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fascination as a faint shade
of red crept up his neck. “That’s not true.”
    “Yes, it is. You always call me Elizabeth
unless you’re trying to charm me.” Or when you’re kissing
me. She decided to keep that thought to herself though.
    “I’m not trying to charm you,” he
muttered.
    Her eyebrows rose. “Then what would you call
it?”
    “I’m trying to make you use common
sense.”
    She snorted very loudly, earning a surprised
look from him, but she didn’t care. Pushing her chair back, she
stood. “I’m not staying here and there’s nothing you can say to
make me change my mind. I’ll go crazy so if you don’t mind, I’m
going to shower.” Lizzy started to leave, but he grasped her upper
arm.
    Not hard, but he exerted enough pressure that
she couldn’t move.
    She glared at him. “Let me go.”
    “You need to talk to Grant.”
    “I will, but it doesn’t have to be here. I
can meet him at the police station or he can come to my office or
wherever.”
    “You’ll be safer here,” he ground
out.
    She dug her heels in but didn’t say anything.
He could argue until he was blue in the face. It wasn’t as if he
could hold her hostage.
    At her lack of response, he practically
growled at her. “Why do you have to be so stubborn?”
    “Why do you always think you know what’s best
for me?” she shot back.
    “You’re the most frustrating woman I know.”
He let her arm drop and scrubbed a hand over his face. Without
another word he moved past her and disappeared from the
kitchen.
    She stared at his retreating figure and
frowned. Porter never let his guard down. Ever. But it
seemed he was just as off-kilter in her presence as she was in his.
The realization was strangely refreshing.
     
    * * * * *
     
    Lizzy glanced up as the handle to her office
door jiggled. Before the door opened, she tensed. Porter had been
so adamant that she not come into work this morning—an argument
he’d most definitely lost—but she wouldn’t put it past him to come
here and try to convince her again to go back to his place.
    The tension in Lizzy’s shoulders relaxed when
Carla Pickett, the receptionist for the eleventh floor, stepped
halfway inside. “Hey, Lizzy, Mara’s here. I figured it would be
okay if she came back, but I wasn’t sure if you were busy—”
    She smiled and pressed the power button on
her computer screen so it went dark. Her friend was a little early
for their weekly lunch date but Lizzy had been working on security
upgrades all morning and her brain was just about fried. “It’s
totally fine.”
    Mara was not only her boss’s soon-to-be wife,
she was Lizzy’s best friend. Before she’d rounded the desk, Mara
hurried into the room, an expression of pure panic on her face.
“Harrison told me what happened. Are you all right? And why didn’t
you call me?”
    Lizzy hadn’t called her friend because she
hadn’t wanted to worry Mara. Better to deflect with another
question. “Is Harrison with you?” His presence at the office had
been scarce over the past couple weeks. He was still coming in to
check up with the various teams of guys he oversaw, but he wasn’t
taking any direct security jobs due to his and Mara’s upcoming
wedding.
    “No, he’s working on… Don’t change the
subject. What’s going on? And why did I hear it secondhand?” Mara
shook her head as she pulled Lizzy into a tight hug.
    “I honestly don’t know what’s going on. I
think Benny might have gotten in a little over his head this time,”
she murmured as she stepped out of the embrace. That was an
understatement considering how much he owed Salas. One hundred
thousand dollars. If she knew how to get in contact with her
brother she would, but the cell phone he’d called her from last
time had already been disconnected. She needed to get to her
parent’s house to check out what he said he’d left for her in his
note. First she’d need to convince Porter to take her there.
    “A little? Porter told Harrison