Page 54 of Forged in Peril

Finally, after several more minutes trying to read the dense legalese, her computer pinged with the welcome distraction of a new email.

It was Grace, asking if she was ready for a lunch break. Apparently, there was a new place a few doors over that she wanted to try before she headed off for her trip to Montana.

Bristol sat back in her seat, playing with a strand of her hair as she considered it.

Cameron had told her to stay at the office, but despite the attack the night before, she wasn’t feeling super worried about taking a five minute walk during lunch hour in the middle of downtown San Antonio.

The other incidents had always happened when she was vulnerable. Whoever this predator was, he was clearly a coward, and she was confident that he wouldn’t pick today to radically change his risk-averse approach to terrorizing her.

She felt her jaw going tight. She didn’t have to answer to Cameron Forge, or to anybody else. She was an adult, and she could make her own decisions.

She clicked the ‘reply’ button and let her fingers fly over the keys, telling Grace to meet her near the back entrance in ten minutes.

She gathered up most of the papers covering her desk as quickly as she could and piled them in the top drawer of her filing cabinet, which she always kept empty and ready for use.

Jaclyn insisted that open files be locked away whenever she left the legal department for anything longer than a bathroom break, and though she found the policy a little paranoid, it was hardly the most ridiculous request she’d heard from a lawyer.

She located the key to the cabinet and clipped it to her lanyard so she could take it with her–another security requirement–and rooted through a few of the lingering stapled papers that were spilling over onto her computer keyboard.

One of the documents caught her eye, and she drew it closer, trying to think why she had noticed it at all. A bright red logo was printed at the top of the first page, nothing more than a stylized version of the company name, Grapas.

For some reason, it looked familiar, though she had no idea where she might have seen it before.

She stood there for a moment, leaning against her desk, and skimmed the document. It was just a few pages long, and it seemed to be nothing more than some sort of office supply delivery contract between this Grapas entity and FBS, followed by several old inventory and order sheets.

She wondered why Jaclyn had it instead of Grace, but it hardly mattered.

There was nothing suspicious about it, save perhaps Ben’s joke order for ‘one office manager who actually knows what a blotter is’ scribbled in pen at the bottom of the last page.

Shaking her head, she stuck it on top of the pile of files, locked the door, and headed downstairs.

CAMERON

“Thank you,” Cameron said, accepting a second cup of coffee.

“Let me know if you need anything,” the immaculately groomed receptionist said, smiling with all of her perfect white teeth.

He forced himself to smile back, not wanting to vent his annoyance to an innocent underling, and sat back in his chair as the woman clacked across the marble toward her desk on several-inch-high heels.

He had been waiting for more than half an hour already, and as delicious as the coffee and croissants on offer were, he hadn’t come to Dorling & Porter in search of breakfast.

He sipped at the steaming, dark liquid, images of Bristol filling his head every second that he tried to relax.

He could imagine the expression on her face after this morning’s meeting, and the guarded look that her pretty green eyes had once again begun to hold.

She said she trusted him, but he could tell that part of her was still holding back, and it was frustrating.

He knew what he was doing, and so did the rest of FBS, but that, it seemed, was not enough in her eyes.

Neither were the gentle touches of their fingertips the night before, their hands entwined in the dark as he kissed her forehead.

Those moments had been so perfect, so beautiful, like traveling back in time to another life that he thought he’d lost forever.

The possibility that he had messed everything up somehow was almost too much to bear.

And yet, he couldn’t shake the fear that that was exactly what had happened.

He could almost see the walls going up around her heart once again, and it required all of his self control to sit here and wait instead of running back to FBS.

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