“Mr. Steele?”
I internally groaned as I heard Emma’s voice. I could feel Jacob’s grin on me as I raised my eyes to him. He was taunting me as he continued to eye the electrical crew, with their loud noises and their fucking drills and hammers and bullshit.
“Yes, Miss Emma?” I asked.
“I wasn’t aware a crew was coming in to do any work on your office,” she said.
“Because it was a last-minute call,” I said.
“Do you want me to stay and keep tabs on them?”
“Yeah. Do you want her to stay and keep an eye on things?”
I shot Jacob a look as Emma’s eyes darted between the two of us.
“Because I’m free if you need me,” Emma said.
“She’s free, Mr. Steele. Very, very free,” Jacob said.
“No, Miss Emma. No extra surveillance is necessary,” I said. “In fact, some more cameras are going to be installed. Some electrical wiring was faulty, but I figured if a crew was going to be coming in, then we could lock down our security a bit more.”
“That sounds like a very wise decision, Mr. Steele,” Emma said.
If Jacob’s grin grew any more, it was going to split his face in half.
“If you’ll excuse us, Miss Emma,” I said.
“Okay. I’ll be at my desk if you need me.”
“If you need her,” Jacob said with a smile.
Emma shut the door behind her, and I practically lunged at Jacob. He laughed at me, tossing his head back and filling the room with his voice. Jacob had a booming laugh that always seemed to relax me in my tenser moments, and I found myself chuckling along with him.
“You’re a dick,” I said.
“Fuck. She’s really got a hard-on for you,” he said. “But really, extra surveillance? Something going on?”
“That shit at the charity event spooked me a bit, and this level isn’t really fortified with anything. No cameras. No automatically locking doors.”
“We’ve got two personal security guards at the elevator and twenty-two floors between us and the bottom of this place,” he said.
“Just go with it, okay?” I asked. “If we had this surveillance beforehand, we would’ve caught that intern incident before shit escalated to where it did.”
“That is very true. So, this has nothing to do with the letters you’ve been getting.”
I tossed him a look as he drew in a deep breath.
“Shit,” he said.
“Yep.”
“Where was it this time?”
“My fucking bed.”
“Your what?” he asked.
“Yeah. My fucking bedroom, Jacob.”
“Okay. Yep. Cameras everywhere.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Now, onto the real question.”
“There’s a real question?” I asked.
“Does Emma know the truth about Sam?” he asked.
“I did maybe mention to her that Sam was my girlfriend, yes,” I said.
“And how did she take that?”
“Not well, but she accepted it eventually. She made some comments about Sam not being good enough for me, and I made sure to let her know it wasn’t her place to have that opinion.”
“Derek, I don’t know. You think she’s got some sort of play in all of this?” Jacob asked.
“If we’re being honest? I’ve got some people looking into that. She’s been fingered as a possible suspect, but I’m not going to mess with it until I’m one hundred and ten percent sure.”
“You know, if you weren’t so damn handsome, this wouldn’t be happening to you.”
“What?”
“Yeah! All the ugly CEOs of shit never have stuff like this happen to them. It’s because you’re too good-looking, my friend.”
“You're an idiot.”
“But think about it. This could be a pissed off old flame, or this could be Emma really being disgruntled over all that paperwork you guys signed a couple of years ago.”
“That was two years, Jacob.”
“And maybe it’s festered. Look, you don’t know. So, you have to come at this from every angle.”
“I’m not that much of a playboy,” I said.
“Doesn’t mean you don’t have ex-girlfriends whose hearts you didn’t break,” he said.