“Where are you going?”
“A wedding.”
“What?
“Kenan is catering the wedding on the grounds here today, and he asked if I wanted to join him. This way I can get a sense of the venue in action.” She righted herself and patted the dress back into place. “So what did you need?”
“I need to come with you to the wedding.”
“Why?”
“There might be people there I can talk to about Ian O’Malley. If I’m there with you then it won’t look so suspicious.”
“You can’t be there with me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ll be there with Kenan and bringing another man will certainly be suspicious. Or at a minimum kinky.”
“It’s like a date?”
“You know what my favorite part of being an adult is? Not having to label things or answer questions I don’t want to. So no, you can’t come to the wedding with me.”
“It’ll be a wasted trip for you if I don’t get some answers about Ian. You’ll be looking at a wedding venue we can’t use.”
“I’m sure I can find the silver lining. Maybe I’ll just appreciate the company instead.”
“I need to get into that wedding.”
“Find a date.” Maribel shrugged.
“Maybe I will.” He could hear it. Aden knew he sounded like a five-year-old fighting over a toy. But the idea of her going out looking like that with anyone but him made his skin crawl.
Kenan cleared his throat as he approached. “Morning.”
Aden tossed him a casual nod but didn’t spare him much attention. He didn’t plan to step aside and let Kenan go in her hotel room. Had he already been there? Last night?
“You look amazing. Are you ready?”
“I am.” Maribel glared at Aden as she brushed by, leaving the slightest hint of her lavender perfume in the air.
“You want to come down to the wedding too?” Kenan jutted his chin in Aden’s direction. “I know you’re both here for work. If it helps you, come on down. I know the couple won’t mind. They’re both on their third marriage. They’re very laid back.”
“That would be great.” Aden beamed with the kind of childish pride that comes from getting what you wanted at the expense of someone else’s pride. “I’ll go change.”
Kenan wasn’t a fool either. It wasn’t blind ignorance that had him inviting Aden. It was sizing up a dog from another pack. “Come in through the kitchen. I need to get my guys going, then I’m good to go.”
If a stare could kill, Maribel would be on trial for murdering Aden. She had a thousand things she’d like to say to him but she was too classy to do it in front of Kenan.
As Kenan took a few steps down the hallway Aden leaned in and whispered in Maribel’s ear. “I guess it’s pretty easy to get a date with your guy. He asks anyone out.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“You’d miss me too much.”
“Who knows?” she hissed. “You haven’t given me a chance.”
The ceremony had been at sunrise and the reception was a brunch on the sprawling grounds behind the hotel. Aden didn’t know the first thing about weddings or planning them, but he could tell how this location could be considered perfect. That fluffy nutty stuff was draped all round. Smartly dressed staff were handing out tiny foods that looked almost too pretty to eat. He didn’t know what half of them were, but they tasted amazing. Not as good as Maribel’s lip gloss would. Damn.
Every time he thought he had some level of focus he’d catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye and lose his mental footing. This was the problem. This was what had him running away from her. Maribel wasn’t the kind of woman you could just leave, and the ability to leave without looking back was all he had some days.
The complicated part, as if there was only one, was that every time he looked at her, she was looking back at him. Sometimes with disdain, other times when he caught her off guard with a curious look he couldn’t place.
“You the guy asking around about Ian?” It was a raspy whisper from behind him. He knew better than to shoot around and draw attention. Being covert was a skill. It meant being patient. Aware.
“Yeah,” Aden said as he turned slowly and looked out of the corner of his eye. “You want to tell me something about him?”
“Walk with me.” The plump woman waddled a few steps away from him as though she knew he would follow. And of course he did.
“Mind telling me your name?” Aden kept his voice low.
“Name’s Aileen.”
“Aden.”
“Nosey are you?”
“I have a good reason.”
“What’s the reason?”
“Can’t say.”
“Nosey and stubborn.”
“You’re a good judge of character.”
“Smart ass.”
“You should take your act on the road.”
They walked from the crowd and the food, toward a hillside with a stone wall that had seen better days. It looked as though it had been cobbled together hundreds of years ago. Aden didn’t dare lean on it.
“Ian O’Malley left here and didn’t come back.” Aileen planted her swollen feet and crossed her arms. “If he sent you here, go back and give him a message from me. He’s not welcome.”
It was time to get some answers. “He’s dead. He has been for years. Heart trouble.” Aden watched her face closely for a reaction. There was twinge, a lift of her eyebrows that showed shock, even if she tried to restrain it.
“Dead?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. People here might have a party.”
“Why?” Sometimes the simplest questions were the ones that needed to be answered the most. “What could he have done to turn a whole town against him? He was a kid when he left here.”
“He took the one girl in this town who shone as bright as a thousand suns and killed her.”
Aden felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “Killed her?” He had prepared for the worst, or at least he had thought so. If Ian was a murderer that was something that would do more than put a damper on Junie’s wedding.
“If he’s dead, may he rot in hell.” She spat on the ground next to his feet.
“He killed someone?” Aden’s question only bounced off Aileen’s back as she shuffled away.
Aden’s mind spun as he tried to weigh the possible scenarios. Was it a car accident he was responsible for? A bad choice that ended in a terrible tragedy?
“Did she just shoot you down?” Maribel laughed as she drove an elbow into his side, startling him from the spiral of his thoughts. “You’re quite the charmer if you couldn’t bag Miss Aileen.”
“We need to go.” Aden took Maribel by the elbow and guided her gently back toward the hotel. “You haven’t told anyone whose wedding it is you’re planning? Tell me you didn’t blab to this Kenan guy just because you think he’s a dreamboat.”
“Who says dreamboat anymore?”
“I’m serious, Maribel.”
“No. I didn’t tell anyone. I’m not an idiot. Why, what’s going on?”
“We need some plausible deniability for Hugo. We bail on this place now, and he never needs to know. If he doesn’t know, he doesn’t have to lie to Junie. If we leave now, it won’t follow us back to Texas.”
“What are you talking about?” Maribel pulled her arm away and planted her feet. “I get that you don’t want me here palling around with Kenan, but you’re being dramatic.”
“Trust me, I’m not.” Aden didn’t want to tell Maribel what he’d just heard. If he didn’t, she could fly home to her friend Junie and not have to lie to her face. That was something he knew she’d hate to do. If they left now, put this town behind them, at least her conscience could be clean. But Maribel was also the same person he’d been spending all his time talking to lately. She was the one who seemed to understand him, root for him, believe in him. She was the exact per
son he needed to talk to about this now.
Maybe she could sense the weight of it. “Tell me then. If you want me to leave with you right now, you need to give me a good reason. Come on. It’s me. You know you can trust me.”
He bit hard at the inside of his lip as he thought it over. “I can’t tell you. You don’t want to be any more involved in this than you already are. I’m calling Hugo today and telling him this was a bust. A wasted trip. That there is no family here to connect with and the place isn’t right for having their wedding. Back me up on that. You and I head north, and you can find a beautiful spot for them. We just need to put this place in the rearview mirror.” Maribel caught Aden eyeing Kenan in the distance.
“It bothers you that much that I’m here with Kenan?” She huffed and tossed her hands up.
“Of course it does.” The words spilled from him like water from a knocked over glass. Their eyes met for just a second, a knowing moment, and then broke away. “But that isn’t why we need to leave. Please trust me, Maribel.”
“I do.” She dipped her head low as though that was a painful admission for her. As though no matter how hard she tried to hate him and villainize him, she couldn’t. “Tomorrow. We’ll leave in the morning.”
“Fine.” Aden nodded his head. The urge to pile their things in a rental car and make Gallamare a distant memory was strong. But in truth it did have something to do with Kenan. Aden could stop asking questions, keep his head down, and he and Maribel could be on the road by tomorrow morning. He’d spend the rest of the day doing research on his own and try to get ahead of whatever this deep dark secret was. “Just don’t say anything about Junie being an O’Malley. I’m going to find the archives and records for this place and try to piece together a little more information. Do me a favor and tell Kenan to keep his hands to himself.”
“You’re not letting this go? It’s really that bad?”
“It is.” Their eyes met again, and this time concern passed between them.
“I’ll come with you.” Maribel grabbed the hem of her dress and lifted it so she could walk faster and keep his stride. “I don’t want to lie to Junie, but I’m not going to leave you on your own in this either.”
“You’re on a date. You’re going to leave?”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “I’m viewing a venue and tasting some food samples.” She twisted her mouth up wryly. “I would rather go help you.”
“You sure?”
“If it means helping Junie, I want in. You can’t do it without me. I’m the brains of our operation.”
“I don’t know if we’ll be helping or hurting, but I want to try to understand what’s happening here. Once I do, I’ll know better how to protect her.”
“She’s lucky to have you.” Maribel never looked back as they pushed open the garden gate and left the property. No goodbye to Kenan. No explanation at all. If there was a scorecard, Aden would mark points for his own column.
“Where would a place like this keep their records?” Aden ran a hand over his head and tried to get a spark of inspiration. But Maribel was right. She was always the one to think their way through a problem.
“Church. Baptisms, marriages, deaths. You could find that all at the local parish I’m sure. I’ve done a little bit of genealogy here and there. I bet we could start there.”
“What about crimes, murder?”
Maribel froze suddenly, skidding her high heels in the gravel. “Murder?”
“Yeah. I guess not telling you is going to be harder than I thought.”
“You’ve got that right. You can’t drop that bomb and then clam up.”
He stopped and bit his thumbnail as he thought it over. “I don’t think I can waltz into the police station and ask for the report.”
At that Maribel looked worried, then suddenly confident. “Newspaper articles. The library.”
“Everyone in town is at this wedding. I bet we’d have the place to ourselves.” He didn’t intend to imply intimacy, the two of them alone in a dusty old library. But now it was all he could think of. The librarian fantasy of every man’s dream popped into his head. Maribel with her hair pinned up and some sexy glasses.
“You’d be a hell of librarian,” he said through a smile. “I’ve had that dream before.”
She snapped her tongue and huffed. “You are a child.”
“I’m endearing.”
“You’re infuriating.”
He gave her a half smile and buried the words he wanted to say.
No. I’m infatuated.
Chapter 10
Maribel
* * *
The library was just as she expected. Stone front. Dimly lit. Eerily quiet. And a place she could feel at home. The unsuspecting librarian had bought their story completely. They were two Americans chasing down their family tree. They’d lied about completely exhausting all the records at the church and needing new resources. She pointed them in the direction of the archived newspapers from the town. Unlike most places Maribel had been, Gallamare only had one paper and archived copies dated back over two hundred years. Searching them would be easier than in a big bustling city with tons of different publications.
“So what exactly are we looking for?” Maribel’s fingers hovered over the keyboard waiting for some explanation. It had killed her to wait this long. It took a lot of willpower to not beat the truth out of Aden. But she was working hard not to put herself in that position again. To need something from him.
“How many murders could this place have had? We know what year Ian was seventeen and came to the US. So we can search using that information.” Aden pulled up a chair dangerously close to her. Dangerous because she’d made rules for herself. Don’t get close enough to smell his cologne. Don’t accidently brush elbows. Don’t feel his breath on your cheek. In an instant all those rules were broken.
She typed the information into the antiquated computer system and tried to focus more on the results than the prospect of turning her head and kissing him. The room was so quiet. Private. They could lean back and swing the door shut. With the amount of built-up tension between them, sparks would flame into a blazing fire pretty quickly.
But there was work to be done. “Twelve articles. This should be pretty easy. We just need to go through those boxes and pull out the corresponding archived papers.”
“It’s not digital?”
“Uh, take a look around. I don’t think this building has indoor plumbing, let alone Wi-Fi. We’re lucky there were so few hits. It won’t take long.”
“How do you know so much about this stuff?” Aden’s eyes were fixed on the side of her face but she couldn’t turn to catch his gaze.
She scratched down the numbers on a notebook. “I know it’s hard to believe, but I was a bit of a nerd. I spent a lot of time doing research. The library was my nightclub.”
Aden was kind enough to feign surprise. “Really? Nothing wrong with a smart woman.”
“Tell that to my entire eleventh grade class. They didn’t find my library skills very impressive. My skirts weren’t short enough. I didn’t have pom poms. They didn’t appreciate a smart girl.”
“Well I do.” Aden pushed his chair back and waited for her to stand, keeping his body close so she’d have no choice but to be pressed to him. More rules broken, but she wasn’t protesting.
“The library closes at lunchtime. We better get moving.” Her whisper filled the room.
Maribel drew in a deep breath as she forced herself to pull away. This game wasn’t fair even if it was a little fun. They’d hit it off right away at work. Both had been given an opportunity to improve their lives with brand new career options. It meant they were motivated to put in the hours and make the most of it. And from that sparked something different than Maribel had ever experienced before. Little reminders of that kept popping up again.
What they had was an ease that felt like it had been formed over decades of friendship. An ability to argue with a fury but never take i
t personally. Aden had covered for her when she fouled up some meeting planning. She’d talked him off the proverbial ledge when he thought for sure Hugo was going to replace him with someone more qualified. She knew about Aden’s completely screwed-up childhood: his father was in prison and his mother was a drunk. He knew that Maribel had flunked out of college because of some jerk guy who broke up with her two months later anyway. She’d gone back and gotten her degree, but he was never the same. Nothing was. Just like things between her and Aden could never go back to the way they were. Once she’d confessed her feelings for him and he bolted, there was no turning back. And that was the hardest part. Missing his friendship.
“Find anything?” He leaned over her shoulder as she thumbed through the stacks of papers looking for the correct nine-digit code from her list.
“I found two so far but they had nothing to do with Ian or any dead girl. This is a pretty sleepy town. I feel like we’ll know it when we see it.”
“I guess that’s why drama from all those years ago can still hang around. Hopefully you don’t hold a grudge as long as the residents of Gallamare.”
“Ask me in a few decades.” Maribel closed the box she was working on and made a move to pull down the next one. It was way above her head and required standing on the lip of the shelf by her feet. Bad idea.
“Watch it.” Aden’s words were swallowed by the crashing noise of boxes hitting the ground. With one arm he scooped her out of the way and with the other he stabilized the wobbling shelf.
“Oh shit.” Maribel covered her head with her hands but it wasn’t necessary. He’d blocked her from being hit with anything. Mr. Dependable.
“I wouldn’t worry about getting hurt by boxes; that librarian might kick your ass though.”
Maribel looked over her shoulder and felt her cheeks blaze red. He wasn’t wrong. Messing with a librarian’s organization process was dangerous. “Help me clean these up.” She hit her knees and started turning papers the right direction. Skimming the titles as she stuffed them back in the right order. “Actually just watch the door.”
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