But he wasn’t about to let that stop him.
Derek started down the hall to call his informant, walking gingerly and counting the hours until he could lie back and let Reese buff him.
FOURTEEN
When Knight left,looking like his pants were too tight, Reese pulled on a dorm style nightgown and flicked on the TV for background noise.
She set the dirty dishes and hot wings scraps out in the hallway for housekeeping and made a surreptitious run down the hall in her nightgown for the Coke machine, on the watch for people. When a guy in a plaid button-up stepped out of the ice room in front of her, she dredged up a smile and crossed her arms over her bra-less chest.
“Soft drink emergency,” she told him and stepped to the side to let him by.
The guy retrieved his jaw from the floor and nodded, doing an admirable job of keeping his eyes off her breasts.
After inserting a ridiculous amount of money for a can of Coke in the machine, she fast walked back to her room and cracked open the drink, taking a long swig.
She was dry from all that moaning when Knight had been there. Damn, that man knew his way around a clitoris.
Tomorrow night she was going to get to play with his piece.
But first she had to look at all the Delco evidence and strategize her next step. There was story there, and she was going to write it.
Knight was an added benefit, like a side order of fries.
An hour later she had picked her way through most of the documentation, having dropped the pictures onto her laptop from her phone.
The majority of it was documentation showing the high price of a variety of name brand prescription drugs Delco manufactured. Then papers showing the expired patents for generic versions of the drugs. Product plans showing competitive products not being launched.
A clear pattern that Delco, in collusion with two other manufacturers, was entering into agreements to not produce a generic version of their competitor’s primary money-making pharmaceuticals and vice versa, thereby maintaining a high retail price for the brand name drug.
There was a pattern, but not necessarily any hard evidence, until Reese found the typed transcripts of phone and E-mail conversations between the CEO of Delco and that of Stanfield Laboratories, their main competitor. The half dozen transcripts showed clear intent to price-fix.
Hot damn. This was her ticket to freedom.
And there was something else.
The CEO of Delco was none other than Ashton Chatterton, father of the groom.What do you know,she thought. Knight had lied to her, right after she had given him an orgasm.
That took nerve. She felt a little used, completely ignoring the fact that she had lied to him repeatedly about the envelope. That in fact, he still had no idea she had copies of the documents in her possession.
Propped up against three pillows, she called her brother Riley, who was a doctor. “Hey, Riley, I need your brain.”
“Nice to hear from you, Reese. Thank you, I’m fine, how about yourself?”
Rolling her eyes, she said, “I’m in Chicago on business. I don’t have time for chitchat.”
She could hear him shifting the phone away from him and murmuring, “It’s just my sister.”
A catty female voice laced with insecure jealousy said, “Why would your sister be calling you at almost midnight?”
Reese glanced at the clock, surprised. Where had the time gone? Burned up in undulating waves of sexual satisfaction, that’s where.
“If you let me talk to her, I could find out.” Riley gave a sound of annoyance into the phone and said curtly, “What’s up, Reese?”
Distracted from her original purpose, she said, “Who is that, Riley? Ugh. Sounds like you’re going to spend all your time explaining yourself.”
“It’s not that simple.”
She didn’t like that tone he was using, resigned and overwhelmed. It had been about a month since she’d seen Riley, and come to think of it, he’d been a little quiet then. “Why? Did you marry her? Knock her up?”