Hot Button by Kylie Logan Page A

perky even while inside my head it grumbled, He better show up after all I’ve spent so far on plane fare, hotel accommodations, and those endless trips to the bar. “Thad is as excited to be here as we are to be hosting him. No worries there.” One of the posters slipped out from under my arm and floated to the floor.
    I bent to retrieve it just as Daryl asked, “And that button of his? The Geronimo button?”
    It wasn’t until I stood up that I realized Daryl had bent over, too. He might have been trying to beat me to the poster. Maybe. To me, it looked more like he didn’t want to miss a word of whatever I was going to say.
    “Do you think it’s real?” he asked.
    “Of course it’s real.” Once again, I had the uneasy feeling that Daryl was encroaching on my personal space, and I shifted slightly to my left, putting a tad more distance between us and hoping it didn’t look too obvious. “Thad has the provenance to prove it. Geronimo’s autograph dated the same day the original owner purchased the button, a letter from the soldier in charge of the barracks the day the buttonwas sold, a list of every person who’s ever owned it. You know how it is with buttons, Daryl. Collectors are very particular.”
    “Sure. Yeah.” Apparently, I looked like I was ready to leave, because Daryl moved back a step to let me by. “Only it seems like a whole lot of hoopla. You know, for one little button.”
    I forgave him—but only because he was new to the button game. “You’ll want to hit the afternoon session,” I told him with a smile. “The one called ‘Collecting Mania.’ We do a workshop on the topic every year at the conference. It’s a good-natured look at what goes on inside button collectors’ heads, and it’s always a lot of fun.”
    “I wouldn’t miss it.” That bashful smile peeked out from behind the bush of his beard. “Will you be there, too?”
    Was that a come-on?
    I looked Daryl over and decided instantly that it was not. The guy was too nerdy to try a pickup line as lame as that.
    Or too nerdy to know how lame it was and try it anyway.
    “I’ll be there,” I promised. Only not in a way that made it sound like a date. “I’m trying to make it to every workshop, even if it’s just for a couple minutes. You know, to make sure the presenters have what they need and that there are enough chairs for everyone. Stuff like that.”
    “So you won’t be staying the whole time? I thought…” Daryl glanced down at the blue-and-green carpeting. “I thought maybe we could sit together.”
    “Not sure I’ll have time for that,” I said, and hurried away as fast as I possibly could. In a busy-conference-chair sort of way, of course. Not an oh-my-gosh-I-don’t-know-how-to-handle-this-so-I’m-outta-here way.
    I hoped.
    Still, when I rounded the corner to head over to hotel security to talk to them about the vandalism and about the items missing from Langstone’s display and realized Daryl hadn’t followed me, I breathed a sigh of relief. Not so when I spoke to a security supervisor named Ralph. As far as he knew, no one had reported seeing anyone vandalize the posters, and sure, they had cameras around the hotel, he informed me, but not in all the areas. Ralph would look at the tapes—he said this with as much enthusiasm as noncollectors muster when the subject of buttons comes up—but he didn’t hold out a lot of hope that we’d find the perpetrator, either of the vandalism or the theft.
    “Kids,” Ralph grumbled just as I was leaving his office. “Must have been kids. Who else would bother to steal any of that button stuff? Or do such a dumb thing to a button poster?”
    Who else, indeed? The theft from Langston’s booth, that was one thing, and apparently, Thad’s work. But when it came to the posters, don’t think I’d forgotten about Beth Howell and the fight she’d had with Thad on the boat. Or Chase Cadell, for that matter, who didn’t seem above finding some way to get