Hidden Talents

wanted to know if he was the one who had sent me the pictures or if he gave those pictures to someone else who used them to wreck my business arrangement with you.”
    “Damn. I knew you'd try something like that,” Caleb muttered.
    Serenity blinked back tears. “I never got any answers. Ambrose was dead when I arrived.” She spun around and walked into the kitchen.
    “Serenity.”
    “Why did you drive all the way up here today, Caleb?” She kept her back to him as she filled a teakettle at the sink.
    “I didn't like the idea of you attempting to track down a blackmailer on your own.”
    “Why should you care what I do?”
    Caleb came to stand in the doorway of the tiny kitchen. “Dealing with blackmailers can be dangerous.”
    “So what? It's none of your business.” Serenity dashed the dampness away from her eyes with the sleeve of her tunic. She put the kettle onto the stove and switched on the burner. “I told you, poor Ambrose is gone. He can't give anyone any answers.”
    “You said yourself that the blackmailer might have been someone other than Ambrose.”
    “That's true.” Serenity slid him a quick glance. “But as you so succinctly put it yesterday, it's my problem, not yours.”
    “Unfortunately, according to the terms of that contract you signed in my office, that's not the case. I told you, I've got standards. You're a client, Serenity, and I have never yet abandoned a client. I don't intend to start now.”
    Serenity stared at him. The flicker of hope within her died. Caleb was here because of his precious, inviolable business standards, not because he felt anything for her. “Forget it. I don't want your help. Not in this blackmail thing or anything else.”
    “You don't have a hell of a lot of choice. I'm not about to let you ruin my reputation.”
    She widened her eyes in sheer amazement. “Your reputation .”
    “That contract you signed is iron-clad. I should know, I wrote it. Unless I choose to let you out of it early, you're stuck with paying my extremely high fees.”
    “You weren't going to charge me any fees,” she said. “You were going to take a cut of the profits instead.”
    “You obviously didn't read clause number ten very closely,” Caleb said smoothly. “It provides for full payment of my standard fees in the event that you cancel the project before completion. Be reasonable, Serenity, I can't see you wanting to pay all that money and not get something for it.”
    “I don't intend to pay you a dime.”
    “I can line up a whole team of lawyers who will see to it that you do.” Caleb's mouth curved in a faint smile that did not alter the detached watchfulness in his eyes. “Like it or not, it looks like we're going to be partners.”

3

    S ERENITY STARED AT C ALEB . “F OR A MAN WHO DOESN'T approve of blackmail, you're very good at it.”
    Caleb's jaw tightened but his gaze never wavered. If anything, his expression grew more forbidding. “This isn't blackmail. It's business.”
    “Is that all you ever think about? Business?” How could she have been so wrong about this man? Serenity wondered. She'd actually gained the impression somewhere along the line that the two of them had something in common, that their inner voices spoke to each other, that they somehow understood each other, silently yearned for each other.
    Obviously her normally astute powers of intuition had become confused and disoriented in the fog caused by the attraction she had felt for Caleb. She suddenly realized that this was her first brush with real passion, the kind that involved body and soul.
    “No, business is not the only thing I think about,” Caleb said evenly. “But it's definitely high on my list of priorities.”
    “I can see that.” The kettle shrilled. Serenity picked up a spoon, opened a canister and began to ladle tea into a pot. “Some of us have other priorities.”
    “Are you telling me that getting a viable mail order business going here in Witt's End isn't still high on your priority list?”
    “I'll find another way to get it up and running. I don't need your help.”
    “You're going to get my help whether you want it or not.” Caleb's smile was humorless. “As long as you're paying for it, you might as well take advantage of the opportunity.”
    “What opportunity? The opportunity to work with someone who thinks I'm pond scum because I once posed nude for a professional photographer?”
    “No, Serenity,” Caleb said with cool patience. “I