not necessary,” he said.
Lacey froze and stared up at him. “She is paying you, right? You didn’t offer to do this for free?”
As far as Mike was concerned, the question was none of her business, even if Kacey hadn’t been a friend. And her identical twin.
He said nothing.
“She isn’t. Mike, she’s trying, I swear, and she’s changing, but Kacey has no idea of the power she has to get people to do things for her. Your firm charges top dollar. I’m going to pay you...” She reached for her purse again.
“Stop,” he told her and was tempted to tell her he’d bill her.
The way she’d talked about her twin pissed him off. Or maybe it was because of the way she’d thought he was too...dense, or blind, to figure out that Kacey was working him.
If she’d been working him.
“This is between your sister and me. I didn’t get to be CEO of a successful firm by allowing beautiful women to get me to do things for them.”
Lacey’s mouth fell open. Her brow furrowed. And he had a feeling that if Jem Bridges had been present, he might have decked him for making his wife feel bad.
He wouldn’t have blamed him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was uncalled for, as well. I’ll go now. See you in the morning?” He tried a grin on her. It used to be a killer with the women.
“No, I’m sorry,” she was saying, following him to the door. “I didn’t mean to imply, even for a second, that you’d fall prey to...that you were... Shit.”
“Best to quit while you’re ahead.” Jem had joined them.
“I’m making it worse,” Lacey said, grimacing as she looked between the two men. “I just... Kacey’s the sweetest, most incredible woman I know, and I don’t like her to be misjudged when she doesn’t even mean to do what she does.”
Jem’s finger covered his wife’s lips. “Believe it or not, Lacey’s the one who can go into any volatile family situation and take control,” he said to Mike. “The woman’s a marvel at mediation and tact. Just not when it comes to her sister.”
“I’m well aware of your sister’s...abilities...to allure,” Mike said, genuinely liking the couple. “I also like and respect her,” he added. “Understand that I see her in a light different than most. I see her at the Lemonade Stand giving women the ability to feel good about themselves again. She’s gentle and loving. Kind. And compassionate. There’s not an egotistical bone in her body.”
He stopped. He’d gone on far too long.
Lacey was staring at him. Openmouthed.
Jem just stood there.
“You really get her,” Lacey finally said, her voice soft.
“In Santa Raquel, at the Lemonade Stand, yes.”
“But she’s the same person...no matter where she goes. I mean, you don’t become someone different just because you get in the car and drive down the road.”
“We all have different sides,” he said, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I don’t need to see the other sides of your sister. I admire her work at the Stand. And I’m happy to help her find out who hacked into her email account.”
With that, he said good-night and got the hell out of there, hoping he hadn’t given away just how close he and Kacey were.
Walking backward on his words wasn’t something he did often. Or had to do.
He wasn’t sure how successful he’d been.
“OH, SIMON, DARLING, I would never deliberately hurt you, you know that...” Kacey, or rather her on-screen character, Doria Endlin, gazed into the vivid blue eyes of Tom Cryder, the actor who played Simon Willfinder, Doria’s best friend.
And forgot her next line.
“Cut!”
Tom, who’d been holding her shoulder and leaning in almost close enough for their noses to touch, broke away and stood up. “What’s with you this morning, Kace? That’s the third time you’ve messed up. You never mess up.”
If he’d asked the question a little more quietly, or sincerely, she might have answered him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, looking between Tom and the assistant director who was running the morning’s takes.
She’d like to say she felt sick. Had a headache. Or that she was upset about being hacked.
Any of those reasons would not have been false. But they weren’t what was crapping out her work—she was too professional to let such things get in her way.
No, the problem was unreal. Couldn’t be happening. She just needed a minute alone to sort through the noise in her head.
There was no way that Simon and Michael were merging in her mind. And yet, that morning, on three separate occasions, she’d gazed at Simon and seen the look in Michael’s eyes the day before when she’d told him he was beautiful.
What was up with that?
“You ready to go again or do you need a minute?” the assistant director, Sandy Paxton, asked her.
“I’m good.” She smiled at Tom. “I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it.
He nodded. And she knew his acceptance was sincere. Tom was...Tom. But they were friends. Not like they portrayed on set—nothing that close. Still, she trusted him more than a lot of people in her world.
“Let’s do this,” Tom said, grinning, and plopped down on the sofa beside her to repeat his confession that he was developing feelings for Doria—the woman he’d been best friends with since the show’s inception.
She wasn’t sure she liked where the script was heading. Doria and Simon? Didn’t fit.
But she’d been in the daytime-show business long enough to know that if your character’s script didn’t come with continued twists and turns, you’d soon be gone.
Still... Simon?
She made it through the scene—and the rest of the morning—without mishap.
* * *
TUESDAY MORNING MICHAEL wasted no time during his breakfast meeting with a detective from the LAPD who was working on a confidential case that he didn’t want some of his peers to know about. The department had allocated funds to bring Michael’s team—in this case Michael, personally—on board.
While in town he stopped by a couple of midsize firms that kept his company on retainer to monitor their systems for signs of hacking.
He had an entire database of larger corporate accounts, too. Ones that called him when they suspected suspicious activity. Some that needed him to underwrite antivirus fixes. Or override system takeovers.
And then there were the housewives who were afraid their inordinately rich husbands were cheating on them, or husbands who wanted to know what their wives were doing online. Mike didn’t cover those jobs himself. He had a staff of four highly trained and trusted employees who did most of that work.
And that morning, for a friend, he was checking out an address from which an account had been set up with a private email account.
The IP address that had posted the Photoshopped picture of Kacey came from an internet café that was known for serving great coffee. The place hosted four public computers. Users paid for computer time by the half hour. Most paid cash. The shop’s manager, upon seeing Mike’s credentials, allowed him to take a