Mad Bad and Blonde

by Cathie Linz

  “Does Caine know all this?”

  “I don’t know. I assume so.”

  “You should tell him. Maybe then he’d stop thinking his father was innocent.”

  “Yes, but the thing is that the case is almost too neat and tidy. My gut tells me there may be more to the story. I found a brief reference to the research assistant named Weldon Gronski vouching for Karl’s innocence. He was never thoroughly interviewed, however. That raised a red flag for me. I want to track that guy down and talk to him.”

  “Why?”

  “Leave no stone unturned.”

  “You don’t think West Investigations botched the case, do you?”

  “I don’t want to think that, no. But I need to be sure. What would make a man like Karl with an exemplary record suddenly sell corporate secrets?”

  “Obviously it was money.”

  “Why then? Why that particular project? He’d worked on other equally important projects.”

  “Did he have a gambling problem?”

  “Not that I could find. Like I said, I just need some more information.”

  “Does your dad know you’re doing this?”

  “No. And don’t tell him or my mom.”

  “I won’t.” Megan proficiently used her chopsticks to dip her sushi into a small bowl of soy sauce. “So when do I get to meet this Caine?”

  “You don’t. Why would you even want to?”

  “Because he’s clearly made a big impression on you.”

  “A bad one.”

  “Are you sure about that? I mean here you are, helping him investigate his father’s case.”

  “He has no idea I’m looking into it.”

  “Would he approve?”

  “Like I’d care.”

  “It seems to me you care too much. It seems Caine has made more of an impact on you than Alan did.”

  “And how shallow would that make me? I was engaged to Alan for almost year. And yet Caine’s the one I keep thinking about.”

  “Maybe because Alan is out of the picture, and you keep running into Caine.”

  “He does that on purpose, you know.”

  “Have you seen him since that lunch where you conned your way into winning that client?”

  “It wasn’t a con. It was my knowledge of White Sox trivia.”

  “Right. So have you seen Caine since then?”

  “No.” She looked around. “But I fully expect him to show up anytime now. I wouldn’t be surprised if he walked through that door.”

  “I would,” Megan said. “How could he know about our Sushi Tuesday?”

  “I may have mentioned it,” Faith muttered. “Before I knew who he really was.”

  “Wow. Is that him?”

  Faith pivoted in her seat, her heart pounding. She saw the man entering the Sushi Place. “No, that’s not him.”

  “Too bad.”

  “What do you mean, too bad? You’d be happy if he showed up here?”

  Megan shrugged. “At least I’d finally get to meet him.”

  “He’s not a nice person.”

  “He helped you transport your wings.”

  “And he never did say what he was doing standing outside the library.”

  “A man of mystery.”

  “You’re my cousin. You’re not supposed to take his side.”

  “I’m just curious about this guy who has such a strong effect on you.”

  “By ‘strong effect,’ you mean he seduced me. Do not remind me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You know what I need? I need to get back to my worst-case scenario approach to life. Had I kept that up, then I would have had a backup plan for the wedding falling through. And I would have been suspicious of Caine in Italy.”

  “What if Jane Austen had thought that way?”

  “She was never jilted at the altar.”

  “True.”

  “In fact, she never married.”

  “Yes, but she was engaged.”

  “For about twenty-four hours, and then she broke it off. I’m telling you—if you prepare for the worst, then you’re pleasantly surprised when things do work out.”

  Megan shook her head. “I don’t think I could live that way.”

  “Because you’re the eternal optimist. I tried that. It didn’t work for me.”

  “So how does your worst-case scenario fit into your new mad and bad persona?”

  “I feel more in control.”

  “It doesn’t sound like things with Caine are more in control.”

  “They will be when I figure out what really happened with his father.”

  “Going with your worst-case scenario—what do you do if you find that the agency made a mistake and that Caine’s dad really wasn’t guilty? How do you prepare for that?”

  “I don’t know,” Faith admitted. “I’m still trying to figure things out.” Including how she really felt about Caine.

  “Is that Caine?” Megan asked.

  “Cut it out. It wasn’t funny the first time around.”

  “Hello, ladies,” Caine said. “Mind if I join you?”

  Chapter Eight

  “Caine, I presume?” Megan said.

  He nodded and smiled at her. “Megan, I presume?”

  Megan smiled back. The traitor. “That’s right. We were just talking about you.”

  Faith kicked her cousin under the table.

  “What?” Megan blinked. “We were.”

  Caine sat in the empty chair next to Faith. Naturally that gave her a flashback to meeting him for the first time in Italy. They’d shared a table on the sunny terrace. She’d had pizza. He’d spoken fluent Italian.

  Like then, he had that sexy stubble thing going on. His dark hair fell over his forehead.

  “The man is stalking me,” Faith reminded her cousin and herself.

  “I just felt like having sushi, and someone I know raved about this place,” Caine said.

  “That someone was me, and you damn well know it. I told you about Sushi Tuesday.”

  He started singing Sushi Tuesday to the Rolling Stones song “Ruby Tuesday.” He had an awesome voice. The man could read the phone book, and he’d sound incredible. It was criminal.

  Faith refused to be seduced. “They don’t do karaoke here,” she said. “I’m sure there are plenty of other places that do. You might want to go eat there tonight.”

  He ignored her comment and instead asked Megan, “Did your cousin tell you how she used the White Sox to steal a client away from me?”

  Megan nodded. “Why, yes, she did.”

  “I did not steal a client from you! He was not your client. He was undecided. He made the right decision by going with West Investigations. Does your boss know you’re here? Did he send you to spy on me again?”

  “No. And no.” He took the menu a server handed him. “Thanks.”

  “You’re not eating here,” Faith said. “You are not a sushi kind of guy.”

  “Really? What kind of guy is a sushi kind of guy? Your ex-fiancé?”

  “Well, yes. He was a foodie.”

  “And you don’t think I’m a foodie?”

  She remembered the delicious meals they’d had in Italy. “I don’t know you well enough to say.”

  “Trust me, if you can eat MREs, you can eat anything.”

  Trust him? No way. She’d done that once with disastrous results. “MRE?” she repeated.

  “Meals ready to eat. What they hand out in the Marine Corps. I’ve eaten worse than MREs. Bugs. Snakes.”

  “Are you trying to impress me?” Faith said.

  “She once ate a grasshopper on a dare,” Megan said.

  “I was only five at the time.” Faith kicked her cousin again, warning her not to reveal any other childhood secrets and anecdotes.

  Megan had a warning of her own. “Ow! If you kick me again, I’m kicking you back.”

  “Do you two fight often?” Caine asked.

  “Never,” Faith said. “You bring out the wors
t in people.”

  “Maybe I just get them to tell the truth,” Caine countered before placing his order.

  “Why are you here?” Faith demanded.

  “I already told you. I felt like eating sushi.”

  “Are you totally incapable of telling the truth?”

  “No.”

  “That’s it? No?”

  Caine shrugged. “You asked me a question. I answered it.”

  “Did you answer it truthfully?”

  “Yes. I am capable of telling the truth.”

  “Have you ever told me the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Plenty of times.”

  “Be more specific.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I’m asking you to.”

  “You already know what you think,” he said. “Why should I confuse you with fact?”

  “What kind of line is that?”

  “It’s the truth. And don’t tell me that I wouldn’t know the truth if it bit me.”

  She bit her tongue. How did he know that’s what she’d been about to say? Was she that predictable? That boring?

  “I’ll have you know that I have a very open mind,” Faith said.

  Caine cracked up, almost snorting the Japanese beer he’d ordered.

  “What’s so funny?” Her voice was colder than the polar ice pack.

  “You are.”

  “Wrong answer.” She stood and dumped her sparkling water in his lap. He stopped laughing. She left a twenty on the table for her bill and headed for the nearest exit. Megan scrambled after her.

  Caine played it smart by staying at the Sushi Place.

  “So,” Megan said cheerfully once they were a block away. “That’s Caine, huh? I can see the attraction.”

  Faith stopped in her tracks, causing the pedestrian walking behind her to veer around her to avoid knocking her down. “Attraction? You’re crazy.”

  “What do you call that back there then? You clearly have a strong reaction to him.”

  “I call it aggravation and anger.”

  “Right. And attraction. I’m telling you, I saw more sparks between the two of you in the past ten minutes than I saw with you and Alan in the past year.”

  “Sparks cause fires. Fires cause devastation.”

  “I thought you were mad, bad and blonde.”

  “Mad and bad, sure. Not stupid.”

  “I’m just saying I can understand how you’d end up in Caine’s bed.”

  Faith looked around. “We are not having this conversation in the middle of the sidewalk. We aren’t having it anywhere. Change of subject.”

  “I can’t believe you dumped your drink on him.”

  “He made me do it.”

  Megan laughed.

  “What’s so funny? And remember what I did to the last person who answered that question incorrectly,” Faith warned her.

  “That’s what you said when you ate that grasshopper. You said he made you do it.”

  “Caine?”

  “No, of course not. That kid you had a crush on in kindergarten.”

  “Okay. Fine. I still say Caine made me do it, and he deserved it. I don’t like people laughing at me.”

  “I know.”

  “Being left at the altar that way . . .” Faith shook her head. “I don’t like people laughing or feeling sorry for me.”

  “Well, I can tell you this much—Caine definitely doesn’t feel sorry for you. I think he may be crazy about you.”

  “He’s crazy, that’s for sure.”

  “You’re crazy,” Caine muttered to himself as he returned to his table at the Sushi Place.

  “I’m so sorry, sir,” the server said, handing him several napkins to mop up.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Faith is a frequent customer here. I’ve never seen her that upset.”

  “I seem to have that effect on her.”

  “She’s a good person.”

  “So people keep telling me. Listen, can I have that sushi to go?”

  “I’ll get it ready for you.” She couldn’t resist adding, “Are you going to go after her and apologize?”

  “No.” I’m going to go refocus my attention on what’s really important: clearing my father’s name.

  Caine had plenty of time to brood as he carried his takeout to a bench along the Chicago River. He needed the fresh air to clear his head.

  What was he doing following Faith around like a doting dog? She wouldn’t lead him to the real perpetrator of his father’s downfall. At least he didn’t think so. He wasn’t following her because of the case. He was trailing her because he wanted to see her.

  A stupid move for a man who prided himself on his street smarts.

  “Is this seat taken?” a stranger asked, pointing to the empty space beside Caine on the bench before seeing Caine’s fierce frown. “Uh, never mind.” The man and his date hurried away.

  Wise move. Caine wasn’t good company at the moment. He rubbed the back of his neck where the tension was building. A stiff breeze off the lake ruffled his hair as he sat there watching the boat traffic going up and down the Chicago River—from sleek sailboats and motorized powerboats to sightseeing vessels filled with tourists admiring the view. Looking south, he could see the shiny Swissôtel on the other side of the river. Beyond that was Millennium Park and the Bean—the polished chrome sculpture that reflected the city’s impressive skyline.

  As far as he was concerned, Chicago held all bragging rights in the skyline department. And he didn’t just think that because he was a native. Hell, the city was famous for its architecture . . . and its Portillo’s hot dogs . . . and deep-dish pizza. Which reminded him, he was hungry.

  He opened the container with his food and sampled one of the offerings before tossing the rest in a nearby trash container. Faith was right. He wasn’t really a sushi guy. He was a burger and fries guy. A steak and potato guy. Although he did have a secret love of broccoli that he never told anyone about because that was a dorky vegetable and not a manly Marine vegetable like . . . carrots.

  Yeah, carrots. They were supposed to help with night vision. Not as much as night vision goggles, of course. Vegetables couldn’t compete with the tech support of the U.S. Marine Corps.

  Still . . . he did have a fondness for broccoli. And that was entirely his dad’s fault. Because when Caine was a kid, his dad told him that broccoli was really a bunch of small trees that a mad scientist had shrunk.

  As if on cue, a little rug rat maybe three years old ran up to Caine. “Wanna see my dog-dog?”

  Not knowing what a dog-dog was, Caine froze for a second before seeing the stuffed animal that the little boy was waving around.

  “Victor!” His dad raced after him and scooped the kid up in his arms.

  The image of father and son hit Caine hard. He remembered being swung in circles by his father on a warm summer evening. “More!” he’d yell again and again.

  His dad would swing him around while laughing and telling him about centrifugal force. His dad was always a scientist at heart. Caine couldn’t even count the number of times his dad would incorporate a lesson about a chemical equation into playtime. He could still hear his dad’s voice saying, “Hydrogen is the first element on the periodic table . . . not to be confused with a picnic table.”

  Yeah, that was his dad. Karl the chemist comic Hunter.

  Caine’s life was forever changed by his mother’s death when he was ten. His mother had been sick for several years before that—in and out of hospitals fighting cancer. She’d always wanted to go to Italy to visit her cousins there but didn’t live long enough to see that dream happen. So she’d made Caine promise he’d go to visit them someday, which was why he was in Italy a few weeks ago.

  He’d also promised his mom that he’d look after his dad. He’d failed with that job. Her death had devastated his dad, and the chemistry jokes had stopped for a long, long time. Instead, his father had become im
mersed in his work, and Caine had been left alone a lot.

  Caine had joined the Marines right out of high school. His dad had supported his decision. He’d felt bad leaving his dad on his own, but Karl hadn’t seemed to mind, claiming it gave him more time to devote to his work. Work that Caine had never really understood, despite his father’s best efforts to educate him.

  He’d wondered if his dad might not remarry, but that never happened. “Your mom was the love of my life,” he’d told Caine. “The hydrogen to my oxygen. No other molecule or woman will do.”

  Seeing what the loss of his mom had done to his dad made Caine determined not to display an equal vulnerability. Love killed something in you. Made you weak, not strong. These were the life lessons he learned. That, along with knowing the atomic weight of hydrogen.

  Not that any of those things could help him now. He needed the skills he’d learned in the Marines: how to lock up his emotions to the horrors he saw around him. He’d heard a saying in the Corps—he wasn’t sure who said it—Death smiles at everyone. The Marines smile back.

  But his dad hadn’t smiled back. He’d taken his own life.

  Guilt shot through Caine. He should have done more, should have done something. Gritting his teeth, he refused to give in to the dark emotions eating at him. He couldn’t afford to go there now. He had to stay focused.

  Caine couldn’t bring his father back to life. The best he could do was to clear his father’s name.

  Because he knew with every fiber of his being that his father hadn’t sold corporate secrets for money. No way. He refused to believe that. And he was the only one who could prove them wrong.

  That meant Caine had to keep his eyes on the mission and off Faith.

  “Are you ready for your first case?” Abs asked Faith at work the next morning.

  “Absolutely.”

  “You need to do an asset search on Douglas W. Haywood, former subprime mortgage broker. He claims he’s broke and can’t pay child support for his three kids. He and his wife, our client, are going through an acrimonious divorce. She’s in small conference room A. Interview her and see what other information you can get on him.” Abs handed over the file, which listed the bare minimum information: employment record, credit report, social security number and date of birth. “Here. You’ll need these.” Abs gave her a box of Kleenex. “She’s a crier.”