by Lynn Emery
“Somebody better tell me what the hell just happened,” Stanton thundered. “Nicole?”
“Shaun Jackson beat up Aliyah in a rage, but he didn’t kill her. Russell finished her off. Marcus was right all along,” Nicole said, and looked at him.
Marcus shook his head. “Not really. Shaun isn’t the man I thought he was.”
“I’m so sorry, babe.” Nicole looped her arm through one of his.
“You’re telling me Russell killed that girl?” Stanton’s mouth went slack with horror. “Oh, God. This is going to be a PR nightmare.”
“How the hell are we going to spin a murder?” Uncle Lionel clapped a palm to his forehead.
“Maybe we should think about what pushed Russell to be so callous,” Nicole said in a steely voice. “This family has some soul-searching to do, if you ask me.”
“Nicole figured this whole thing out. Incredible deductive reasoning, Nikki.”
“You mean inductive reasoning, Stan,” Uncle Lionel corrected. He snapped his fingers. “Our brilliant young CEO tracks down the breach in security and solves a murder. She didn’t stop even when the answers led to her own family. Could it work?”
“We don’t have a choice, Lionel,” Stanton said with a deep sigh. “You’ve got another big hurdle, Nikki. But we’re behind you.” He and her uncle strode out, talking over strategy.
“So much for soul-searching,” Nicole quipped. She turned to Marcus. “I don’t see how a security company can survive this series of disasters.”
“We’ll have to reinvent ourselves if necessary. Actually, your Uncle Lionel’s approach isn’t bad at all.” Marcus put his arms around her waist.
“What?” Nicole gaped at him.
“Listen, you did one helluva detecting job. Big corporations pay reformed thieves and computer crackers to help them design security procedures. Summers Security could do the same.” Marcus grinned at her horrified expression.
“Oh, no, you’re starting to think like them.” Nicole rested her forehead against his chest.
“Some of that upper-class cunning was bound to rub off on me. You body slammed poor Russell the way a real player from the ’hood might have.”
Nicole gazed up at him with a soft smile. “Some ghetto smarts was bound to rub off on me.”
“Not a bad combination.” He lovingly brushed a tendril of hair from her cheek.
“Not a bad combination at all.” Nicole kissed him long and hard.
About the Author
LYNN EMERY is a native resident of Louisiana. A licensed clinical social worker, she has been an expert consultant for articles on relationships and single women for the popular magazine Today’s Black Woman. Her first novel was recognized by Romantic Times for Excellence in Romance Fiction in 1995. In 2000, she was nominated for the Romantic Times Lifetime Achievement Award in Multicultural Romance Fiction.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
KISS LONELY GOODBYE. Copyright © 2003 by Margaret Hubbard. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition December 2006 ISBN 9780061746277
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