To a degree, he supposed he was guilty of typecasting her. “It’s just that you’re an accomplished career woman. Most career women I know either don’t know how to cook or they don’t have the time to cook—unless their careers involve having their own cooking show,” he amended with a smile.
She supposed she could accept that. “Well, I don’t have my own cooking show,” Krys said. “But cooking was just always something I knew how to do. I guess waiting for the pizza delivery guy got a little old after a while and I’m not really a big fan of junk food.” She gave him a rueful smile. “I eat too much of that when I’m on the road anyway.” She nodded at his soup bowl. “By the way, you don’t have to feel obligated to finish that. I can make you something else if you’d rather.” Although she saw that he was all but finished eating it.
“Maybe next time,” Morgan said, retiring his spoon beside his bowl. “But for now, I’d like a second helping of soup if you have any.”
She had no idea why his request for seconds could make her feel as happy as it did. But there was no mistaking the warmth that was flooding through her as she rose to get him another helping of soup.
“You’re in luck,” Krys announced, picking up the ladle and using it to fill the bowl she was holding. “There’s just one more serving left.”
“I don’t want to take your last serving,” Morgan protested. “You eat it.”
She turned around with the refilled bowl and brought it back to the table and Morgan. “Trust me, having you eat like this does wonders for my morale.”
“I wasn’t aware that your morale needed reinforcement.”
She merely shrugged, not seeing anything embarrassing about the situation. “Everyone’s morale could use an occasional boost.”
He thought about his life over these last few months. He was finally coming around. It hadn’t been easy, but life had gotten a lot better. “Mine doesn’t.”
“Then you are definitely the exception,” she told him. Krys considered what her twin had told her about this family Nik was marrying into. “But then, being part of such a large, strong family, I guess your situation might be different than the one that we mere mortals find ourselves slogging through.”
Finished with his second serving, he put his spoon in the bowl and looked at her. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
She spelled it out for him. “It means that there’s always someone there to have your back, someone offering you emotional support even when you pretend that you don’t need it.”
He didn’t see their situations as being different from each other. “You have your twin.”
But Krys shook her head. “Not the same thing. Nik and I have taken slightly different paths. Hers wound up keeping her close by while mine has me flying around to all these different locations. Following these last two stories was the closest I’ve been to home—as far as this region of the country goes—in a year and a half.”
There was a lot more to this woman than he had initially thought, Morgan realized. He turned back to his work. “It looks like I’m going to need a bigger notebook to document this list of suspects I asked you to give me.”
“Yes, about that,” Krys told him. “I’ve been giving this whole matter a lot of thought,” she said. She could tell by the way he was sitting that he was closing himself off to what she was about to tell him. She pushed on anyway. “And, to be honest, except for Bluebeard, I really don’t think that any of the people from the drug trials I interviewed could be potential suspects. I don’t see them wanting to get rid of me in order to stop the articles from coming out.”
She paused, taking in a deep breath before proceeding. “If anything, they might even be hoping that I’ll wind up championing their cause—that is, if I could find them.”
Morgan stared at her. “How’s that again?” he asked. “You lost me.”
“That’s just the problem,” she agreed. “I lost them.” She realized that her comment made what she was trying to say no clearer for him. Krys backtracked. “When I started looking into this miracle drug that was scheduled to be released, I heard rumors that not all the test subjects were thrilled with the drug’s result. I actually managed to talk to a couple of rather dissatisfied, or at least unhappy, test subjects.
“But when I went back to attempt to verify my initial information, those people I had talked to just seemed to have taken off. They’ve disappeared,” she stressed, “and no one could tell me where they had gone. The two test subjects who I actually did manage to find swore up and down that I had gotten their stories all wrong. That the truth of it was they were overjoyed with the drug’s results. They said they were even willing to go on record singing the new drug’s praises.”
He barely knew this woman, yet had gotten the impression that getting her facts right was of exceeding importance to her. Apparently, she valued the truth above all else. People like that just didn’t bend the facts to suit their purposes.
“That sounds rather suspicious,” Morgan commented.
“You think?” Krys asked. The fact that this man believed her meant a lot to her. It also bolstered the stand she had taken. “But they stuck by their stories. When I wanted to talk to them at length, they refused to meet with me after that. One of them actually told me that if I had anything to ask them, I could talk to their respective lawyers. Lawyers,” she added, “who ironically worked for the same law firm,” Krys told him in a voice that was all but dripping with sarcasm.
“It sounds like Weatherly Pharmaceuticals is
