Dangerous Obsessions by Kira Matthison Page A

hadn’t left my chair all morning.
    And this was only reading the media requests, not responding to them. I looked up in mute appeal, and my manager laughed. From her no-nonsense bun to her plain black suit, Emma DiMarco was someone who looked as though she wasted no time and brooked no slacking off. Unexpectedly, she also had the most infectious laugh I had ever heard.
    “So.” She perched on the edge of my desk, her gaze direct. “What have you noticed about these requests we’re receiving?”
    “Um…” I tried to marshal my thoughts. I brushed the papers to one side, scanning the words distractedly. Somewhere around 10AM, the requests had begun to blend together into one big morass. “They’re all... using assumptive language around guilt and scandal?”
    “ Yes .” Emma nodded decisively. “That is exactly it. Well, I’m glad you’re a quick study. So, now you know what comes into this department. And can you guess how we address it?”
    “Creative misdirection?” I joked. I smiled and shook my head at Emma’s pained expression. “I didn’t mean that.” I really had, but that was a conversation for another day. Or possibly never. “Uh…well, I’d guess we just explain the facts and make it clear there’s no scandal.”
    That was precisely the opposite of what I thought they did, but I was pretty sure it was better to play the innocent.
    “Half right.” Emma folded her arms and frowned, staring off into the distance. “You know how they say all press is good press?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Not true at all. We already have all the contracts we’ll ever need. We don’t need to be in the news—so the long and short of it is that our team wants to make Ellison Corp sound as boring as humanly possible.”
    “Oh?” I reached for my coffee and tried not to look at where the email was still up on my screen. Come to my office. My cheeks flamed. I didn’t think I could minimize it without the other woman noticing, but what if Emma looked over and saw it? It was a clear sign of something inappropriate.
    Something like the CEO of Ellison Corp bending me over his secretary’s desk to slide his fingers inside me, and then taking me against the wall in his office after having known me for all of fifteen minutes? I caught my breath, feeling warmth building between my legs, and squirmed, crossing one knee over the other.
    “Everything okay?” Emma’s voice was concerned.
    “I…yes, of course.” I nodded. “I’m so sorry. You were saying to be boring.”
    “Yes. Just enough facts that we aren’t accused of hiding things, but try to make the facts as boring to wade through as humanly possible.” A mischievous grin light came into the other woman’s eyes. “When possible, get your facts straight from the scientists. They think they’re being fascinating, but…” She shook her head with a laugh.
    “Oh, right. And, uh…where would I find them?” I hoped my face didn’t betray my sudden flash of interest. This was important. If only I wasn’t thinking of Dominick—of the look I would see in those blue eyes when I went upstairs—
    I was not going upstairs to his office. That would be ridiculous.
    “You know, I’m not even sure.” Emma frowned. “They’re somewhere down…” Her fingers waved at the floor. “And actually, a lot of our labs aren’t even here. There’s one in Singapore, I think, and another in…Kansas somewhere? Ohio? West. But you really don’t need to go find them. You can just call them up here. Here, I’ll show you how to use the directory to find the scientists on a relevant project. So, pick a question there.”
    “Okay.” I picked one of the packets from the unread stacks at random. “It’s about Sebastian Ellison—”
    “I’ll take that.” Emma twitched it out of my hands with alacrity.
    “He’s Dominick’s—I mean, the current CEO’s—brother, right?” I kept her voice calm, as if I didn’t much care. As if I hadn’t spent the past months