Ellen Hartman - Out of Bounds

It was mostly the truth.

Her cell was in her bag. If only it would ring with a call from her mom to tell her the wire was going through.

“I read your website last night,” she blurted out. “I really admire the work you’re doing. Kirkland is lucky you guys are coming here.”

Wes raised his eyebrows and smiled, and she was surprised to find herself smiling back at him. She’d never actually experienced an infectious smile before.

“The foundation is all my brother. This is my first day on the job and all I’ve done so far is sign a hat.”

She was definitely going to have to watch out for this guy. Good-looking, charming and sure to file a police report if he found out what her mom had been up to with her checkbook in the back room of Wonders.

Time for phase two of her bluff.

She’d considered trying to skate along for the next few days without giving him any information, but then she’d decided a better plan would be to give him too much of the wrong sort. If she had any luck, he would be so overwhelmed by the thorough records her mom had kept that he wouldn’t care that she was a few days late with the check.

“My mom did make you a list of donors and all the amounts. Everything is categorized and you can see where and how they donated.” She handed Wes a one-inch binder stacked with printed pages. “She asked me to deliver this.”

“Thanks.” He opened the binder and flipped the pages, then glanced behind him at the one chair. “I’m not set up for meetings yet.” He ducked behind his desk and grabbed a basketball out of the bag on the floor. “There are tables outside near the court. How would you feel about moving this conversation outside?”

She would feel a heck of a lot better if they ended the conversation, instead.

“I’m not sure what we’d have to meet about, Wes.”

“We’re meeting about the foundation.” He tapped the binder. “All the money these people donated. I thought I’d get to thank your mom, but since she’s not here, looks like you’re on the hook.”

Wes dribbled the ball once, the long muscles in his arms flexing as he caught the ball again with unconscious skill. The smack of the ball on the tile floor echoed in the empty office. “You ready?”

She closed her mouth. Bluff. Hard. She had a job to do here and it had nothing to do with Wes’s many physical charms.

CHAPTER FIVE

“P EOPLE ARE AMAZING,” Wes said. “Look how many are for less than twenty bucks.” They’d spread Posy’s binder out on a picnic table under a tree that was covered in pink blossoms. The petals kept drifting down onto the paper. He brushed his hand across the page, knocking another blossom to the ground.

“It’s been a remarkable experience for my mom.” Her voice had lost the no-nonsense tone. There was something going on with Posy, he thought.

She’d had one foot out the door since they stepped into his office, but Wes wasn’t about to let her off that easy. For one thing, he didn’t think she was telling him everything she knew. Posy was all business when they were going over the details, but he’d seen a quick flash or two of uncertainty, mostly when he’d said anything touching on the subject of her mom.

She closed the binder and slid it across the table closer to him.

“What about the other blogger?” he asked, refusing to take her big hint that their meeting was over. “Chloe, right?”

“Chloe Chastain.”

“She and your mom are an unbeatable team. Do you know her?”

“We grew up together.”

“So Kirkland is the ultimate hometown—everybody helps everybody else.”

“I left a long time ago,” Posy said. “But don’t believe everything you hear.”

He’d assumed she lived in town. Why was she here, otherwise? “You don’t live in Kirkland?”

“Rochester. I’m a quality control inspector for the Hotel Marie chain.”

“Quality control? Now I’m imaging you checking in with a fake name and making all kinds of crazy requests to see if the staff is up to snuff.”

“We call them personas, not ‘fake names.’ And my requests are always reasonable.”

“Extra towels, not chocolate fountains?”

Had Wes ever ordered a chocolate fountain? Maybe with one of those beautiful women she’d seen in the pictures last night. She stared at a pink petal on the table next to her pinky.

“Look, Wes,” Posy said as she stood, “I’m staying at my mom’s house so I can watch her dog. I’m in charge of her store, and I really should at least check my work email while I’m here. You’ve got all the data and as soon as my mom gets back, she’s dropping off a check. That’s about all I can tell you.”

She was brushing him off. Definitely something strange going on. Wes went into foster care when he was two and came out when he was eight. In those six years, he’d been bounced from five separate placements. He didn’t remember the details about many of them, but he’d learned to tell when someone was lying to him.

“I’m just going to say this and you can say what you know and we can move on, okay?”

She flinched. Not much, but he saw it.

“The situation seems off to me. Not just to me, frankly. Chloe Chastain had some questions for my brother. Your mom is sitting on a lot of money she raised in our name,” he said. “Our reputation is on the line and we’re still negotiating here in Kirkland.”

“I’m not surprised you have questions, but my mom will deliver your money. I promise.”

She didn’t flinch that time. She met his eyes, and he couldn’t make himself call her a liar. He didn’t want her to be a liar.

“Well, I’m looking forward to meeting her,” he said. “My brother put his heart and soul into the Fallon Foundation, and this new project in Kirkland means everything to him. Neither of us could believe that your mom, a stranger, would go out of her way to do this kind of fundraising. He’s floored and so am I. People like her don’t get enough credit.”

* * *

P OSY DIDN’ T WANT HIM to say nice things about her mom. She didn’t want him to say nice things about anything. She wanted to not like him and for him to work for some horrible corporation. Not a foundation that did good for the community. She didn’t want to respect him, because she had to keep lying to him.

She hated lying and the longer she talked to Wes, the more she hated herself. She shouldn’t have let herself get dragged into her mother’s mess. She knew better. This was the last time. It had to be.

“You play basketball?” he asked.

She waited for the obligatory comment about her height, but it didn’t come. He just waited for her to answer.

“I did.”

“High school? College?”

“Both.”

“I did, too,” he offered as he leaned down and grabbed the ball from the ground. “High school, college, then in Europe. But I got hit by a truck so I’m retired now.”

When he mentioned his accident, he touched a spot on his head behind his right ear. She noticed the scar there, a thin line of red flesh visible through the dark stubble.

“I read about the accident.” He looked up. “Google. I was trying to get ready for our meeting. I’m sorry.”

“A dog ran into the road,” he said.

“The articles didn’t mention that.”

He lifted one shoulder. “It was a little dog.”

Wes was getting more dangerous by the second. Pete hadn’t understood humor.

“So this job with the foundation, where does it take you after Kirkland?”

“It’s only a temporary gig. My brother asked me for help and I was at loose ends. It worked out.” He touched his scar.

Funny that they’d both been thrown into this through an obligation to family.

“Want to shoot around?” he asked.