“Fuck, what were you doing, Kowalski, family portraits?”
It’s family dinner.
Toni’s voice echoed in my ear.
The way her voice had caught. The pain in the words.
Once again, I saw her driving her fist into the cop’s nose.
Slowly, I stood up. I made my way over to the cabinet and helped myself to a bottle. It wasn’t my favorite bourbon, but it didn’t matter. I carried it over to the couch and sat down.
The burn of that first drink didn’t undo anything.
So I had another.
Then a third.
Somewhere along the way, I passed out.
Then I woke up and it was dark, so I had another drink because I could still think, still remember.
I could even still hear Toni’s voice. It’s family…
At some point, I finally passed out and this time, I stayed that way.
***
I lurched awake, unsure what had pulled me from the blissful ignorance of unconsciousness.
A knock on the door?
I practically bolted to my feet, and the second I did, I regretted it.
My stomach rebelled and I swayed, slamming both hands against the wall as I struggled to stay upright, as I tried to make my stomach stay in control.
What was…?
My head abruptly cleared. Oh, the pain was still there. Plenty of that. And the headache, the nausea, the misery…
But I could think.
I’d heard something.
A knock.
Shuffling on stiff legs, I moved into the hallway and stared at the front door. Doug wasn’t here. None of the staff were. I’d given them the weekend off. Normally, Doug wouldn’t have left no matter what, but he’d overheard me going over what I planned with the cops and he'd given me a look that said he wanted no part in it.
Toni. I saw her driving her fist into the officer’s face.
I heard her voice as she said, It’s family dinner. And the look of complete and utter betrayal that had slid into the deepest loathing.
“Son of a bitch!” I shouted, my voice echoing through the empty house. My headache pounded harder and harder and I bent over, thinking I might get sick. I deserved it.
Swallowing the bile in my throat, I straightened. I had to brace a hand on the wall to do it, but I was upright. I took one shambling step, then another. Out into the foyer. I squinted at the door.
Somebody had knocked.
That was what woke me up.
Somebody had knocked.
Swearing, I opened the door.
Nobody.
Absently, I glanced down. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have seen it.
But there it was.
A large padded manilla envelope, crumpled and battered, like it had been mailed to hell and back.
Mouth dry, I bent down and picked it up.
Blood started to roar in my ears and it wasn't from the alcohol. I knew what it was without needing to see my name scrawled in black marker on the front of it.
I half fell against the door to shut it as I opened the envelope with shaking hands.
“Sir—”
I vaguely recognized Doug’s voice. I’d been wrong. He hadn’t left.
Several things fell out.
“Sir, you shouldn’t touch—”
“Shut up,” I said dully as I sank to my knees.
The thick, gleaming locks were tied together messily with a piece of what looked like twine. I had no trouble recognizing the heavy curls.
“Iz,” I whispered, broken.
“I’ll call the police.” Doug’s voice was quiet, oddly gentle.
My hand shook as I picked up the folded paper that had also fallen out and read it.
Printed on plain paper, block letters, it listed demands, simple and stark. Money in exchange for Isadora.
I read it through once, twice, three times.
I’d be contacted.
I’d better be ready.
The letter fell from my numb hands as I sat down. It was only then that I noticed the other envelope that had also dropped to the floor. It was smaller, bound closed with rubber bands. I picked it up.
Doug's voice came from above me. “If I tell you again, you shouldn’t touch, will you listen?”
“No.” I was careful though, only touching the rubber bands as much as I had to, handling only the edges of the envelope. Once I had it opened, though, the weight of its contents did the rest.
Photographs spilled out. Dozens of them. My eyes tracked over them, trying to make sense of what I was looking at.
It was Doug who started to reach out this time. I caught his wrist just before he would have touched the one lying nearest to us. The very sight of it chilled me right to the bone. It was Isadora and me, her hand tucked inside mine. I couldn’t see either of our faces, but it was no puzzle as to who it was. It was us.
So was the next one, and the next one…
More than a dozen.
“Some of these are old,” Doug said softly.
I nodded, staring at the photo of the younger images of my sister and me. Standing together, dressed in our finest, as we went to visit our parents' graves. It had been raining that year. I didn't remember anybody photographing us. But then again, I wouldn’t have. Not on the anniversary of their death.
Whoever had taken this had wanted to make sure they weren’t seen. There was something stealthy, secretive, about the pictures.
That feel was echoed in every last one of them, reading right up to the most recent one. It, like the others, had been taken on the anniversary of our parents' death, which had been three months ago.
It didn't matter if that one had been taken before or after Isadora and I met Toni. Even if she'd been some mastermind criminal and had been stalking us for months, there was no way she could've taken those old photographs. She would've only been twelve or thirteen when the first one had been taken. Her brother wouldn't have been much older. Their involvement didn't make any sense.
I closed my eyes, but I could still see the hurt on Toni's face. “What in the hell have I done?”
Marcum's voice answered my rhetorical question. Congratulations. You helped ruin that girl's life.
Continues in Blindfold Vol. 2, release September 25th. Click Here to received an email reminder on release day.
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FREE BONUS: Casual Encounter Book 2
Casual Encounter
Vol. 2
By M.S. Parker
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 Belmonte Publishing LLC
Published by Belmonte Publishing LLC.
Book Description
When I found out that Cade Shepard was my white knight, I let myself believe that I could fall in love again. And then I realized that everything had been a lie.
Twenty-five year-old Bree Gamble feels betrayed by her best friend after discovering that the man she thought could help her get over her broken heart is nothing more than a paid escort.
But Cade surprises her. He shows
up at her door with an apology and a proposal. He offers to teach her how to become the kind of woman that no man will ever be able to refuse. He just has one rule: She can’t fall in love with him or the deal is off.
Will Bree give in to the temptation and risk losing her heart in the process?
The second installment of Casual Encounter by best-selling author M.S. Parker is a must-read seductive roller-coaster.
Chapter 1
“Come on, Bree. How do you think? A great fuck was the entire reason I wanted you to date my guy in the first place. When you want something done right, hire a pro. Cade's a gigolo, Bree. A professional escort and lover. A damn expensive one, but worth every penny. Consider it an early Christmas gift. Surprise!”
My best friend's words still echoed in my mind even though I'd hung up on her more than a minute ago. I kept expecting anger to come to my rescue, to break me from this catatonic state. It might come later, but at the moment, I was numb. I sank back against my pillows and stared at my phone. It vibrated and began to ring. I didn't even have to look at the screen to know it was Adelle. Even if it hadn't been her ringtone, I would've known it was her.
I turned off the ringer and watched as her call was sent to voicemail. The second time she called, the anger came. Couldn't she take a hint that I didn't want to talk to her? Tears stung my eyelids and I squeezed them shut. I didn't want to cry. I'd spent too much time crying after Ronald had left. I'd shed enough tears over one bastard. I wasn't about to shed anymore over the one Adelle had paid.
I pressed my hands to my face as a stab of hurt pierced through me. I should've known better than to get my hopes up. I knew I idealized Cade as my mysterious white knight, but even after I forced myself to admit he wasn't perfect, I at least thought he liked me.
Heat flooded my face as I remembered telling him that I wanted him. Anger followed embarrassment when I remembered him telling me it was obvious he wanted me too. I'd just been foolish enough to believe it meant he felt something other than lust. And now I learn it was his job to get hard, to say pretty words. There probably hadn’t been any lust there at all. I mean, I wasn't naïve. I knew it was more difficult for a man to fake arousal than a woman. A female prostitute could just lay there and make noises to convince her client that she wanted him. I wondered how Cade did it. Was it just the prospect of sex that got him hard? Did he cock respond to his commands like Pavlov’s dog? Or had he been running through some fantasy in his head?
I suddenly felt sick. Who had he been thinking of when he was inside me? Had it been Adelle? And why had he pretended like that? If he'd treated it like some business transaction, I could've figured it out, stopped things from going too far. All he needed to do was make a single comment when he invited me back to his room for dessert. If he'd just said that the sex was already paid for, I would've been able to save myself a lot of pain and humiliation. I would've been embarrassed, but there was a huge difference between knowing I'd had dinner with a prostitute and knowing I'd fucked one.
My phone buzzed again and I was tempted to throw it across the room. Instead, I shoved it into my bedside drawer and crawled back under my covers. I pulled the blanket up over my head, closing myself off from the rest of the world.
When I'd been in seventh grade, my older brother had posted a picture of me on my locker at school. It hadn't been any picture though. It had been a picture of me modeling my mom's bra over my clothes, and it had been painfully obvious I'd never fill it out as much as she did. He'd gotten a detention from the teacher who'd found it, but by then, it had been too late. Every kid in the world had seen it, or so it seemed at the time.
My parents had grounded him for a month and made him apologize, but in my mind, my life had been over. I'd been convinced I'd never get over the embarrassment. For two days, I stayed in bed, my head under my covers, blocking out the world. I felt safe there, as if no one could hurt me. On the third day, my mom had forced me to come out and eat with the family. I'd gone to school the next day.
It was funny, I thought bitterly, how we grow up, but who we were as children never fully goes away. I hugged my knees to my chest and tried not to think about how much I hurt. What Cade had done had been bad enough, but he hadn't known me, and he'd just been doing his job. It hadn't been his fault that our first encounter had predisposed me to think of him a certain way.
I swore. Had Adelle set that up too? She'd sounded genuinely surprised when I said Cade was my rescuer, but she could've been acting. The idea that this entire thing had been a lie from moment one made it all the worse. It meant Adelle had no respect for me as a person or as a friend.
What she'd done had been so much worse than what Cade had done on many levels. Sure, she claimed she only had my best interests at heart, but what did it say about how she viewed me as a person—as a woman—if she thought I needed her to hire someone to go out with me, to sleep with me? How pathetic and stupid did she think I was? And she had to think I was both of those things because I couldn't think of any other reason that would've led her to believe I'd be okay with what she'd done.
Sunday went by far too slowly for me. Every fifteen to thirty minutes, Adelle would call. Every hour or so, I'd delete her voicemails without listening to them. I already knew what she said in every one. She apologized, but added something about how it was all for the best. She'd never admit she did anything wrong. I wasn't sure I wanted to forgive her even if she begged for forgiveness. I definitely wouldn’t if she pretended she'd done something as simple as scratching my car or throwing up in my purse – both of which she'd done on more than one occasion.
When I finally had to get up to go to the bathroom, I decided to move my pity party into the living room where I ate half a gallon of Rocky Road ice cream and watched chick flicks for hours on end. By the time I showered and went to bed that night, I didn't feel any better but I knew I could at least pretend to be okay when I went into work tomorrow. I was just glad I didn't work with Adelle or Cade. I hoped to never see either of them again.
Chapter 2
When my alarm went off on Monday morning, I didn't want to get up. I already knew how tough it was to slog through a day when I was emotionally devastated. It was strange how something like this could compare to being stood up at the altar. Most people would assume that having your fiancée run off with the wedding coordinator would be worse than finding out your best friend paid the man of your dreams to have sex with you, but it actually wasn't. I thought I loved Ronald, but in hindsight I could see all the ways we hadn't fit together. And this wasn't about Cade. He hadn't been the one who'd truly betrayed me. Adelle and I had been through so much together that her actions were worse than what Ronald had done.
I sighed and slapped the top of my alarm clock. I'd gotten through the humiliation of being left at the altar and I'd get through this. I was a stronger person than a lot of people thought I was, and I would move on. The first step was getting back to my normal routine. That meant school.
I dressed simply and then forced myself to eat an apple for breakfast. The only thing I'd eaten the day before had been ice cream, so I needed to get some food with substance inside me. That and coffee. I decided to treat myself to my favorite premium roast at the little café down the street, which brightened my mood enough that I was able to manage friendly greetings to my colleagues as I walked into the school.
My fake smile faltered when I saw Mindy heading my way. I hadn't even thought about her and how she'd want to know all about the date that had turned out even more disastrous than the one she'd sent me on. Heat rose to my cheeks as I wondered how much Adelle had already shared. Did Mindy know about Cade being my rescuer? Did she know what else he did? My stomach clenched. Was it possible that she'd even been in on it from the beginning? I shook my head. Mindy never would've gone along with deceiving me like that. Then again, I reasoned, I'd never have thought Adelle would've set me up with a gigolo either.
Gigolo. I winced at the word as humiliation washed over me and Ca
de's image flashed in my mind. That charming, cocky smile. His dark gray eyes. The way his blue-black curls had fallen carelessly across his forehead. Not exactly what I pictured when I thought of a male prostitute. He'd been authoritative, but never rude or cruel. He was comfortable with sex and his own body, but not crass. I supposed that's why he was a high-class escort.
I rubbed my temples. I could feel the start of a headache there.
“Bree!” Mindy's voice was cheerful.
I opened my eyes and reminded myself that her being a morning person and disgustingly chipper was not a valid motive for murder. I was already down one friend.
“So, how did it go?” She grinned at me and leaned against one of the front row desks.
I studied her for a moment and felt a stab of sadness that I didn't trust her completely. I forced a half-smile as I gave her a vague answer. “It went. Nothing worth talking about.”
“Really?” She looked disappointed. “The way Adelle was talking him up, I was fully expecting you to come in here with a post-orgasmic smile from ear to ear.”
I glanced at the door. “Not exactly school-appropriate talk.”
She shrugged. “Fair enough.” She straightened. “And there wasn't anything there between the two of you?”
I looked down at my lesson plan book as if it contained something I needed. “Nope. Not a thing.”
In my mind's eye, I could see him as he moved above me. I felt him inside me again. His body thrusting into mine. Remembered how my skin had sung at his touch. I clenched my jaw and banished the thoughts. I wasn't going to do this.
“Well, if there's nothing to talk about.” Mindy filled the awkward silence. “I guess I'll head back to my classroom. Those math problems aren't going to write themselves.”
“See you at lunch,” I said. I didn't want to eat lunch with her and subject myself to another round of questions, but if I didn't, she'd get suspicious and call Adelle right then. Now, if I was lucky, she'd at least wait until she got home and have the rest of the night to figure out how she was going to react to what had happened.
Blindfold Vol. 2: Alpha Billionaire Romance Page 8