“A lot of places a key might hide in here.”

“Wait until we get into the storage and shipping areas.”

They started in the offices. Malory set aside her guilt at going through drawers, riffling through personal items. This wasn’t any time for delicacy, she told herself. She crawled around James’s desk, searching under it.

“Do you really think people like Rowena and Pitte, or whatever god’s in charge of hiding the keys, would tape the secret key to the bottom of a desk drawer?”

She sent him a sulky look as she slid the drawer back in place. “I don’t think we can afford to overlook any possibility.”

She looked so cute, he thought, sitting on the floor with her hair tied back from her face and her mouth all pouty. He wondered if she’d worn black because she felt it suited the circumstances.

It would be just like her.

“Fair enough, but we’d get through those possibilities faster if we called the whole team in.”

“I can’t have a pack of people running around here. It’s just not right.” And the guilt of what she was doing scraped her conscience like ragged fingernails. “It’s bad enough you’re here. You can’t use anything you see here in a story.”

He crouched down with her, stared into her face with eyes that had gone winter cool. “Is that what you think?”

“It doesn’t seem unreasonable that the thought crossed my mind.” She rose to take a painting off the wall. “You’re a journalist,” she continued as she checked the frame, tested the backing. “I owe something to this place, to James. I’m just saying that I don’t want him involved.”

She rehung the painting, chose another.

“Maybe you should write up a list of what is and isn’t appropriate for me to write about. In your opinion.”

“There’s no need to get testy.”

“Oh, yeah, there is. I’ve invested a lot of my time and energy in this, and I haven’t printed a word. Don’t question my ethics, Malory, just because you’re questioning your own. And don’t ever tell me what I can or can’t write.”

“It’s just a matter of saying this is off the record.”

“No, it’s not. It’s a matter of you trusting and respecting someone you claim to love. I’m going to start in the next room. I think we’ll do better separately.”

Just how, she wondered, had she managed to screw that one up so completely? She took the last painting off the wall, ordered herself to concentrate.

Obviously Flynn was oversensitive. She’d made a perfectly reasonable request, and if he wanted to get huffy about it, it was his problem.

She spent the next twenty minutes going over every inch of the room, and comforting herself with her conviction that he’d overreacted.

They didn’t speak for the next hour, and though they were two people performing the same task in the same space, they managed to avoid contact.

By the time they started on the main level, they’d developed a rhythm, but they still weren’t speaking.