by Lexi Blake
His lips curled up, a tiny hint of his amusement. “You’re the one who needs therapy. And I thank you for doing that with her. I want to know if anything in that room was moved prior to you walking into it.”
“I sort of slid, actually,” she admitted. “Blood on marble is slippery.”
He put the file down. “When did your sense of humor go so dark?”
She sighed and sank into the chair across from him. “I can laugh or cry, and I think I’m cried out. The good news is, we did find something that’s missing. It would have been easier if I’d been able to go back in, but I noticed that the fireplace poker thing is gone. The sweeper and the pan are there, but the poker is missing. I almost never used that fireplace, but it was part of the original house, so we left it in during the remodel. That fireplace set has been sitting there completely unused for probably fifteen years.”
“That works in our favor,” he said, nodding. “You wouldn’t have had time to hide it, and if we can find it, we can compare it to the wound you took that night. I can hope and pray there’s fingerprints on it.”
“They shouldn’t be mine. Like I said, I haven’t used the fireplace. The central heat works fine and while I call it my childhood bedroom, I’ve never truly lived in it. It was a place to stay when I wasn’t traveling or working.”
“I’m going to ask NYPD if they’ve found it and if they haven’t, I’ll request a full search of the house. This could be exactly what we need.” He slid the glasses off, staring at her for a moment. “How are you sleeping?”
Not as well as she had that first night when he’d held her. That night she’d slept like a baby, listening to the steady sound of his heartbeat. But they’d woken up the next day and still had to face all the problems they had in front of them. They’d sat down and agreed to try to find that easy companionship they’d experienced on the island. It had been a brief, awkward conversation, but they were working on it.
She missed him, too.
Unfortunately, they hadn’t had a ton of time alone in the last forty-eight hours. Working a big murder case was tough on a lawyer.
“I’m good, Henry,” she replied. “How about you? I can’t tell if you sleep at all. You came in so late last night.”
Not that she hadn’t had company. She was rapidly coming to love Lisa and Genny. They’d brought her clothes and makeup, and more importantly, they hadn’t let her feel alone. While their husbands watched her back, these two women had been important in bringing her hope.
“I was working on a couple of things. We have your grand jury hearing in two weeks, and then we’ll start with discovery and a ton of pretrial hearings to decide what evidence will and won’t be allowed in,” he said.
“Have you found any evidence you’ll try to get thrown out?”
“I’ll try to throw everything out, Win,” he admitted. “I’ll bury the DA in minutiae until I can find what I need.”
“What do you need?”
“I need to prove someone else did this,” he explained. “You see, the shitty thing about believing that your client is truly innocent is the fact that I can’t be the one who lets you go to jail, and jury trials are a crapshoot. If I can’t find another explanation, even without concrete evidence, the truth is, juries walk into a trial wanting to punish someone in a case like this. I can file for a change of venue, but there’s not going to be a single person out there who hasn’t read the story or seen the TV coverage.”
Yeah, it sucked. She hadn’t been able to watch TV for days because every time she turned the channel, her face popped up. “So your plan is to find the actual killer? Is that what you would normally do?”
“There is nothing normal about this case.” He sat back, frowning.
Because she’d made him break his rule of not caring about the guilt or innocence of his client. Because this case wasn’t merely a puzzle to be solved.
She decided to give him a pass because he wasn’t particularly good with emotions. It was one of the things she’d pondered while she’d begun the shut-in phase of her life. She knew she wanted Henry, but she couldn’t be sure which Henry she would get.
It was past time to stuff those thoughts away. She’d promised him she would work on their friendship. Whatever it was they had when they weren’t going at it like rabbits.
She missed sex. That was a revelation because she’d never missed sex before. It was something she’d talked about with her new friends and something she was going to handle on her own because she was a modern woman and she could use the Internet.
It would be better if she didn’t have to use the Internet for that particular problem. She would rather handle it the natural way, with Henry’s hands on her body.
She turned back to the files because that was some seriously dangerous ground. “So if these aren’t all on me, who are they on?”
He relaxed and put his glasses back on, obviously happy to be talking about something less touchy-feely. “These are files on every single person who came in contact with you or Brie Westerhaven that night. They’re dossiers on everyone who attended the party. I’m going to interview a couple of them. This pile is the people I find interesting. The middle I’m on the fence about, and the last one is everyone I’ve cleared. Somehow I don’t see Mr. and Mrs. Condiment King waiting in your bedroom to take out a reality TV star.”
The Hanovers were a lovely couple who had built their fortune off tiny packets of ketchup and mayo. They were definitely not the murdering type. “I talked to her that night. She’d recently had a hip replacement. I think murder would have been too much exercise for her.”
“That was my assessment as well. None of the people in pile number three had any links or ties to Brie, and no meaningful ties to you.”
“Meaningful ties to me?”
“None of those people have any reason to hurt you,” he explained.
“It was Brie they hurt.”
“Oh, I disagree. They’ve certainly ruined the last few days of your life, and if you go to jail, I would say you owed it all to whoever killed Brie. I’ve got three working theories of this crime. One, Brie was killed over something she did or said or by someone she trespassed against, and I mean that in the biblical sense.”
Brie’s crowd wasn’t into forgiving those who trespassed against them. “I can see that. Brie could certainly rub people the wrong way. And the other theories?”
She was fascinated by watching him work, listening to him talk his way through some legal issue.
The Monster of Manhattan was an incredibly smart man. She wished he wasn’t so damn sexy.
“Theory two is that this has something to do with you. That the person who killed Brie was actually waiting for you to walk into that room. It’s mere coincidence that you weren’t killed yourself.”
The thought sent a shudder through her and took her right back to that horrible night in Stockholm when she’d felt those hands around her throat, had known she was going to die. “The police still think I tripped or that I was injured while I was fighting with Brie. Have they gotten back any of the report things yet?”
A single brow arched. Yep. That was his “dumbass said what?” face. “By ‘report things,’ I suppose you mean forensics?”
Such an intellectual snob, and yet it was incredibly fun to tease him. She kept a perfectly straight face. “Forensics. Got it. Have those things come back yet?”
He stared through her as though trying to figure out if she was serious or not and then gave up. “No. Those tests take time. Well, except the fingerprints on the murder weapon. That was simple enough.”
She could guess from his sourpuss face the fingerprint report hadn’t gone well. “It was my letter opener. I used it a lot. I would pry open stuff that didn’t want to come open with it. I would scratch my back with it from time to time. It served to hold my bun in place at the back of my head when I couldn�
�t find a set of chopsticks or a pen. So yes, very useful, though I never once stabbed anyone with it.”
“Obviously your fingerprints are on it, but I can maybe deal with that. Especially given your creative uses for it. Did you ever open a letter with it?”
She shrugged. “I opened a lot of DVDs. Letters aren’t that hard to open and I mostly get email. The letter opener was a high school graduation present from an elderly relative. Like a second cousin or something. Who gives an eighteen-year-old girl a Tiffany letter opener?”
His lips curled up. “Probably the same kind who gave an eighteen-year-old boy an expensive pen set. Even when I went to college we had laptops.”
She glanced down, looking at the names on the files of the people he really wanted to talk to—the ones he thought might have something to do with the killing. She felt her eyes widen. “Alicia Kingman? Your ex-wife? What would she have to do with anything?”
“She was right there, front and center, and she knew about our affair. While Alicia never loved me, she was quite possessive and didn’t like her territory being infringed on. She also doesn’t take it well when someone puts her in a box. I did that a few weeks before the murder. This could be part of my third theory, the one in which you were the target, or hurting you was the object, even if it was only to get to another person. In this theory, Brie either walked in at the wrong time or was set up in a way that would make you look like the guilty party. In this version, the point is to send you to jail for something you didn’t do.”
“That’s a very convoluted theory, Henry.” It would be a spectacularly hard sell to a jury, too. Even she could see that.
He sat back, his frustration evident in the way his shoulders slumped. “Well, money is out, and that’s my usual go-to. When incredibly wealthy people get murdered, it’s almost always over money. But you’re right. Your parents’ will was airtight. Without you, the money, the company, and everything in between goes straight to charity. Your uncle has zero reason to want you killed.”
“He wouldn’t hurt me.” At least they could cross her uncle off the list.
“Though it occurs to me that getting you put in jail would leave all those assets in his hands. As long as you’re alive, the assets remain in play. There’s no clause for your going to jail or being incapacitated. Bellamy Hughes would continue to run everything.”
Crap. She didn’t need him running down leads on her uncle. “Why would he do that? I could die in prison and then it would all go to hell for him. He should want me right where I am. I don’t want the headache of running Hughes. I never have. That’s the sad part about it. My parents left me this enormous birthright most people would kill for and I never wanted it. It’s why I didn’t go into the business after college. I couldn’t stand the thought of being a cog in a wheel, of sitting through meeting after meeting and making choices that hurt people. I could never agree to a layoff. And yet I know they’re sometimes necessary.”
“So what are you planning on doing with your master’s degree?”
“Run the foundation. That’s what I want to do. I told you I wanted to work for a charity group.”
His eyes dimmed, and she knew she’d made a mistake by mentioning anything from their past. “Yes, you did tell me that. You failed to mention that you already had a multibillion-dollar one waiting for you.”
She stood up. “I did fail to mention that. Be happy you phrased it that way and didn’t say the word ‘lie’ or ‘liar,’ because I swear every single time you throw that word at me from now on, I’m going to find the first newspaper I can, roll it up, and swat you on the nose with it.”
She turned to walk away because she wasn’t going to spend the afternoon fighting with him. Nope. No way. She would go back to her room and read a book. Lisa had brought her some romances. They were a good way to forget her troubles.
A hand wrapped around her arm and she was pulled back toward him. To her surprise, he was smiling down at her. “You going to train me like a wayward puppy?”
“I’m sick of the lying thing, Henry.” She wasn’t going to back down from that. “I can’t let you use it anytime you want me to feel guilty. I know you don’t understand why I did what I did, but I don’t think any amount of explanation from me is going to work.”
“No use of the word ‘lie’ or ‘liar,’” he said, his hand drifting down to hers. “I don’t want to make you feel guilty. I’m sorry. I really do want to understand.”
But she feared it was something he couldn’t do, and that that lie—even if he never said the word around her again—would always sit between them. It was precisely why she’d kept her distance the last few days. She knew he would break her heart in the end. “I wish I could explain it better than I have.”
His fingers tangled with hers. “Win, trials like this can take years. In fact, until I’m sure I’ve got what I need, my intention is to push this as far out as I possibly can. Have you thought about what it would mean to stay here for a long period of time?”
“How long?” She’d known it would be weeks. Maybe a month. “At some point it’s got to be safe to go back to my own place.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think this is the kind of story that will stay in people’s minds.”
“I can go quietly.” She didn’t like how soft her body got the moment he touched her. It was like she had a button only he could push. “Once my uncle is home, I should be safe with the bodyguards around.”
“Your uncle travels constantly. He isn’t home more than a few days out of the month. You would be alone in that house with Trevor,” he pointed out. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I could find a place of my own.” She hadn’t wanted to because she’d been planning on living in Durham for a few years.
“I think you should stay here.”
“Even if it takes a year?”
“However long it takes.”
“You know why that’s a bad idea.”
“Because we’re going to end up in bed together? That’s inevitable.” He stared down at her hand and the place where their fingers entwined. “It’s a matter of time and proximity. I’ve had to work late the last few nights. Hell, I forced myself to work at the office because I knew what would happen.”
“And you don’t want it to happen.” Somehow, even as the words were coming out of her mouth, she found herself closer to him.
“Don’t I? I wanted it to happen the minute I saw you again, but it would have been an ugly thing. I needed time to process. I still don’t think I have anything to offer you, but I also know that if we’re stuck together, we might as well enjoy it.”
“So I should have sex with you because we don’t have anything better to do? That’s an offer I can refuse.”
He winced and held her hand as she tried to walk away. “I’m bad at this part. I don’t know what to say to you. I know that when I make the proper decision to stay away from you, thirty minutes later I want to touch you again. I’m not as angry as I was. I’m more sad than anything, and not kissing you is killing me.”
“Kissing me, making love to me, won’t solve our problems. I’ll still be me when you wake up in the morning.”
“But I don’t know that I’ll be me. I can’t seem to stay me around you.”
And it bothered him. “I don’t want to cause you stress, Henry.”
His lips curled up in the sexiest smirk. “You know what’s good for stress?”
He killed her when he softened like that. He was probably right and she wouldn’t be able to hold out. “You should do what I did. I went on the Internet and bought a . . . Well, it’s going to prove helpful.”
The smirk left his face, replaced with the most prudish frown she’d ever seen on a man with that filthy a mind. He dropped her hand in favor of putting both of his on his hips, like an outraged priest or something. “You bought a vibr
ator?”
She felt her face flush. “Well, I thought it would help with stress, and there’s not a lot to do around here except sit and worry about going to jail. Also, Lisa really recommended this brand. She says it’s long-lasting and gets the job done.”
He stopped for a minute and then his head fell forward on a booming laugh. When he looked back up, he was pulling his glasses off and wiping tears away. He reached for her again, pulling her in. “I forgot how funny you are.”
It felt so good to be in his arms and feel genuine warmth from him. It almost made her forget all their problems. Still, it was a moment and she allowed them to have it. She let her arms wrap around him. “I haven’t had much to laugh about lately.”
His hand stroked her hair but whatever he was about to say was interrupted by the door to his apartment opening. His hands relaxed and he stepped back.
“Mr. Guidry, I would appreciate it if your wife would refrain from selling my client sex toys,” he said.
“Henry!” She couldn’t believe he’d simply put it out there. It hadn’t been like the big Cajun bodyguard had been around when they’d had their girl talk.
“Well, if you can order it, I can complain bitterly about it,” Henry replied.
If the bodyguard was shocked, he didn’t show it. Remy simply shrugged. “If you’re talking about the Pleasure Wand 5000, that thing is worth the money. Good call, Win. But right now you have other company.”
Two men were behind Remy. One was tall with sandy-blond hair and the other was . . . Her heart clenched at the sight of him.
“Win, these are our investigators.” Henry gestured to the men. “Case Taggart and his partner—”
“Michael Malone.” She teared up and hoped she could hold it together. “Yes, I know him. Our families were close when we were younger. Michael, it’s good to see you again. I didn’t realize you were working on the case.”