a long swallow of tea.
All that soy sauce had made him thirsty, Kristen thought.
“Jeremy did a heavy-handed thorough job of setting me up. It was too easy. These investigators have seen a lot of cases and, since I was oblivious, I wasn’t fitting the pattern. I went home to visit my folks. I didn’t contact my shifty clients, and anytime I talked with Jeremy, I’d ask if he had any idea of what was happening. So, they find t
his trail in my records. But they don’t find any in my e-mail or any of my accounts, or anywhere in my stuff.”
Kristen had been eating her sushi as he talked. It wouldn’t hurt to cut back. “But you wouldn’t have been stupid enough to use your regular records and e-mail. You’d set up hidden ones.” She set one of her California roll pieces into Mitch’s soy sauce lake.
“Exactly. So why would I be stupid enough to leave all the financial records on my office computer?” He ate her sushi piece.
“You wouldn’t.” She drank some of her tea and pretended not to notice when Mitch stole the last of her sushi. “And somebody realized that. They haven’t arrested you because they’re not sure you’re the right guy to arrest.”
“That’s what I’m hoping. And I also think Jeremy is down here because he and his father can’t figure out the delay. They must be getting nervous.”
“They’re not the only ones. You know what your father has been doing, right?”
Mitch nodded. “He gloats every night. And my mother has destroyed her efficient schedule and randomly sends people to the Sloane house to set up for the party and over to the construction office to get more float supplies, so they pretty much have no privacy.”
Kristen laughed. “I know it’s not funny, but I almost feel sorry for them.”
Mitch gave her a look.
Oops. “But I’m over that now. Jeremy and his parents deserve to suffer.”
Mitch checked his e-mail again. “I can’t believe I haven’t heard from him yet.”
“Because…?”
“You’ll love this.” Mitch appeared smugly proud of himself. “So I log in and I find out that Jeremy has changed his password and there’s an encryption program on my files. Remember, we’re talking about a guy who has used the same password since college. Obviously, someone has been helping him and I hope it wasn’t our IT guy, because it was a sloppy job.”
“Fortunately for you.”
“Yeah. Jeremy lacks finesse with computers, which he will never admit. For example, he overwrites files and is real quick with the delete key. I set up a shadow drive for him that backs up his backups.”
“I could use one of those,” Kristen muttered, knowing she lacked a certain finesse, herself.
“I could install one for you,” Mitch offered. “It’s no biggie.”
“That’s okay. Go on.”
“Well, whoever was helping Jeremy reset passwords and encrypt data didn’t know to ask about a third back up system. He probably gave Jeremy a list of instructions, obviously assuming he knows more about computers than he does. Jeremy, being Jeremy, wasn’t about to correct him. So, the shadow drive was never changed and I was able to get into the system. The files weren’t the latest version, but they were close enough. Here’s the good part.”
He looked so gleeful that Kristen smiled.
“I switched drives and put in a macro so that when Jeremy logs in and tries to open certain files, code scrambles and he gets gibberish. And I locked him out of my files.”
Okay. Okay, maybe she wasn’t quite getting it. “Just so I can fully appreciate your brilliance…basically, Jeremy is stupid when it comes to computers—”
“Not stupid stupid.”
“But stupid enough that he needed help to fix it so you couldn’t access your company files anymore.”
“Right.”
“But he forgot that there was another copy of everything on a ‘shadow drive.’” She made finger quotes.
“Or didn’t think it mattered.”
“So you sabotaged it and magically—” she wiggled her fingers “—switched it for the real one?”
“Magically?”
“You did all that without actually being on his computer?”
“Our files are stored on a network server,” he explained.
Or thought he explained. “Uh…”
“Big central computer.”
“Gotcha. So why will Jeremy contact you?”
“Because he always calls me when he has computer trouble. He doesn’t want anyone else to know how inept he is. And when I help him, I’ll see what he’s got hidden on his laptop. They have to have the laundering records somewhere.”
Mitch was so confident and all Kristen could think was that his plan hinged on Jeremy’s pride. “Still, I can’t believe even Jeremy would have the audacity to ask the man he’s trying to—”
Mitch’s hand buzzed. Or rather the phone in Mitch’s hand buzzed. He checked the display and then triumphantly held it so Kristen could see.
Jeremy.
“What do you know,” Kristen said.
They high-fived each other and Mitch answered the phone.
Chapter Eleven
Things began to move after Jeremy’s phone call.
Up until then, Mitch had felt as though he’d contributed nothing to his own defense. Kristen and her parents—even Mitch’s parents—had done more than he had.
After playing detective, his father had insisted on hiring a lawyer.
Mitch had been against it because he already had a lawyer to whom he paid a very nice fee, and now doubted Jeremy’s conflict of interest explanation.
His father had listened to everything Mitch had said, and then announced, “I hate shopping, so when I find the perfect gift I buy it. I’m buying you a lawyer. Merry Christmas.”
Even Mitch’s mother, in the midst of parade frenzy, assembled a list of VIPs who would be in attendance at the kickoff party and gave it to Barbara to see if there were any hits on her list.
So basically, it was the Save Mitch project and he’d felt useless.
That was about to change.
But not before Kristen got a hold of him.
They were in his parent’s bedroom because that’s where the full-length mirror was. He could smell his mother’s perfume and see his dad’s suits lined up in the closet.
This was the opposite of an aphrodisiac.
“Let’s go over this again.”
“Kristen…”
“Mitch, you’re playing a role and you need to practice so you’ll be convincing.”
“I’m playing me. Jeremy knows me.”
She shook her head. Her forties-movie-star hair had frizzed during their lunch, and she hadn’t reapplied her red lipstick, so in her black skirt and white blouse, she looked more like a strict school marm than a femme fatale and Mitch could go with that.
Or he could have gone with that if his parent’s king-sized bed hadn’t been visible behind him in the mirror.
“But you know what Jeremy has been doing. You have to play a Mitch who still doesn’t suspect. Jeremy is going to be watching for any sign that you do. And I’ve got to tell you, if you give him one of your disgusted looks, he’ll know.”
She had a point. She had a very good point because it was so much more than disgust. “Okay.”
She made him practice greeting Jeremy, rehearse a few conversational lines and craft an explanation of what he’d been doing with his time.
“Would you ask about your clients?”
“Yes. I’d be frantic about my clients.”
“What kind of answer would you be willing to accept?”
“That they’ve been taken care of.”
“Then if Jeremy’s explanation is the least bit believable, you accept it. You express relief, gratitude and admiration.”
“Admiration? No way.” He would have inserted a certain crude adjective, but they were in his parents’ bedroom, after all.
“Admiration,” she reiterated, crossing her arms over her chest. She was utterly sure of herself and this was serious to her.
He should respect that. “Okay.”
“Remember that Jeremy’s ego is the key. Next step. You’re at the computer. What’s your explanation of the problem and how much are you going to fix?”
“I’ll access the registry—”
Kristen held up a hand. “You don’t have to tell me, but you have to know. If Jeremy doesn’t leave yo
u alone with his computer, then you’ll have to distract him.”
“How? Yell, ‘Look, it’s Santa Claus!’ and download files when he runs to the window?”
“Think ego. What does he do better than you?”
Mitch remained silent.
“What does he think he does better than you?”
“People. Women.”
“Then you tell him you’ve met someone. You act sappy. That’ll also explain away any weirdness in your behavior. Now, show me sappy.”
Mitch made kissing sounds and batted his eyes.
Kristen thwapped him on the arm. “You are going to thank me later. You will be down on your knees in gratitude. You will owe me. And I will collect.”
A wave of affection washed over Mitch. He deliberately tamped down any desire, primarily because of the psychological unease of being in his parents’ bedroom with a woman he desperately wanted. In every way.
He usually delayed getting physical in his relationships and to his surprise, more often than not, the woman complained or wondered what was wrong with her. Mitch wanted to get to know his bed partners before doing the deed—didn’t they want to get to know him?
Sometimes, they didn’t. And that was a deal breaker for him.
Mitch liked to let the initial fizz of attraction develop into something many sided, and certainly one of those sides was physical. He was well aware that it was time to work on the physical side with Kristen. Not that it would be work. But she deserved all his attention and all his emotional energy, and until he cleared his name, that wasn’t possible.
His eyes skimmed her face because if they skimmed her body, he’d never be able to concentrate on her instructions.
“Excellent.” Kristen was watching him in the mirror.
“What?” He’d zoned out for a moment.
“Your sappy look.”
Mitch cleared his throat. “Okay, what next?”
“Describe her to Jeremy. He’ll ask. In fact, use me. I’m perfect.”
Mitch raised his eyebrows.
Still holding her arms above the elbows, she paced as she thought. “As soon as you say my name, he’ll stop paying attention to what you’re doing at his computer. Think ego. He’s jealous of you. You’ll go on and on about me so he’ll know you’re really infatuated.”
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