experience in this field?”
“My parents divorced when I was in my teens. We haven’t heard from my father in years. Are you and your ex-wife still lovers?”
She couldn’t believe she’d actually come out and asked such a question, and would have given anything to withdraw it. He wasn’t impressed by it, either. “What’s it to you, cookie? I thought you came here to enlist my help, not quiz me about my sexual history. Are you done with that plate?”
“Yes, thank you,” she mumbled, still awash in embarrassment. “Dinner was delicious.”
“Nice of you to say so. Did I mention, when we went over the house rules, that the one who doesn’t cook gets to clean up once the meal’s over?”
“You seem to live by a great many rules.”
“I make them up as I go along, especially when I’m saddled with uninvited houseguests.”
“Well, it’s easy enough to be rid of me,” she said, rallying. “All you have to do is agree to help me find my niece, and I’ll leave.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I won’t budge.”
“Then it seems I’m stuck with you either way, since you don’t have any other place to stay tonight.”
Either way? A flicker of hope took hold of her. “Does that mean you’re prepared to take on the case?”
Face unreadable, he swirled the wine in his glass and took his time replying. “It means I’m prepared to consider it. Not, I hasten to add, because I find your powers of persuasion irresistible or because your sister was fool enough to get herself pregnant by a man she didn’t know well enough to trust, but because a young and helpless child is the ultimate victim.”
“Oh, thank you!” she exclaimed, relief leaving her voice shaking with emotion. “Thank you so much, Mac! You don’t know how grateful I am, or what this will mean to my family. Now, probably the best place to start—”
He cut her off with a decisive gesture, slicing his hand through the air like an ax blade and thumping it down on the table so hard that the plates rattled and the wine danced in the glasses. “Let’s get something straight right off,” he said. “If I take this on, I will be the one to decide on the best place to start. I will be the one who calls the shots. Not you, and not your family. With all due respect to your understandable concern, you are not the ones with the experience or contacts needed to bring that baby back home. But only, as I said, if I decide to pursue the case, something which is by no means certain.”
“What do I have to do to clinch things in my favor?”
He smiled. A dazzling, beautiful smile, which should have reassured her but which inspired instead the tingling sense that accepting favors from him would come with a very high price—one she might never be able to afford. “I’ll let you know when I’ve figured it out, cookie,” he said, rising from his seat and strolling languidly to the couch at the other end of the room. “Meanwhile, tackle the dishes.”
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