Almost a Lady by Heidi Betts

cabinets, opening the bottom drawer marked X. Her eyes were drawn to the large letters at the top of the second, matching file. She couldn't take the entire portfolio, but she had already copied the information, so she didn't need the whole thing. She only needed the photographs. If anyone noticed the pictures were missing from this file, they would probably just think them misplaced.
    She returned the contents of the safe, replaced the picture on the wall, reburied the key into the soil of the plant, and extinguished the lamp. Confident that Robert would never know someone had been in his office, she hurried from the building, heading back to the Astor House with the information she'd gathered tucked securely beneath her shirt and into the waistband of her trousers.
    When she arrived, she slipped in through the back of the hotel: the same rear entrance she'd used to get out, and that Robert had used the night he came to her room. It wouldn't do to have people witness a man visiting a lone woman.
    Willow breathed a sigh of relief as she ducked into her well-lit room and turned to close and lock the door. Now all she had to do was get a couple hours of sleep to convince Brandt that she'd been in her room all night. She would hide her newly found facts somewhere safe until she got the chance to look them over more thoroughly.
    "How nice of you to drop by."
    Willow whirled around. And came face-to-face with her nemesis. Anger and frustration warred within her. She felt like a delinquent toddler, followed every step by a hawkish nanny.
    "What are you doing in my room?” Her voice was deceptively even, white-hot fury bubbling just below the surface.
    Brandt sat reclining on the settee, feet propped in front of him, the epitome of nonchalance. Shimmers of light danced against a crystal tumbler as he raised it to his lips and drank before answering. “I'm just sitting here waiting for you,” he replied easily. “Mind telling me where you've been? I assume you weren't at the theater, given your less-than-ladylike attire."
    She resisted the urge to tug at her man clothes. “Where I go and what I do is none of your concern. Now get out of my room.” She opened the door, leaving him more than enough space to make his exit.
    But he didn't move. He stayed seated, took another sip of brandy, and pinned her with a steady gaze. His eyes shone with emerald clarity, cool and determined. He wasn't any more likely to leave of his own volition than she was to sprout wings and fly across City Hall Park.
    She slammed the door shut. The sound reverberated through the room and, she was sure, down the hall. Giving him a withering glare, she crossed her arms over her chest, hitching one hip to the side in annoyance. She felt the file, warm and stiff against the bare skin of her torso.
    "You seem to have forgotten that we're partners,” Brandt observed.
    "I forgot nothing."
    "Then where were you?"
    "That is none of your business,” she told him, enunciating carefully so there was no chance that he would mistake her meaning.
    "But we're partners,” he said again. There was a sharp edge to his tone now, a steely glint in his eyes. “Therefore, your whereabouts most certainly are my business."
    "I told you that we would start on the case in the morning. Tomorrow we become partners. At eight o'clock, and not a minute before.” She moved toward the bedroom entrance with as much nonchalance as she could muster, considering she was dressed in ratty male clothing, clutching the stolen information to her breast like a hulk of driftwood on a raging sea.
    "Don't you want to know what brought me to your room so late at night?"
    The question stopped her in her tracks. Before, she had been too preoccupied with getting him out of the room to think about his reason for being there in the first place. But now that he brought it up . . . f
    He didn't wait for her to respond. Her pause a yard from the bedroom was answer enough.
    "I was lying in bed, struggling