After the last twenty-odd hours, she could use at least a pound of the sugar solace in Caleb Lewis’s hands.
He placed the basket on her desk, close enough that she could swipe one of those candy bars with little more than a scissor snip of the cellophane. She fought the urge. Valiantly.
Caleb gestured toward the visitor chair. She nodded, and he dropped into the seat with the kind of ease that marked a confident man, one who could take over a space simply by being in it. “I need some information.”
Sarah tried to concentrate on Caleb’s face instead of the candy. Her stomach rumbled in protest. She should have had breakfast this morning. Then again, concentrating on Caleb Lewis came with as many dangers as digesting the thousands of calories in the basket before her. The man was a distracting interruption she definitely didn’t need today.
His blue gaze zeroed in on her face. He had a way of looking at a person that seemed to see past any façade, to make any secret hard to hide. Like the fact that her entire body was responding to his smile, his eyes, betraying her common sense. She’d seen women get so wrapped up in his face, his smile, that they tripped over their own two feet trying to get closer to him. No wonder. Being this close to Caleb Lewis, she realized the direct power of his gaze. Almost hypnotic.
Sarah cleared her throat. “Information? On what?”
“I wanted to ask whether you—” He cut the sentence off, then leaned forward. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” She pivoted to follow his line of sight. Right over the books on her desk, past the coffee cup serving as a pencil holder, beyond the unopened oat-and-honey granola bar she’d been saving for a snack, and straight to—
The wanted poster.
She reached to hide it, but Caleb’s reach was faster and he plucked it up. “Hmm. Interesting.”
“It’s nothing.” Sarah swiped at the paper, but Caleb just leaned away from her. “Give it back.”
“Missing: one shoe,” he read. “Red stiletto. Custom design. Reward for safe return.” He arched a brow. “You lost a shoe?”
Sarah snatched the paper out of his hand and buried it under a stack of old magazine issues on her desk. In the next cubicle, she heard Pedro snicker. “I thought you wanted to talk about your company.”
He leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “That looks like a Frederick K. I heard rumors he was launching a shoe line. Is this a prototype for the new season? Something he plans to unveil at Fashion Week?”
Suspicion arced inside her, then she realized the designer’s trademark signature was clearly visible in the photo Pedro had used, one he’d probably grabbed off the server from the art department’s test shoot last week. Someone like Caleb, who made his living in this industry, would recognize the logo right away, and would want information about the competition. “Maybe.”
“Did you lose it?”
His stare seemed to cut right through her. But she refused to be daunted by him. Or by the condemnation in his tone. “What do you care?”
“Oh, I don’t.” A smile curved across his face. “Though you might, if you want to find that shoe.”
The suspicion that had risen in her earlier burst into full-bore distrust. For the first time, she realized he was wearing a navy-blue pin-striped suit. Just like the man she’d seen stop on the sidewalk this morning. Had he been that man? Had he found and taken the stiletto?
What were the chances? And surely, he would have told her right away, wouldn’t he? Then again, given their history, the chances were slim he’d tell her anything. There were a lot of navy-blue-suit-wearing men out there.
But not very many interested in a Frederick K stiletto.
“What do you mean, if I want to find that shoe?” she asked.
He danced his fingers on the arm of his chair, that damnable grin lighting up his features. It was the kind of smile that said I know something you don’t. “I might know where it is.”
Relief exploded inside her, quickly chased by the sobering reality that this was Caleb Lewis she was talking to. The man hated her guts. His vague comments about the shoe’s whereabouts could all be a trick. A way to get back at her for all those columns. “You have to return the shoe. It’s private property.”
That smile flitted across his face again, too fast to read its meaning. The tempting aroma of chocolate wafted up from the basket to greet Sarah, as if saying, trust him. He’s okay. He came with chocolate.
“Is there a reward involved?” Caleb asked.
“Mr. Lewis, if you have that shoe—”
“Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t. Either way, I’m not admitting anything, because Lord knows you’re very good at declaring me guilty before you’ve looked at all the facts.” He draped an arm over the back of the chair, as easy with being there as if he were in his own office. “Why don’t you meet me over at my office at say, two o’clock, and we can discuss an … arrangement of sorts.”
One more smile—the same smile that had undoubtedly charmed half the female population of New York City—and then he left. Leaving Sarah in a position she hadn’t been in before with Caleb Lewis.
Out of control.
Caleb should have been glad that of all people, the reporter who had been his nemesis had been the one to lose the Frederick K. He could call it karmic payback for writing all those stories about his personal life.
Sarah Griffin had created an image of him—one nearly everyone believed—as a womanizing, shallow man. One more concerned about the blonde on his arm than the bottom line.
She didn’t know the truth—no one did—about why he filled his nights with the mindless world of nightclubs. Why he chose to forget his mistakes by spinning through relationships like an errant top.
When he’d walked into the magazine’s offices earlier today, he’d had no intention of talking to any of the reporters who worked for the tabloid side of the magazine. Especially not Sarah Griffin. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her—he barely knew her—or find her attractive—because she was beautiful, quite so—it was more that he wanted to avoid the person who had painted him with a one-dimensional brush.
He had seen Sarah Griffin dozens of times, in the background of the clubs he frequented, the restaurants where he dined. She avoided the spotlight that shone on him, never taking off the reporter hat to have a drink or take a spin on the dance floor. That didn’t stop him from noticing the quiet, observant woman in his periphery. Her wide green eyes took in everything he did and said, then her poisoned pen pasted all that information on the next issue’s pages. He often wondered how she was judging him—though all he had to do was open the latest issue to find out.
If it were any other day—and any other circumstances—he would have been intrigued by a woman like Sarah. Her slender frame held the kind of curves that said she enjoyed food and didn’t spend her days subsisting on diet soda and cigarettes. Her brown hair hung in a long, sleek curtain down her back, with a couple of loose tendrils curling around the edges of the bronze-rimmed frames of her glasses. She had an understated beauty about her,
