“Thank you,” I said, my voice strong again. I wrapped my arms around his neck. “For that. All of it. Every part.”
A smile tugged at his mouth. He looked at his watch. “We need to feed you and get you back to work. I would love to see you again, if you want,” he said.
“I want that.”
“But I don’t even know how long you’re in town.”
I winced. “Not long. I leave tomorrow for New York.”
His smile spread. “Me too.”
The words rang in my ears like a song.
And suddenly, I knew I wanted to live in the present with him for a little bit longer.
The Thai restaurant served us lickety-split. With my fork I twirled the noodles and took a bite of my pad Thai. I hummed as I ate. Maybe I was still high from that orgasm, or maybe it was from the knowledge that we’d have more time to spend together in New York. Quite possibly I might be feeling this way because we’d talked about what was happening, and I’d moved through it for now.
“The pad Thai . . . it’s that good?”
“Maybe it is,” I said, after I finished chewing.
“Or are you grinning about something else?”
I leaned across the table as he worked his way through his shrimp dish. “You,” I said with a naughty grin. “Your tongue.”
A smile spread slowly across his handsome face, as he licked his lips. “You looking forward to getting to know that part of me?”
I nodded and took another bite, moaning around the food. “Mmm. I bet you’re spectacular at that.”
“What makes you say that?”
“The way you kiss me.”
His eyes darkened. “You have no idea how badly I want to show you other ways to kiss you.” He dropped his voice lower. “I want to kiss you until your taste is all over my lips.”
I dropped my fork. My entire body went up in flames. He reached across the table, picked up the utensil, and handed it to me.
“Thank you,” I murmured, and I wasn’t sure if I was thanking him for the fork, or the orgasm, or the promise of more.
Somehow I managed to take another bite of my noodles, but I couldn’t rein in my grin as I ate.
He laughed, wiped his napkin across his mouth, and took a drink of his water. “I like seeing you . . . happy. You deserve to be happy.”
Happy was one way to put it. Unlocked worked too. That first kiss had turned the key on a closed door in me. I’d shut off the woman who’d loved sex and intimacy and closeness.
But as soon as I’d let myself go there last night, with my own fingers, I’d become a woman unleashed. It was as if that single orgasm against my hotel room door had uncorked me. And I wanted more.
And I wanted more with Michael. He’d been my first taste of love, and the connection we’d shared years ago had been so deep and strong. Even though loving again was too dangerous, surely I was still allowed to experience passion and erotic joy. Especially with someone who’d once been the center of my world.
We’d waited for each other when we were younger, but now we’d matured into adults who could have sex without labels. As teens we’d been wildly idealistic; as grown men and women who’d seen the world, we had the freedom to have unfettered sex. He would be the balm to my wounded soul, the warmth to my cold heart. Maybe then I could finally live again, and stop feeling like I was walking around the earth half alive, with a frozen heart encased in my icicle ribs.
“I am happy. I’m looking forward to New York. It’s everything we couldn’t do before,” I answered him.
“Being young made some things too difficult,” he said, his tone both serious and nostalgic.
“Now we can be naughty adults. In taxis, on airplanes, in restaurants,” I said, as my dirty dreams spilled forth.
“You want all that? You sure?”
“Yes,” I said emphatically, waving my hand behind me as if to gesture to the room where we’d been. “Please don’t let my momentary freeze before scare you off.”
He held up his hands. “I assure you, I’m not scared off.”
“And I assure you that I desperately want all of you,” I said, choosing total directness right now. The truth was I’d mostly had bedroom sex, and while it had been good, I wanted hot, dirty, thrilling sex. Sex with abandon. The kind he seemed to be able to give me.
The waitress appeared to refill our water, breaking up the flirty, dirty moment. That was fine, because I also had something serious to discuss with him. “I wanted to tell you about Sanders and Becky,” I said.
Michael nodded, an intense look in his cool blue eyes. “Talk to me. What happened?”
“Becky seemed off. Like something was really bothering her,” I began, and I shared the details, including the fact that Sanders had missed the breakfast because of an appointment. I hadn’t intended to tell Michael at first, but I’d lingered on the exchange with Becky, and the fact that my old friend had said, Ever since the investigation. And the more I reflected on the conversation, the more it seemed necessary for him to know. “She seemed nervous, but sad too.”
Michael nodded, his expression focused, his jaw set. “Sad in what way?”
“She wouldn’t elaborate. I have no idea what’s going on, but something is on her mind. And I don’t want to sound the alarms, but I wanted you to know.”
“I don’t know why she’d be like that. But I’ll try to find out if it means anything.”
I reached across the table for his hand and clasped mine over it. He let out a breath, seeming to relax the slightest bit. I rewound to all the times we’d talked about his loss. He’d shared everything with me—all his hurt, all his pain. He’d cried once or twice on the phone with me, and I’d comforted him from afar as best I could as he told me the horror of what happened to his family the night after I left town.
The story was shocking to me, especially since I’d seen Thomas Paige less than thirty-six hours before he was killed. Michael and I had had breakfast with him at a little diner, eating eggs and toast as we talked about our plans. He was such a good man, so committed to doing everything he could for his son, and by extension for me. I’d thanked him, hugged him, and even told him I looked forward to the day he’d become my father-in-law. I’d believed it then—at the time, I was so certain I’d marry Michael.
“How is everything going with the reopened investigation?” I asked, threading my fingers more tightly through his, wanting to be his anchor if he needed me, like I’d been before.
“They arrested one guy, the getaway driver. And they’re looking for the mastermind, TJ Nelson. He was the guy who brokered Stefano’s hits. Apparently, he’s wanted for several murders over the years, including this one.”
I shuddered, imagining the trail of carnage the man had left behind. “Do they think your father’s death was connected to others? I thought with your mother in prison, and the gunman’s confession, that they knew the motive.” How much more clear could it be? Dora had her husband killed for the life insurance money so she could run off with her lover.
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s changed. But the shooter had accomplices, and now it turns out the guy she was involved with is the head of the entire Royal Sinners gang.”
My jaw fell open, and my eyes widened. I knew of the gang from all of our talks after the murder. I grabbed my water, taking a drink, processing this newest twist. “She was involved with the head of a street gang?”
“Turns out she was buying drugs from them and running her own ring. That’s part of what the cops have uncovered now. She was selling drugs to a long list of people, including the two guys they think assisted in the killing. The shooter was her supplier, and the guy she was cheating on my dad with—well, turns out Luke wasn’t just some local piano teacher. He’s, like, the ‘deep undercover, appears innocent on the outside, but is really the leader of a street gang’ teacher.”
Shock coursed through me, spreading from my chest all the way to my fingertips, a cold, liquid sensation under my skin.
“Are they arresting him too?”
Michael rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “That’s the thing. They know he’s head of the gang, but they have to have specific evidence to link him to a specific crime, so that’s what they’re looking for. Since all the other players were part of the Royal Sinners, they’re trying to figure out if somehow that means my dad’s murder was related to the drug trade the gang is part of. The guy who supposedly masterminded the hit, TJ, was involved in a lot of the gang’s other crimes.”
I shook my head, taking it all in. I remembered details that had emerged during the trial—the lover, the affair, the life insurance. Michael had told me everything. It was crazy now that the crime might have had deeper roots. “Do you think they can find TJ?”
“I sure hope so. I want nothing more than to see all those fuckers behind bars. Forever,” he said, his voice a low seethe, his eyes sharp as knives. “I will never forget.”
His hand tightened beneath mine into a stony fist. I rubbed my palm over it, wishing I could comfort him. As I touched him, a memory flickered before me. A party. His mother saying something about a piano.
“Do you think she met her lover at a party? Your mom mentioned something once about a party with a piano.”
“You remember those kinds of details?”
I nodded. “I have a ridiculously good memory. I remember her making a dress. I asked her what it was for, and she told me.”
“A party with a piano?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
I nodded, then told him bits and pieces from a brief conversation I’d had with his mother in passing one afternoon. “I don’t know if that’s helpful though.”
His expression seemed grateful. “It’s all helpful. Every detail matters.”
We finished lunch, and he walked me back to the shoot a few minutes early.
“I can’t wait to spend some time together in New York,” I said, cupping his cheek. His eyes blazed, and his breathing intensified from that simple touch. For a moment I felt powerful, eliciting that reaction in this strong, stoic man. I stood on tiptoes and pressed a soft kiss to his lips.
“I’m counting down the hours.” He’d said he had a dinner with a client that night, so the flight would be the next time I saw him.
Then, because I was feeling frisky, and because things had been one-sided so far, I pressed a hand to his flat belly through his shirt. “Don’t think I’m selfish—I’m not,” I said, whispering in his ear. “I want to taste you. I want you in my mouth. I want to feel you in my throat.”
He swayed closer, a sexy sigh escaping his lips. “You’re killing me,” he growled.
I wiggled an eyebrow, turned on my heel, and left with a spring in my step, knowing that tomorrow I’d be coming again.
17
Michael
My grandmother kept everything. Which meant it took me nearly an hour to find the box of photos from when I was sixteen. If my hunch was right, my mom had met Luke that year. I grabbed a shoebox from the top shelf in the garage, cluttered with tools, old toys, and clothes headed for donation.
“Found it?”
“I think so,” I said, tucking the box under my arm as I climbed down the ladder to join Victoria Paige, the woman who’d raised us after my mother went to prison.
“Let’s go inside and paw through it,” she said, gesturing to the door into the house. I had come straight here after lunch with Annalise.
We parked ourselves on stools at the kitchen counter, and I took the top off the shoebox.
“What exactly do you think you’ll find?” my grandmother asked as she grabbed a thick handful of curled-up photos from nearly two decades ago.
I shook my head. “I’m honestly not sure, Nana. But I want to look to see if any of the photos give me a clue about that guy. Anything at all. I know he had to have been involved in Dad’s murder somehow. It can’t be a coincidence that my mother was trying to run away with that man.”
She nodded resolutely. If anyone understood the drive to leave no stone unturned, it was Victoria. I had lost a father; she had lost a son. That loss tethered us more tightly than a grandmother and a grandson should be. Now we were driven by the same need—the one for justice.
What if it was in our grasp? What if there was a clue in the family photos? Annalise had said photos sometimes held surprises, that when she looked at them again, she’d find things she hadn’t noticed the first time. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but hell, if there was a speck of evidence under my nose, I wanted to find it. I wanted to know if there were any photos that would tell me about my mother’s relationship with Luke Carlton, and how it had played a part in my father’s death. After all, Shannon had told me that on her last visit to Hawthorne, our mother had said that Luke being married now to someone else proved something—it proved he lied, she’d said to Shan. At the time, it seemed like the ramblings of a woman losing her hold on sanity.
But turning it over, was that some veiled clue she was sharing that he’d lied about other things? Well, I figured he’d lied about every damn thing.
Except, for our mother to finally admit that—it made me damn curious if she was dropping crumbs for us to follow, something she’d started doing recently with Ryan. Crumbs that had led us to some of the accomplices.
And so I followed them too.
I flipped through picture after picture from that fateful year, from posed school photos, to shots of Ryan playing hockey, to pictures of Shannon dancing.
“Let me have that one,” Victoria said, grabbing a photo of my sister on stage, leaping high. “I need to frame that and give it to her.”
I smiled and draped an arm around my grandmother, squeezing her shoulder. “She’ll love it.”
My sister didn’t dance after she tore her ACL in college. She’d become a world-class choreographer instead.
My grandmother and I thumbed through more pictures. Shots of dance recitals, pictures of sunsets, images of family barbecues, including one of my dad flipping burgers with my grandfather, then one with me standing at my father’s side, the two of us laughing together.
A lump rose in my throat, and my fingers lingered on the photo of my dad and grandfather.
“I remember that day,” I whispered.
My grandmother’s eyes shined with wistfulness. “You do? Tell me,” she said, resting her chin in her hand.
I shook my head, surprised at the clarity of the memory. “It was just an average Sunday in the fall. October, I think. All of us were there hanging out at your house. I think Ryan and Colin were watching college football, and Shannon was playing with the dog you had then. Dad was grilling with Grandpa. Nothing special. They were placing bets on whose barbecue sauce was better, and at some point, the stakes were so crazy, we were all cracking up.”
Victoria smiled widely, her eyes misty. “I can see it all now,” she said, then tapped the photo. “Why don’t I have this one framed too?”
I scoffed and tipped my head to the walls around us. They were thick with framed family photos. “Can’t frame everything.”
“But I can try.” She snagged that photo, sighing as she regarded the shot of the men grilling. “The barbecue was the day after Thomas went to that party. I remember it now.” She traced a shaking finger over my dad’s face. “He was so tired, as they’d been up real late. He and your mother went to a work function.”
I sat up straighter. That’s what Annalise had mentioned. “The party,” I hissed. “That’s what I want to see. Do you think anyone took pictures of the party?”
“Not me. I wasn’t there.”
“But what if my dad had them? If someone had taken pictures from the work party…” I let my voice trail off, desperate hope coloring my tone.
She gestured to the pile. “Let’s hunt.”
I wanted to find those photos. I grabbed the next stack of pictures and methodically studied each one. There was no reason to believe there would be pictures of a party here in my grandparents’ home, but my grandmother sa
ved everything, so there was always a chance. If someone had taken pictures at the event, my dad might have held on to them . . .
My heart stopped, then started again. I’d found it. A shot of my mother and father in front of a work banner at a company party for West Limos. Flipping to the back, I checked the date. Yep. The year it all went down. I gripped the edge of the photo as dark anger coiled through me. My mother took from me the person I loved most. My insides churned viciously as I studied the two of them. But it was only them posing for the camera, like some kind of company photographer had taken the picture.
I turned to the next one. A foursome. Sanders and Becky stood next to my parents. Sanders clutched his wife’s shoulder tightly, and she smiled for the camera. My eyes roamed to my mother. I saw her looking to the right, just outside the frame.
Determined to follow her gaze somehow, I tore through the other pictures from the party. All in front of the banner, each one a little farther over, like the photographer was moving sideways. There were only a few more. As I lined them up, I could tell where my mother’s eyes had drifted to just beyond the edge of the banner.
To a man playing a piano.
Luke Carlton.
Was Annalise right? Had my mother met her lover at my father’s work party?
“I need to talk to Sanders again. See if he remembers anything from that night. Anything about Luke talking to my dad maybe. Anything that could make it clear what role Luke played.”
But when I called Sanders a little later from the car, my dad’s old friend didn’t answer.
18
Michael
I rapped on the window outside the detective’s office. John Winston sat in his chair with his back to me, talking on the phone. He swiveled around, holding up a finger to ask me to wait.
As John wrapped up his call, I jammed my hands into my pockets, tension curling my muscles tight as the sounds of the police department filtered from behind me—the crackle of the radio, phone calls about cases, the shuffling of papers.
My Sinful Love (Sinful Men Book 4) Page 8