It was tall, white-haired Arthur who spoke up, the one who never made waves, never invited confrontation if there was a prayer of avoiding it. “We all know there’s a thief, Harm. We all know it has to be one of us.”
Purdue pushed back his chair. “And we all want to know what you’re going to do about it. It’s driving us crazy. Not knowing where we stand with our jobs, with the company, with our reputations. With not knowing what’s going to happen.”
Yale, who could be counted on arguing with Purdue on whether the sky was blue, actually nodded. “We can’t keep on this way. None of us can leave. We’ve all got too much at stake. But nobody can think with this cloud over our heads, much less imagine working together again.”
Harm waited for Fiske to take a turn, but his financial officer waved off the chance. So Harm took the floor.
“What we’re going to do-what I’m going to do-is figure out where the money is. Figure out who did it. And then put the lab together. My uncle built an outstanding team-but I believe we can make it even better. You’re each uniquely brilliant. One of you got sidetracked. Not all. Just one.”
Purdue said, “Okay, so that’s what you want to do. But how are you going to do it? All of us feel it. That we’re under a cloud of suspicion.”
“Because you are-but I didn’t put that cloud there,” Harm said. “The thief did. And I’ll tell you this. In the next ten days I’ll know who it is.”
They believed him. God knew why, but Harm saw the trust and reassurance in their faces. It seemed the right time to close down shop, and the group followed him below deck, all of them yawning and expressing exhaustion.
Harm was well aware that one in the group was a fantastic liar and unpredictably dangerous. But his main worry-his real crisis of a worry-was that the group was counting on him. The whole company-not even counting their cure for pancreatic cancer-would go down if he couldn’t.
And once Harm got that in his head, he couldn’t sleep. He tried to. Heaven knew he was beyond exhausted, and his cabin was as comfortable as a luxury hotel. The steady lap of water outside was soothing, hypnotic-or it would be for anyone without so many problems preying on his mind.
A couple of hours later, cranky and disgusted, he yanked on sweats and made his way topside. He just… wandered. He’d forgotten-or hadn’t known-that it was never going to be midnight-dark in the summer here. The sky wasn’t daylight-bright, more the dusky, pearl hues of a late twilight. The salon and dining areas were gloomy with shadows, only the gleam of occasional brass relieving the dimness. Outside, the air was crisp, the pilothouse as deserted and silent as the rest of the deck.
Harm kept ambling, seeking to find the highest spot on the boat so he could see the Alaskan night from the highest vantage point. Beside the pilothouse was another set of steps, leading to a small top deck. He climbed up, exploring, not looking for anything beyond a quiet spot with a view. He found the view…but he also found a five- foot-long lump of blankets already up there.
Initially, he assumed the dark bundle of blankets was just a cover for some kind of storage-until he stepped closer and saw a white oval in the middle of all those covers. A face. A pixie face with a gleam of annoyed blue eyes staring back at him.
“Do me a favor and don’t tell on me.”
A minute ago, Harm would have sworn nothing could have aroused his sense of humor. “Hmm. I sense blackmail potential. What exactly am I not supposed to tell on you?”
“I’m not supposed to sleep up here. No one is. And the last thing I want the captain to notice is that I’m not where I’m supposed to be at night.”
Since this was getting more interesting-and for damn sure, more distracting than a fistful of problems-Harm hunkered down on his haunches. “I suspect Ivan would be happier than a kid in a candy store to discover you were up here alone.”
“Yeah, there’s that issue, too.” She sighed. “This is the thing. I’m pretty seriously claustrophobic. Have been ever since going through that fire when I was a kid. None of my sisters can stand feeling trapped or locked in either, but I seem to have it the worst.” She paused. “On the other hand, I’m not the only one wandering around in the middle of the night. So what’s your excuse?”
“My excuse is that I seem to have given up sleeping. To add insult to injury, the less sleep I have, the stupider I get. So that’s pissed me off even more.”
“Ah, I’ll run for the hills then. I wouldn’t want to risk pissing off a hotsy-totsy corporate magnate.”
“I’m not a corporate magnate.”
“Well, you’re certainly crabby, whatever label you want to call yourself.”
His gaze narrowed with interest. “So why aren’t you running away?”
“You think I should?”
“Everybody else does.” It was her own doing that he ended up beside her. He could have stayed in that hunched position indefinitely. She was the one who lifted the blankets and unrolled a few extra feet of tarp. The tarp had obviously protected her from the damp deck, which she was willing to extend to him, as well.
Her kindness was definitely appreciated, because damn, it was cold up there. Only being half-prone next to her immediately provoked the idea of kissing her.
That idea had been growing on him since, oh, around a second after laying eyes on her. It’d be funny if it weren’t so incomprehensible. Inheriting the business had sliced his sex drive in half-or that’s what he’d been trying to tell himself. Since his uncle had died, he’d been hurling himself around the country nonstop, thrown into legal and ethical situations that just kept getting deeper and darker, so obviously, there’d been no time to meet a woman or form a relationship. Harm had rationalized for some time that all the stress had obliterated his sexual needs.
Looking at Cate forced him to recognize that need was alive and clamoring-noisy. And the more he felt the nearness of her, the more he realized that need hadn’t been satisfied in a long, long time.
“You don’t take nonsense from anyone, do you?” he asked curiously.
“Sure I do. Everybody does.”
But he didn’t. And he’d long wearied of people who took it from him. From school to the military, to the business crisis he was in now, people had always deferred to him. Always expected him to find answers, to come through. To not show weakness. Cate had challenged him from the start. It was refreshing…but yeah, a little unnerving. And rather than think about that unwanted sexual tug, he started a conversation. “What was your impression? Of my guys, the team at dinner?”
She leaned up on one elbow. “When you told me what the situation was, I specifically set the table with good crystal, the white tablecloth. Probably sounds silly to you…but I’ve always found that atmosphere affects behavior. I also think having strangers around your group-like me and Ivan and Hans-probably brought out more manners in your guys. People always behave better around strangers. Likewise, if you give boys mud and water, they’ll end up getting dirty. Put on the crystal, and they’ll tend to be more polite, to get along.”
He said, “I don’t know about the crystal. But you sure did something because you got them talking.”
“Not real talking. Just polite talking. I was hoping the atmosphere would help you figure out the crux of the problem.”
“Who my thief is.”
She frowned. “Where the poison in your company is,” she corrected him. “Same thing.”
“I don’t think so. The person who stole the formula not only stole the formula. He betrayed the team, hurt the other players-financially and job-wise-and is doing a pretty effective job of tearing down the company. Your uncle had lofty goals. So did they. The one who ripped that open took away some serious big dreams and goals, as well.”
“You’ve been thinking about this,” he said slowly.
“Not really. I don’t know anything. It’s just…an interesting problem. If the person did this right after your uncle died, then your uncle’s death must have provided them with an opportunity. Access. But I don’t get at all
He absorbed what she’d said. He’d had no one to share the puzzle pieces with before-except for the P.I.
