Season of Hope. Virginia Carmichael

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      “I peeked in at the hospital. Grant seemed to be back to normal. Proud as can be and mentally sound. We had a good laugh about him not being able to walk across the lobby that night.”

      He looked around, still taking in the small office. Evie was painfully aware of the teetering piles of papers and the jumbled books haphazardly tossed onto shelves. She felt the heat rush to her cheeks. His office was probably neat as a pin.

      “They say a messy desk is a sign of a tidy mind.”

      “Do they?” Evie glanced around, wondering if the perpetual mess had anything to do with her mental state, or if it had everything to do with her organizational skill. “One of my employees says I use the EAS filing system. Every Available Surface.”

      He grinned, tiny lines appearing around his eyes. “I would never survive in this office. How do you find anything?”

      “Strangely, it doesn’t seem to be a problem.”

      “So, if I moved something, right now, you could probably tell?”

      Evie bit her lip, staring at the piles of papers and Post-its scattered like colorful snowflakes. “Depends on what it is.”

      He stood up, leaned over her desk and wiggled his fingers. “Let’s try it.”

      She fought to keep from laughing. They were going to play a game with her messy desk? Something about that grin made her want to play along. “Fine, I’ll close my eyes. Try to be very quiet.” She was almost surprised at her own flirting, but then that smile made her forget a lot of things.

      She scrunched her eyes closed and put a hand over them for good measure. As if someone had thrown a switch, all her other senses went on high alert. She could hear the rustle of his shirt against his suit jacket, his slow breathing. The scent of his aftershave was deep and woodsy. She could hear, no feel him, moving very close to her. There was a tiny sound and then he said, “Done.”

      She peeked between her fingers and frowned. Maybe she didn’t know where everything was. Maybe not even half of it. And then she saw the change and triumph surged through her. “You moved my pen.”

      The look of shock on his face made her laugh out loud. His eyes had gone wide. “Well, I guess that proves it. Messy doesn’t mean disorganized. But how did you know?”

      “I’m left-handed. I keep my pens on this side.” She waved with her left hand.

      “I hadn’t noticed that.” He cocked his head, appraising her.

      “Why would you?” Evie felt her face flush under his gaze.

      Gavin ran a hand down his tie and cleared his throat. “So, how much space can you spare for tomorrow’s article?”

      Evie struggled to switch gears.

      “Half of the front and two full pages in the first section.”

      “You usually have that much room on short notice?”

      “Only when the lawyers tell us to shut down our biggest story of the year.” Even saying the words made her feel slightly sick. She could see the newsroom over his right shoulder, through the half-open door, and it looked like someone had hit the panic button. Her head throbbed a little, as if for extra emphasis. She sighed and rubbed her eyes. So much work, down the drain.

      * * *

      “Lawyers.” The word wasn’t a question, more like he was repeating her.

      She nodded. “We keep them on retainer so we can pass stories by them. Otherwise we might be left open to lawsuits. It’s the kiss of death for a paper.”

      “So, what exactly got shelved?” He was working on keeping his body relaxed, but he heard the tension in his own voice. Of course they’d need lawyers. Walking the fine line between getting sued and delivering the daily gossip must be a lightning rod for litigation.

      “I don’t know how much you hear about the dark places in this city,” she paused, gathering her thoughts, “but there is a slave labor ring. It keeps moving. We can never quite catch them. We know some of the businesses involved. But the people we’re getting the information from are too unreliable. The lawyers said it was a no-go.”

      There was a beat of silence, then another. His throat felt tight. “I do hear things, now and then. I have friends who work in the free clinics. They see girls coming in for treatment, always accompanied by men, never left alone.”

      Evie raised her face, stricken. “There are those, too. Girls brought here with the promise of jobs and then enslaved. No one thinks it can happen in this city, but it does.”

      “What about the police?”

      “We can’t get word to the police fast enough. By the time they arrive, the groups have decamped.”

      Her words hung in the air between them. So many people needed help, desperately, and sometimes he didn’t even know where to start.

      “Thank you.” His voice was softer than he intended.

      “For what? Failing?” Bitterness was written on every feature.

      “For caring.”

      She gave a small shrug and sat up a bit straighter. “Did you bring the current stats on the reported cases?”

      He handed over the file.

      She was busy studying the graphs and numbers. “This is bad.”

      “I know. My grandmother’s been praying like crazy. She’s got the whole Women’s Guild at St. James on the case.”

      “I didn’t know you went to St. James. I mean, I’ve never seen you there.” Then she paused. He knew what she was thinking. Just because someone’s grandmother went to church, didn’t mean they did. Usually grandmas held down the fort and everyone else went about their lives, sleeping late on Sunday and counting on the trickle-down effect of the prayers.

      “Usually the early service.”

      “Oh, I went to that one last summer when we were leaving on a trip. It was me and Jack and about forty old ladies.”

      Too accurate to be funny, but he couldn’t help chuckling anyway. “Right. Just me and the old ladies. My grandmother has trained them all to treat me like their own. We have a great time at coffee after.”

      Evie let out a throaty laugh that made him want to scrap his plans for the day and do something better, more fun, just the two of them. But that wasn’t really an option, in a lot of ways, no matter how that laugh tugged at him. Work was ramping up to round-the-clock shifts and Allison... Just the thought of his sister made him sit up straighter. All he could think of was how good Evie smelled and how that husky laugh made him want to take a day off work. He gave himself an internal shake. People reacted to stress in different ways, and he must be grasping at anything that wasn’t related to pertussis or fragile sisters. This was a working relationship and it needed to stay that way.

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