Secrets that Simmer (3 page)

“This night isn’t about me. It’s about you, man of the hour,” Maggie said. She expertly followed him as he led her around the dance floor. If he wasn’t so discombobulated about the fact that his wolf believed that this was their mate, he would have been able to simply enjoy the dancing. It had been a while since he had found a partner who was as practiced as she clearly was. Despite the tightness of the dress and the formfitting way that it hugged every curve of her body, she moved lightly on her feet. She felt practically weightless in his arms. It was a delightful feeling, and Tony was eager to explore the rest of her.

He had to shake himself mentally. It was very possible that if he did not watch himself, he would come on far too strong. It had to do with the fact that once a shifter found their mate, their body released a boatload of pheromones and made them practically crazy. He hadn’t been far from the truth when he thought earlier that when people found their mates, they lost their minds. He had testified to that fact on many occasions.

He told himself that he needed to hold it together. This was about her, despite the fact that she kept trying to tell him it was about him.

“Well, I am flattered that you appear to be so interested in me. But really, there’s nothing to tell and nothing to know that hasn’t already been reported in every media outlet across the world,” Tony said. He wasn’t saying it to brag in any way. It was simply the truth. He had lived his entire life in the spotlight, and so there really was little that wasn’t available for public consumption.

“Maybe That was why I still find you fascinating,” Maggie said. “You say all the same stuff in every interview, after all. You know, the fact that your father is a well-known politician, and your mother was a housewife who dedicated herself to his career. That you have two younger brothers. That you went to prep school and met the two men who are now your business partners. As if that wasn’t enough, you went out and became a world-renowned expert on shifter behavioral psychology. A field that didn’t exist until you created it,” Maggie said. Her face grew animated as she said this.

The way that she enunciated every word and spoke each one of them so carefully and articulately almost made him feel like she had practiced the speech. He recognized the care that she gave each word because he did the same thing when he knew he was going to talk in front of a crowd. That was when it hit him.

Tony stopped in the middle of his step. He had placed her now. “Maggie. Maggie O’Hara.” The pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place. He
had
seen Maggie before. In fact, the last time he saw her, he had been in a courtroom, and she had been cross-examining him. She had been a real bitch from what he remembered.

His arms fell away from her as she took a slow step backward. But she didn’t move away from him after being recognized. “I guess I should also be flattered that you had not completely forgotten me. Our last interaction was…tense.”

Tony was starting to process some other bits of information now. Things that he remembered his assistant telling him over the last several days. “You have been making quite a nuisance of yourself pestering my assistant.”

“It has proved to be extremely difficult to get your attention, Mr. Atwood,” Maggie said.

He grabbed her by the elbow and moved her off the dance floor before they made a spectacle. She shook her elbow out of his hand as soon as they were clear of the other couples. He tried to walk away from her, but she followed after stalking him. He needed a minute to think. The idea that Maggie O’Hara of all people was his mate was preposterous.

“I’ve been trying to get somebody from your office on the phone to schedule a meeting with you for the last four days. I need to talk to you.”

“I have no idea what I would need to discuss with the assistant DA,” Tony said. He wanted to leave, but he couldn’t go quite yet. His name was due to be called at any moment as soon as the music stopped, so he could make his speech. Maggie had to have known that. But the other reason was, despite the fact that she was following him now, was that he wanted her to follow him. Part of him was thinking he could lead her right to a secluded area and find out if her skin was as soft as it looked.

Tony wanted to hit himself over the head. This physical distraction being thrown up by his wolf thinking that this was his mate was going to make this entire exchange all the more difficult.

“Perhaps you can tell me what you want to talk about, and I can see where I can fit you in. Quite honestly, Ms. O’Hara, my schedule is booked out for the next six months at least.”

“Even to have a conversation regarding the events of October 23, 1999?”

It was as if the entire room around him disappeared. He knew that the color drained from his face, and he struggled to keep his composure. Slowly, he turned and studied her, trying to read what she wanted from him in her eyes. “What the fuck do you know about that?”

As if by some ironic twist of fate, that was when the music stopped, and he heard his name being called. It was time for his speech.

“Don’t you dare leave,” he growled at her. Then Tony took a deep, calming breath and stalked back toward the front of the room.

As Maggie watched Tony approach the front of the room, a shiver ran down her spine. Tony’s look when she mentioned the date on the mysterious police report was a look of pure astonishment mixed with rage. His cool, bored facade had completely disappeared for a flicker of an instant before he regained his composure. This was exactly part of the reason she wanted to talk to him. Everything that she saw in the media painted Tony as a confident, affable, charismatic kind of guy. There was nothing that indicated he had anything inside of him to be rattled or aggressive.

She was certain that she had just seen a side of Tony that he did not let anyone else see. There was something there, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She had been more than a little distracted.

What had thrown her off her game a bit was the sheer masculinity of the man. Up close, he had been even more intense than when he had been on the witness stand. She felt drawn to him in a way that she couldn’t even explain. When he had held her in his arms, she wanted to lean into him and ask him to never let her go. Those kinds of fanciful thoughts weren’t things that were part of Maggie’s DNA. She didn’t fall to pieces around any man.

Maggie was logical. She was also incredibly analytical. She understood the laws of physical attraction and clearly, Tony Atwood had somehow gotten under her skin. Of course, it would be the guy with potentially murderous intentions that would do so. It seemed that in her case as if fate was coming around with a particularly karmic kind of payback.

She was annoyed by his demand that she stay put. There was part of her that was tempted to leave and let him track her down. After all, she had been stalking him for the last four days. The bastard hadn’t even had the decency to return her phone calls. That was what told her that Tony Atwood and probably the rest of the Urban Dwellers considered themselves a bit above the letter of the law. Most other people, when told the assistant DA was trying to reach them, would make the time pretty quickly. The fact that Tony said it would be six months before he could possibly work her into his schedule was infuriating.

Perhaps that was why she had lobbed the verbal bomb across the way at him the way she had. She hadn’t leveraged her usual level of finesse. She had practiced the entire speech multiple times in front of the mirror. In fact, it had taken away from some of the prep time for her case, but luckily it hadn’t impacted the outcome in the end. She had won it neatly and then asked for a couple of days of time off. She had spent that time digging into everything that she could find about October 23, 1999 and what might have been happening at St. Ignacious prep school.

The interesting thing was October 23, 1999 was a historic day for the country overall. It was the day that shifters had been recognized by the U.S. government as equals with the same rights and benefits as humans. Shifters were given equal rights across the board, and it was said that discrimination against them would be punishable by law. It had been a day of celebration for many. By her calculations, Tony would have been eighteen-years-old on October 23, 1999. He and his friends hadn’t yet graduated from St. Ignacious. It would have been the late fall of their senior year.

Anybody who was anybody knew that October 23rd was the shifter equivalent of Independence Day. It was an informal holiday, but required some celebration every year nonetheless. But when she had said that date to Tony, the reaction that she had gotten wasn’t of jubilation or anything that generic. It was as if he knew exactly what she was talking about, and he was not happy that she was bringing it up.

She watched as he climbed up on the stage. People around her were clapping at his introduction, and she did the same. She had to keep up appearances after all. She had seen several women glaring at her out of the corner of her eye while she and Tony were on the dance floor. When she had approached him, she had already been watching him for the better part of an hour.

She had watched as more than one woman had gone up to him to engage him in conversation. In each instance, after a few moments of what appeared to be idle chitchat, the woman left looking slightly crestfallen. It seemed rather obvious that on that particular evening Tony wanted to be alone. Despite that, he moved from group to group throughout the time that she watched him. He swooped into a group to say a couple words and then he would move on. Then he would be approached by another woman, chat her up, and then send her on her way. He would join another group for a few minutes, chat a little bit and then continue on. It was as if he was working the room in a very careful and methodical way to ensure he spoke to everyone.

She wondered if he was even conscious of his behavior. Tony had been playing in political circles at these kind of events for the better part of his life. He was far more expert in those kinds of things than she was. She had found a quiet corner and sat alone with a glass of whiskey. No one had approached her at all. She felt it was important that she took his measure without him knowing before she approached him. She figured it was always a good idea to try to get a sense of your opponent before you engaged them in gameplay.

It was an interesting thing that that was how she viewed the entire situation now. She was involved in a game; she could feel it. The problem was that she didn’t know the rules. Maggie was a competitive sort. That was the reason she kept a running tally on a chalkboard in her office of each of her wins. She was on a six case winning streak. It gave her a sense of pride and motivation, even though the person that she was really just competing with was herself. This kind of thing, though, was even more intriguing. She was used to the negotiation and the back and forth kind of gameplay that was required when working a case. But, in this instance, the case hadn’t been assigned to her in the traditional way, and the defendant didn’t even know he was on trial.

That was another issue that she was grappling with. Maggie knew that she probably should have taken the mysterious case file to Jack and asked him what to do about it. Especially since it fingered one of the most powerful men in the city. That would have been the smart move. But Maggie felt she had been chosen for a reason. She kept coming back to that. She didn’t know who sent her the report, or how she could find out who that person was. The creepy part was she knew that she was probably being as carefully observed as she was observing Tony.

When she made the decision to approach Tony directly, she leveraged her extensive network. While she didn’t have a social life, she had built up many relationships through the years with different contacts all over Copper City, because she never knew when she might need a favor.

Combing through her Rolodex, she found that she had a contact in Eric Carmichael’s company. She was able to get the name and number of Tony’s assistant. That was when the game of endless phone calls and voicemails with no response began.

She had put in a few phone calls to some of her other contacts and had the geolocation feature tracked on Tony’s phone. She knew it was illegal, but when she couldn’t get anyone to speak to her, she felt like it was necessary to take some rather drastic steps. That was how she had uncovered the fact that he was going to be at the benefit gala event that evening.

Quickly, she formulated a plan. She had gone out and spent a small fortune on the dress she was wearing that she planned to return tomorrow. There was no way she could afford anything like that on an assistant DA’s salary. She had also carefully planned out her strategy for ambushing him. She was rather pleased with herself. So far, she felt she had done a bang up job.

As Tony took the podium, she watched him as he smiled easily at the crowd and then began to speak. His voice had a comfortable cadence that made him easy to listen to and was familiar to her from her stalking of him on social media. The funny thing was that she could tell that he was off his game. Perhaps it was because she had immersed herself in YouTube videos of his press interviews and had hunted pictures of him across the Internet. She felt as if she knew Tony Atwood pretty well at that point. At least, the part that was Tony’s public persona. The man at the podium now was very close to that man. But as his eyes lasered in on her, and she felt a flush of warmth run through her body, she knew that it wasn’t. She had struck a nerve. She felt a momentary flair of triumph.

There was something to the information in the report. There was something about that case that had to do with Tony.

She knew that now that she had confirmed that truth in her mind, it would be wise to retreat and take the report to her boss. Especially now that she had gone ahead and stuck her hand inside the hornets’ nest. Not only had she stuck her hand inside, she had basically knocked it around and kicked it across the room. She would be responsible for cleaning up the mess that resulted. She had a feeling that if Tony decided to go over her head and go to Jack, there was a good chance that she would get fired. She wasn’t keen on the idea of being fired, so she hoped that the report gave her leverage and a negotiation point.

She had already decided that she wasn’t going to let Tony intimidate her, not at all. She was the one holding the cards, even though she didn’t know quite what the cards were or what they meant. She wasn’t even quite sure what card game they were playing at, but there was one thing that was for certain. She was in the game, and if she was in the game, she was in the game to win it.

Maggie stood up just a little bit straighter, and it wasn’t just to pop her chest a little bit further in his direction, she told herself. She might not be terribly experienced in the way of men, but she had known that Tony was attracted to her too. That was going to make the whole thing a lot more interesting. She had many questions for him, and it was time that he stopped ignoring her. She wasn’t quite sure she got his attention the way that she wanted, especially now that he was continuing to stare at her in a way that was making her feel wholly unsettled. She caught the glances of several other women around her who had noticed as well. She shifted from side to side and then decided to get a drink.

Even as she walked to the bar, she could feel his eyes on the back of her neck. He was definitely staring at her. Since the bar was empty because everybody was paying attention to Tony’s speech, she got another a glass of whiskey fairly quickly. She turned back around and leaned back against the bar to watch him. She carefully ensured that her face looked like one of complete boredom. She could see that he tensed slightly at her expression. This was also interesting. She would have never thought that little Maggie O’Hara from the wrong side of the tracks would have any kind of ability to impact or shake a man like Tony Atwood.

Even though she pretended to be bored, Maggie couldn’t help but actually listen to his speech, and it was exactly what she expected. While he went on and on about being flattered and honored to be there, and the fact that the Urban Dwellers had a responsibility to Copper City in order to keep and maintain the peace for everyone both humans and shifters alike, she felt herself slowly being drawn into his speech. He was an energizing and engaging speaker. Of course, that came from years of practice both in front of audiences and on the witness stand. That was slightly grating. Maggie wasn’t comfortable talking in front of groups, even though she had chosen a profession that required her to argue in front of them all the time.

The few times that she had been required to be on TV, where impromptu comments were required, had been some of the most uncomfortable of her entire life. After the debacle of an interview the week before, Jack had decided that Maggie should keep to the sidelines for the time being. She wasn’t that upset about it.

“And so in closing, I want to again thank the members of the Kolbon Society for their generous support and contribution to the new wing of the Urban Dwellers Medical Research Facility.”

For a crowd of people in tuxedos and ball gowns, they went wild. Maggie did the obligatory golf clap as well. Then she stood there and waited. As she anticipated, she didn’t have to wait for long.

“So my speech was boring for you?”

“You hear one speech, you hear them all,” Maggie said. She looked off to the side and shifted again. She was having the time of her life appearing to be bored out of her gourd. She could tell it was driving Tony crazy, and there was a part of her that wanted him to be unsettled. If she could make sure that he wouldn’t escape behind his perfectly crafted professional veneer, there was a much better chance that she was going to get to the truth.

The fact of the matter was if she sniffed out that there was any hint that Tony had something to do with what happened that night at the quarry, she was going to go after him. That was what was truly scary about all of it. That was also the reason she knew that she should have gone to Jack instead of taking on Tony alone. It was a classic case of a rookie arrogance. You gathered evidence, and then you filed your complaint with the court. You didn’t go off on your own acting like some kind of legal vigilante.

But because it had to do with one of the Urban Dwellers, Maggie had wanted to make sure. She couldn’t just come out and accuse him of any wrongdoing. There was a reason it was a cold case. It seemed as if the redacted parts of the report indicated that there were holes in the story. She knew the before and the after. What she didn’t know was the things in between. And it was things in between that would determine if she had a case that needed to be reopened or not.

“I think you and I need to go somewhere more private to chat,” Tony finally said.