gaze collided with his bare legs, then darted away. She lifted her chin. “I think we have more important things to worry about than your wardrobe.”
“You brought up the issue,” he replied easily, enjoying the way she emotionally scrunched herself up into a tight knot. He guessed there was a lot of inhibition trapped inside, just waiting to bust loose. Then again, she could be one of those eternally rigid fusspots.
She ignored the rebuke, her single-mindedness vaulting back to her initial purpose. “We need to go over what you’ve learned.” As she spoke, Laura trailed behind him through the apartment.
At the door of his bedroom, Mitch turned around, leaning one hip idly against the doorjamb. “It’s not that I mind sharing my shower, but I draw the line at discussing business at the same time.”
If possible, Laura flushed even darker.
Unable to resist needling her, Mitch let one hand drift toward his waistband. “I’ll leave the choice up to you.”
Laura whirled around and retreated into his living room.
Chuckling, Mitch padded into the bathroom and turned the shower on full blast. He suspected he would need the bracing wake-up to face the morning.
Ten minutes later he was sure of it. Strolling into his kitchen, he found that Laura had commandeered the space. Blissfully, he inhaled the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. He grabbed a mug and filled it to the brim. After sipping the strong brew, he tipped the mug toward her in a mock salute. “I’ll give you this—you know how to make a decent cup of coffee.”
But her eyes were doing some sort of strange dance that didn’t seem to have anything to do with the coffee. “Don’t you get completely dressed before noon?”
He glanced down at his jeans. “Didn’t know we were going formal today.”
She waved in the direction of his bare chest. “I don’t think anywhere we go today will be that informal.”
“We?” He lowered his mug. “Look, you hired me to do a job. I work solo.”
“But I can help you. There must be some grunt work I can do that will free you up for the more difficult things.”
“So, you’re going to be my gofer?” he questioned skeptically. She didn’t seem like the sort to take orders well.
Laura met his eyes evenly. “I would clean sewers bare-handed if it would help my son.”
Sobered by the reminder, Mitch lowered his mug. “Our methods may not be the same, but I know how serious the situation is. You don’t have to dog my steps to make sure the investigation’s being conducted the right way.”
“That’s not the point.”
He guessed it was, but let the comment pass.
“I can’t just stand by doing nothing.” Laura paced toward the window, yet she didn’t seem to notice anything beyond the shuttered panes of glass.
Mitch studied the fierce determination in the set of her shoulders, the earnestness in her eyes. And sighed in defeat. “If I let you help—”
“You’ll—”
“I said if, Miss Kelly. And let’s get one thing straight. I’m in charge of the investigation. I won’t put up with you second-guessing my methods.”
“What do we do first?” she asked, choosing to ignore his warning.
“First, we put on my shirt.” His gaze took another unhurried appraisal, enjoying the sudden jumpiness in her eyes. “Or do you want to be in charge of that?”
Instead of answering him, she turned her back and made a production out of clattering the mugs in the sink and yanking at the faucet, purposely adding the roar of the water to the manufactured noise.
“Oh, and, Laura—”
“Yes?”
“Next time you show up before breakfast and drag me out of bed—you’d better mean it.”
LAURA FELT MORE in control with the width of a sturdy oak library table between them. And it didn’t hurt that Mitch had donned a shirt. Papers and books surrounded them, but he didn’t seem to mind the clutter. He had selected the library for the morning’s work since it contained microfilm records he needed to probe.
“What is that you’re doing?” she asked, impatient to cut to the chase, to find the key they needed to unlock her past.
“Finishing your personal profile,” he replied. “We did the preliminaries before talking to your aunt. Now we need to dig deeper.”
She frowned. “Why?”
The librarian strolled by, hushing them, her wrinkled face looking like that of a pug dog’s—set in permanent lines of disapproval.
Laura lowered her voice. “So?”
“Right now, we have an equation of the unknown, and the only known factor in the formula is you. I have to learn everything about you, Laura. From top—” he paused as his eyes drifted over her slowly “—to bottom.”
Despite the fear gnawing at her, Laura felt an unexpected warmth curling in her belly. Resolutely, she straightened up in the rigid, narrow-backed chair. “And we had to come to the library to do this?”
“I need to dig through their old records. Of course, we could have stayed at my apartment to complete your profile.”
“No, the library’s good.” She tried to hide her discomfort. “I’ve told you I’ll do whatever it takes to help Alex.”
He had a way of blinking, a slow easy motion that seemed to mock and tantalize at the same time. “Then let’s start where we left off.”
And they did, including her memories of junior and senior high school. Patiently Laura recounted her past, balking only when they got to the choice of her senior prom escort.
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Why do you want to know that?”
His answering smile was a lazy curl of his lips that seemed to reflect deep amusement. “Wondering if you hung out with the jocks, the geeks or the brains.”
“What possible relevance can that have to finding my birth mother?”
Again the librarian hushed them.
Mitch’s voice was low, but it reached her easily. “I didn’t say it was relevant. I just wondered.”
Exasperated, she was prepared to let him have it, albeit in a quiet tone.
But he was smiling fully. “That’s better. You were looking entirely too serious.”
“This is serious.”
“Right. You won’t be much help, though, if you burn out.”
Realizing
