Page 91 of Under Pressure

He grinned up at her and then shooed her off. “No peeking at my cards.”

She lifted both her hands. “I would never!” She mouthed to Walt: fold.

“I fold.” Walt threw down his hand.

Don and Bluebell laughed as he scooped up chips. He’d had a high card of five. But neither of them would tell Walt that.

Blue found Sean chatting with Nancy in his office. Nancy sat at Sean’s desk looking over some paperwork, and Sean stood behind her as she pointed things out to him.

“How many of these hydraulic handheld saws do you have?” Nancy asked.

Sean rubbed the back of his head. “Three?” he said with a sheepish smile.

“And how about the Self-Priming Trash Pumps?”

“Probably two more than we need,” Sean said.

Nancy gave a firm nod. “That’s exactly my point. If you reduce spend on tools that you don’t need, you can increase spend on marketing. You have a lucrative business here; you could be bringing in much more than what you’re currently bringing in.”

“Can you see any other areas where we could reduce costs?” Sean asked.

Nancy leaned back in Sean’s chair and smiled up at him. “How much time do you have?”

Sean laughed out loud, a belly laugh that Blue hadn’t heard from him in years and that she’d desperately missed—it brought a smile to her face. “For you, Nancy, I’ve got all the time in the world.”

Blue leaned against the door frame, making it creak. Sean and Nancy glanced her way.

Blue made eye contact with Sean and could feel his gaze boring into her soul. He’d always had a way of doing that to her. Seeing more than she wanted him to.

Nancy cleared her throat and stood up. “We’ll have a look at your books another time,” she said. “I forgot I just need to . . . borrow . . . a book from Polly or something.” The woman was about as subtle as Don.

She hustled off.

Sean’s gaze drifted from the top of Blue’s head down to her feet and back again. She expected him to grin at just how huge the clothes were on her, but instead, he swallowed. Hard. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

Feeling self-conscious, she glanced down at the clothes, her bare toes poking out. “They’re a little big.”

Sean put his hand to his heart and let out a deep breath. “You’d look good in a wet towel.” Pink rushed to his cheeks, that even Blue could see in the dim light, and he fell into the chair Nancy had just vacated.

Blue came closer, glancing at his desk. In the middle of it was a little device with a wire on one end and what looked like a small bulb on the other. She pointed to it. “What’s that?”

Sean picked it up. “The tracking device Jonah put on my boat. The boys found it while we were bailing Gramps out of jail.”

Blue took it from his outstretched palm and rolled it over in her hand. “Doesn’t look like much.”

Sean shrugged. “It’s a low-end model, but that baby can still track up to one hundred miles. And it’s easy to set up.” He opened his phone, went to an app, and showed it to her. A green dot sat in the middle of the screen next to a longitude and latitude. “Probably cost them five bucks.”

“Is that it?” Blue asked.

He nodded.

“So much for personal security.” She handed it to him, but he shook his head.

“Keep it,” he said.

Maybe she would. Maybe she’d confront Jonah with it when he was arrested and hand it over to the cops. Maybe that’s what Sean wanted . . . or more likely, he wanted to give her the choice to throw it out or use it against the man she’d been about to marry. Part of her just wished he’d press charges, but he wouldn’t as long as Blue was in the middle of it all. And completely the opposite of Jonah who’d had Sean’s grandpa thrown in jail.

A heavy silence fell around them, so she filled it by walking over to the sofa and sitting down. A spring popped up into her behind, and she wiggled to try and find a more comfortable spot, clutching the device in her hand.

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