Lila

Three weeks. Three weeks with barely a dozen words spoken between them in private.

​​

Dane was running from her. He had avoided her like she had a communicable disease. Ever since the night she'd shown up at his door, he'd arranged every meeting they would both attend to make sure it would include others, kept her on the phone when things had to be private—she was even pretty sure he'd pretended his cellphone was breaking up once when she'd tried to force him to talk because she was afraid it was the only opportunity she'd get.

Now it had been three whole weeks and she was getting frantic. They had staff meetings together, and she caught glimpses of him around the office, but he always had his door shut, and usually had others in there with him when he was around. And he'd taken to working outside the office a lot more.

He was still ignoring all calls from the press, and instructing staff to point them to Lila or Chris. Lila had been overrun with requests for quotes for stories, and information about the business. Chris reported that their client list was actually increasing, ever since Dane's heartfelt press conference. They were still fielding contacts from Becky's lawyers. But publicly things were settling. Dane had scored real points.

Meanwhile, they'd made a lot of progress on Becky's father's contacts, and even discovered a couple names they could confirm were in the room the night she and Chris met. The picture was slowly becoming clearer, though Lila still felt frustrated that they hadn't already cleared this up completely. There was a block—no matter who they approached. It was clear everyone was covering for someone. And Lila was determined to discover who it was.

But the media coverage of the story was waning. Without Dane's silence to fuel her credibility, Becky had been asked some very tough questions the last time she'd appeared on a morning show. She'd been oddly quiet since.

Lila had a tentative sense of hope that they might have successfully stifled that particular fire. Of course, they still needed to figure out who was directly behind it and what they really wanted. But she couldn't get past Dane's cool, professional wall to pick his brain. He was keeping his distance in very real ways, and it was slowing her down.

In fact the one and only time he'd dropped the act and she'd seen his normal self was when she thought they might be onto something.

*** Ten Days Earlier: ***

She'd caught him in the hall and forced him to stop by stepping in front of him so he couldn't keep walking without literally bowling her over. He'd frowned, but stopped.

"I think I found something!"

He'd frowned, but put his hands in his pockets. Looking around, as if he wanted to make sure there were other staff nearby, he said, "Okay, what is it?"

She looked around too, because there were other staff around, and he'd said not to discuss any of this with anyone else. "Do you want to come to my office? This needs discretion."

Dane blinked. "You're closer. Names?"

"Sort of," she hedged. She'd discovered an odd set of intelligence contacts in the database that were unnamed and didn't include certain details. It breached the security policies and she wondered if they might have been created by the person who was working within the company, against them.

"Well?" Dane pushed.

She pressed her lips thin. "I need to speak with you privately, Dane."

He looked over his shoulder, at the clock on the wall. "Not now. I have to get to a meeting across town. I'll call you on my way back and we can—"

"I really think you need to see this."

But he just flapped his hand and started to walk around her. "I'm sure you're doing great," he said quickly.

Lila let her hands drop in frustration. But he only got two steps away before he turned quickly, his eyes sharp. "Are you using the cars? And the delivery service?"

She had to take a second. She'd actually forgotten about his instruction to do that. She swallowed and hadn't even had a chance to answer before his face went tight.

"I can't stress this enough, Delilah. If you're digging into these areas you must be security conscious. People talk."

"I am security conscious. For goodness sake, I'm literally surrounded by security. And no one's talking about this. No one else found it. It was only me. That's the thing, Dane—"

"Found what?" Chris appeared at her shoulder, smiling and winking. He'd been a lot happier since the Becky story cooled off.

"Nothing," she and Dane said at the same time, then looked at each other.

Chris looked back and forth between them, then shook his head. "Okay, then. Clearly there's nothing going on here."

Dane scoffed. "She's being overdramatic," he muttered. "It's nothing."

Lila had felt it like a blow. She'd known it was nothing—a cover. He'd said it to keep his brother from questioning further. But his tone was so dismissive. As if she were a flighty teenager making waves for no reason.

Chris's eyes widened. "Oh, ho, big brother. Watch out. You'll bring the claws out."

"Ignore him," Lila said to Chris, with a glare at Dane. "He doesn't know what he's talking about."

Dane's brows pressed down, but he didn't say anything. Lila made a little small talk with Chris, then said goodbye to both of them. "If you could make sure and give me that time on the phone later, Dane, that would be great."

His arms were folded, emphasizing the breadth of his chest and she'd forced herself to turn to Chris who was still looking back and forth between them and looking like he was stifling a smile.

"Just as long as you're following policy," Dane snapped.

"I'll get right on that," she snapped back and stalked off to her office. But it wasn't anger that had her turning to lock the door behind her. It was embarrassment, because her throat was pinching.

She'd stood there, at the locked door, and leaned her head on it. There was no denying now that he was avoiding her. He hadn't wanted to speak to her now. Hadn't spoken to her for over a week! Then he criticized her to Chris?

Maybe it was better this way. Maybe she shouldn't fight him.

She swallowed back the ache in her throat and reminded herself that kind of emotional reaction was really stupid when you were dealing with erratic people like Dane Daniels.

So she'd gone about her day. Proven to herself that she knew what was needed, and even if Dane was going to be silly and distant, she could still get things done.

*****

That had been ten days ago. It was three weeks now, since they'd talked. And although he'd checked about the drivers again once or twice, it was always in front of others, and always in the context of their general security.

As much as they were moving ahead, she feared if they didn't reconnect soon they never would.

How had it come to this? And why couldn't she leave it alone? Why couldn't she just let him be her boss, and leave him to face his demons alone? Why did she always feel so tense when he wasn't around—and then a different kind of tense when he was?

She was passing the conference room and glanced in the window pane in the door to see if Tonya and Grant were alone. She stopped suddenly when she realized they weren't.

Dane stood at the front of the room, no jacket, his sleeves rolled up his forearms, and tie loose. He was looking over Grant's shoulder at something Grant was explaining on the computer. Tonya bustled around at the other side of the table.

She couldn't hear what they said, the rooms had been insulated to stop eavesdropping for security reasons. But whatever Grant raised, made Dane thoughtful.

Then Grant got up from his seat and walked out of sight, but Dane just stood there, staring out the window. The tendon on his neck, his jaw shadowed in the late afternoon light coming through the windows on the other side. Dane glanced at the computer again and ran a hand through his hair. Lila's heart flipped over.

Then, as if he'd felt her scrutiny, Dane's eyes flipped up from the computer screen to her and locked.

They stared at each other a moment. Every possible scenario running through Lila's head. But in the end it was her who broke the gaze and turned away, continuing down the hall to her office.

And it wasn't until she got there that she realized he hadn't run from her. He hadn't broken the gaze. He hadn't turned to one of the others, or pretended to get a phone call. All the things he'd been doing for the past three weeks whenever he saw her.

It was her who had run.