“I know,” she says, sloping down her shoulders and melting onto the floor as if she were a puddle of water. “I just want you to know that this is not why we just did what we did. I really wanted to be with you.”

“I wanted to be with you, too,” I say, stepping into one of my shoes and tying the shoe laces.

“I just had to tell you about the fact that I have to write the story. If I don't, then I'm going to lose my job.”

“What happens if you were to tell them what really happened in the first story?” I challenge her.

Her eyes get big and she stares at me.

It looks like she's about to cry. I feel bad for her.

I don't want to make this threat. Under normal circumstances, I never would, but the situation is anything but normal.

She has put me into real danger with what she’s done. The only problem is that she has no idea.

She buries her head in her hands and when she finally looks up her eyes look moist.

I can't help but feel bad. I want to tell her all of the reasons why and I want her to understand.

I'm afraid. We don’t know each other that well and she has already betrayed my trust. She's a journalist. The truth would be a story that would make her career.

No, I have to keep this to myself. When I look at her big wide eyes and the sorrowful expression on her face, it pulls on my heartstrings.

It's more than that. I want the chance to get to know her better. Something tells me that there's a lot more to her than I can see on the surface and I'm eager to find out.

“Okay,” I say slowly, still ruminating about exactly what I want to put forth. “What if I were to make the same proposal to you that I did earlier?”

“What are you talking about?” she asks, rising slowly to her feet.

“Come to the desert with me for a week. You can work there. I will work there. We can get to know each other better and in exchange you can write a story about me.”

She crosses her arms and raises one eyebrow higher than the other while tilting her head.

“You don't have to do anything you don't want to. I just have this need to get to know you more and I need to go home. I have a deadline that I have to meet.”

“You want me to spend a week with you at your house?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say quietly. “I don't want to offend you with this offer. There's nothing nefarious about this arrangement. I just need to be home so that I can work and if you're going to write a story about me, then I want it to be as accurate as possible.”

“You promise that you won't tell my boss that you didn’t go on the record with the first story?” she asks.

I nod.

Emma takes a moment. She bites her lower lip. She tosses her hair from side to side and then twirls one strand around her index finger.

I wait while she thinks about it.

I have no idea what her answer will be.

She turns around and says, “Okay, let's do this.”

There's a big smile across her face and I can't help but smile back.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Let's just see if you're sure about it.”

15

Emma

Liam takes off an hour or so later. I promise to come over later tonight. I want to take my own car, but I also want to run this past Corrin.

I know that she wants the story, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get a whole week off.

“Hey, sorry to call you at home,” I say nervously into the phone.

“No problem,” she mumbles.

“I have something going with the D. B. Carter story. I talked to him again and he agreed to a follow-up.”

“He did?!”

“Yes, but he wants me to come out to the desert and stay with him. He wants this to be sort of a day in the life of or rather a week in the life of.”

“Really?” she asks.

I bite my lower lip. I don't know how else to explain it.

“Something going on between you two?” Corrin asks.

A moment later, before I can answer, my phone rings and when I look at the screen, I see that I have a FaceTime call coming in.

“Shit,” I mutter to myself and then plaster a smile on my face as I click the Accept button.

“You don't have to do anything you don't want to do,” she says with the tone of a concerned friend.

She's wearing a large floppy hat and sitting in front of a pool with big Jackie Kennedy Onassis sunglasses.

“No, nothing is going on. I guess we just developed a rapport. He went to school with Alex many years ago and I guess he trusts me as a journalist.”

“Okay,” she says, her face barely moving and therefore impossible to read. “I do want you to consider why he's being so open with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Coast Magazine isn't exactly a hard-hitting investigative magazine. We aren't really known for that. Until…” Her voice drops off.

I furrow my brow and wait for her to explain.

“Okay,” she says, taking off her sunglasses and letting me see her eyes with their perfectly winged eyeliner and expertly applied lashes. “If this goes well, then maybe we can talk about some other stories with a similar slant.”

“There are other reclusive authors out there?” I joke.

“No, not on authors,” she says, “but unusual disappearances. People going missing. That sort of thing.”

“Crime stories?” I ask.

“I think that it might be a good angle for bringing in new readers. I don't want to make Coast entirely focused on true crime, but one big feature in each issue might go far in helping us expand our readership.”

“Yeah, that sounds good,” I say, nodding.

Actually, I'm really interested in this idea. I like working on more serious investigative stories.

Of course, I don't say any of this out loud. It's not that all interior design stories are fluff, it just so happens that the ones that I have been assigned tend to be a little bit on the lighter side.

“As far as the story is concerned, I want you to find out who Matt Lipinski is. He's the one that pointed you to D. B. Carter and it makes me wonder what he has to gain from it. If there's nothing, then that's fine, but that could be an interesting angle on what happened.”

“Yeah, I was thinking of pursuing that as well,” I say.

“You got the PI's info? Feel free to contact him. He has been quite useful in my divorce and he knows how to do his job well.”

That is the first time that she has mentioned anything about her personal life to me.

“You used him in your divorce?” I ask.

“Yes,” Corrin says with a shrug. “Unlike you, I was not lucky enough to find out that my husband is a lying and cheating piece of shit until after we were married.”

“I'm really sorry about that,” I say quietly, staring straight into her eyes.

We share a moment.

She has always made me so uncomfortable in her presence that I pushed her away and tried to write her off.

Now I realize that we have actually had a lot more in common than I ever knew.

“I just want to say that I'm sorry about what happened between you and Alex, but I'm also glad that the truth came out before you invested anymore time into that relationship. You deserve to be with someone who loves you unconditionally and who treats you as such. We all do.”