Free Molten Gold by Elizabeth Lapthorne

started to make them something light
to eat.
    “Ham and salad okay with you?” he asked.
    “Sounds delicious—I’m starving,” she replied.
    He caught her gaze and grinned, but decided not to say
anything and tease her further. Jared made them two sandwiches each and placed
them on plates. Handing Adelaide hers, he grabbed his food and glass and led
her through to the living room. They sat around the coffee table and ate in
silence.
    By the time Jared had polished off his food and drunk most
of his tea, Adelaide had finished one sandwich and was chewing a very slow bite
of her second. Jared took his plate to the sink and refilled their glasses.
When he sat, Adelaide had shifted into a more comfortable position on the couch
and looked ready to begin.
    He took a moment just to take her in. She seemed so
natural—so right—sitting there on his couch. Energy tingled along the edges of
his fingers and a warmth he hadn’t experienced much flushed his chest. Jared
knew he wanted to protect this woman, to keep her safe, but it ran deeper than
just that. He wanted to know what it was like to lie beside her in his bed at
night, to wake up next to her to start a fresh day with her in his arms. Jared
wondered what the morning sun would look like shining in that blonde hair of
hers, and whether it would change color in the moonlight.
    Most surprising of all, he wanted to dance with her wrapped
up in his embrace. Would she be saucy and naughty? Or would they just press against
each other and sway to the music? Jared had never been the romantic, daydreamer
type, but there was something about Adelaide that had him breaking all his own
rules.
    She looked perfect in his home and he knew he wanted her in
his life.
    “Thank you for helping to calm me down,” she said.
    Jared shrugged. “If there really is a leak somewhere in the
office, then I brought that to your door and I’m sorry. Helping you is the
least I can do, especially since it looks like we both want answers now.
Working together makes sense.”
    “Of course,” she said with a small smile.
    “Obviously I’m attracted to you,” he conceded. “But I’d have
helped you nevertheless. You need it. It’s not in my nature to turn my back on
someone.”
    “So how do I convince this stranger we know nothing about
that I don’t have the gold?”
    Jared tilted his head. He wasn’t surprised that Adelaide had
cut right to the point, but he didn’t have any answers yet.
    “We don’t know of a way to communicate with them yet,” he
agreed. “But maybe we can feed them information. We’re both assuming someone in
my office is passing along data. So we can try that path, but I’m not certain
it will work.”
    “Why not?” Adelaide said, confused. “That’s quite logical.
If you put it about your office that I know nothing, then surely that will
reach these people and they’ll leave me alone?”
    “Not necessarily. I sent an inter-office memo to my boss
yesterday,” Jared explained. “It was after our talk, a sort of summary before
my official report. I said that I didn’t believe you had any knowledge of the
gold.”
    “Then why didn’t these idiots pick up on it? Was it some
super-secret, hand-delivered, eyes-only memo?”
    “No,” Jared said, thinking hard. “Indeed, it would have been
the perfect time for someone to get a jump-start on what would be included in
my report. It wasn’t as if we broadcasted what I was doing, but it certainly
wasn’t a secret that I was visiting the relatives of the men we think were
involved. Nor was it classified that I was searching for answers about these
trucks full of gold. Plenty of people knew I was meeting a relative, though we’d
kept your name quiet. I would have thought for sure the mole would have read
the memo.”
    “Maybe they weren’t in yesterday?” Adelaide postulated.
    Jared shrugged. “Possible, but unlikely. If it is someone in
my office, no one was off sick yesterday. Now it could easily be