by Natalie Ann
“It is,” he said. “How long do we have to stay?”
“We can go any time we want. The bride and groom snuck out a little bit ago.”
“I didn’t even notice that,” he’d said.
“How could you not notice that big ball gown full of tulle and bling not moving around?”
Her cousin Drew looked like he was walking on the moon today, Amanda’s smile never leaving her face either. Two weddings this year for her cousins. Two more would be happening next year she was assuming. She hadn’t heard about dates for Mac or Emily yet.
“That was a big princess dress. Not sure I could see you in something like that.”
She wasn’t sure why her heart was racing, but it’d taken off in a sprint. “It’s not my style,” she said.
When the music ended, his hands dropped away. “Then why don’t we go to our room and see what style we can have together tonight.”
“Sounds like the best suggestion I’ve heard in a while.”
They went back to their table. Her brothers were talking with their cousins Garrett and Gabriella that had been sitting at the table next to them. Her parents were nowhere to be found, but she was sure they were mingling. Weddings and funerals were the only things that brought all the Bonds together now. When they were kids it was summer parties or the kids gathering on the beaches when they were old enough to drive. Maybe in ten years her generation would have some kids and be doing the same thing.
“See everyone later,” she said, grabbing her purse.
Her brother and cousins nodded their heads and she and Seth left, then went to the elevator and their room. They’d checked in when they got here and dropped their luggage off for the night but then left shortly after, having gotten ready at her house.
Once the door was shut behind them, she pulled him into her arms. “Alone, finally.”
“Finally,” he said, his hands going to her face, framing it. Then he lowered his lips to hers. She would never get enough of kissing the man she loved.
Maybe it was the romance of the wedding or more like it was just Seth.
“I’m feeling the same way,” she said. “No rush tonight either.”
“No,” he said. “Not like it was before, but different.” He was kissing her in between words. “Better. Much better this way.”
They weren’t as rushed because they weren’t going so long anymore without spending the night. Two weeks at the most. When Adele was with them, they stayed at Seth’s house. When Adele was gone for the night, they stayed at hers.
She slipped her nude pumps off, then turned her back so he could unzip the back of her royal purple dress. He’d said she looked good in purple and blue and she found that she was trying to wear it more around him when she never cared before.
There was so much that wasn’t the same in her life now.
His hand was almost a whisper as it slowly lowered the zipper of her garment, then lightly brushed the dress off her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor by her feet.
“I almost bought some sexy lingerie for tonight.”
“This works just fine for me,” he said of the matching dark purple silk bra and panties. She loved the way they felt on her skin.
“I figured it would be. And we looked so good with your black and purple tie. As if we planned it when we didn’t,” she said.
“Like it was meant?” he asked as she reached for the tie in question and loosened, then removed it. Her hands made quick work of his suit jacket, shirt and pants until they were both standing there in their underwear.
“I’m starting to think that maybe it is. Is it a problem I think that way?”
“Not at all,” he said, picking her up and bringing her to the bed, laying her down and making her feel like they were in their own honeymoon fantasy.
He slowly removed her bra and panties, lowered his own underwear and then grabbed a condom. He set it next to the pillow and got under the covers with her.
“I think we need to take it slow tonight,” she said, her arms opening to bring him in. He covered her body with his, heat against heat, grinding and pushing, mouths seeking.
“I’m all for that,” he said. His hand threaded through her hair, holding her head in place while he assaulted her mouth.
“I love the way you kiss. It’s like your mouth touches on all my erogenous zones.”
“Is that possible?” he asked.
“Possible or not, it’s happening.” Her body was heating up, her legs spreading. She didn’t want to wait for the condom and didn’t know why they were at this point.
The chances of a pregnancy were slim to none.
They loved each other.
And if something happened, she didn’t care anymore. She saw a future with Seth anyway.
His body started to move, as if he got the silent invitation. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” she said. “If you are, I am. I’m one hundred percent committed.”
And she realized that maybe that was the one thing holding her back. Fear of him not wanting to be tangled in her mess. Fear that he’d struggle to balance his daughter and her.
All that fear was gone suddenly as if someone snapped their fingers. Only she wasn’t sure when it happened.
He slid inside of her, telling her that he felt the same. They were all in. Through thick and thin. Drama and messes.
None of that mattered when the two of them were together.
His hips started to move in and out, the width of him stretching her and feeling so lovely. So right.
It’d never be enough. She knew that now.
She bent her knees, opening up more for him, her hips moving with his in a beat to a song it seemed that only the two of them had in their heads.
Her body felt like a deadline looming with a task to be accomplished fast. That task was feeling an explosion of love and sharing it with the man in the bed with her.
He often wanted her to watch him while she came, but this time it was she who wanted it.
She brought her hands up, lifted his head to look at her and smiled.
He got what she wanted without saying the words.
Their eyes were locked, their hips moving, their bodies building.
The urge to shut her eyes when she started to pulse and squeeze him was massive, but she fought back and held on. She was glad she did when she felt Seth coming in her, saw his eyes go dark, the smile drop from his face, but not the tenderness in his expression.
“I didn’t know how possible it was to love someone so much again,” he said.
And that was enough for her. The future would come when it came and they’d find a way to work anything out because there couldn’t have been a better night than this.
36
Why Her
The lovely night they shared two weeks ago at The Retreat was a thing of the past when Ava’s phone rang while she was with a client. She looked down quickly. She wasn’t on call, but no one ever called her during the day either.
She saw it was Griffin but couldn’t answer right yet. He never called unless he had something important.
She pushed it from her mind though and finished with her patient. A first-time mother and Ava was doing her best to alleviate any concerns or worries. Excitement was always there, but fear and worry could build when women realized the reality of the life growing inside of them.
The minute she was done, she went to her office and listened to Griffin’s message to call him when she had a minute. She really didn’t but was making it.
“Did you find out who it was?” she asked when he answered right away.
“I’m not sure. Maybe,” he said. “When can you come in to talk?”
“It’s that bad you can’t say it over the phone?” she said.
“We don’t have a name, but we’ve got a face on camera.”
“What?” she said. “How?”
“Part of why it’s easier to explain in person, not while you are working.”
&
nbsp; “Right,” she said. “Damn it.” She looked at her watch. “I’ll be out of here at five. I’m sure Seth will want to be with me and will have to make arrangements for Adele.”
Griffin laughed. “Bring her here and Eli can babysit again. He was bummed he didn’t get to show her everything. He hasn’t shut up about it.”
“I can’t do that to Eli,” she said. “What if he’s busy?”
“He’s not. He’s standing right here laughing.” She heard Eli shout to bring Adele in the background.
“Let me reach out to Seth and I’ll text you to verify. I’m not sure if I can focus on my job now knowing that you got the person.”
“We don’t know yet. I’ll explain it all when you get here.”
The next several hours seemed to drag like the last day of school before Christmas break as a kid. She was pulling into Seth’s driveway at five thirty and the three of them were on their way to the casino.
She didn’t have to say who she was to the front desk this time. One of the workers recognized her from a previous visit and picked up the phone.
Eli showed up five minutes later and Adele went running over to him. “Hi, Eli. Daddy said you’re going to finish our tour.”
“I am,” Eli said, giving her a high five. She’d never thought of her cousin as being so good around kids before but supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. He was the oldest of three boys. “Let me get your father and Ava set up to go see Griffin first.”
Seth and she followed Eli down the hall, got in the elevator and then into Griffin’s place. He’d left the door open for them.
“You have no idea how hard it’s been to pay attention on my job today,” she said. “Thankfully I didn’t have any surgeries planned this afternoon.”
She’d had one earlier in the morning and was just seeing patients this afternoon.
“You didn’t have to call me right back,” Griffin said. “I said no rush.”
“Please,” Seth said. “You had to know she’d rush if she thought you knew who did this.”
“True,” Griffin said, grinning at them. “So let me explain first. After we analyzed all the charges, there were a lot of gift card purchases at the grocery store and the big box stores. I happened to get in contact with the grocery store where many of the purchases had been made. We got card numbers, but those for restaurants and other stores are hard to track without their cooperation.”
“And most aren’t going to get in the middle of this, right?” Seth asked. “It’s not worth their time?”
“Right,” Griffin said. “Every gift card was purchased in either fifty- or a hundred-dollar increments. Not enough to stand out. Even if they were around a thousand dollars with each set of cards.”
“So being smart to use later on?” Ava asked, realizing her mind wouldn’t work that way. She’d always been an honest person.
“I’m sure that was it,” Griffin said. “Anyway, the grocery store gift cards that were purchased were flagged as fraudulent. They were willing to cooperate at all their locations and put the information in at their corporate level. The fact that so many of the purchases were made at their store with a stolen credit card didn’t sit well with them.”
“So when the person tried to use them, you’d get notified?”
“Yes,” Griffin said. “Right here on the island no less. Yesterday afternoon there were attempts to use two cards and both were flagged as inactive. The person was forced to pay with cash so we didn’t get a name, but we got a face.”
Ice seemed to be flowing through her now. “The person is on the island?”
“We aren’t sure yet. We aren’t going to assume anything at this point. Do you know who this person is?” Griffin asked and pulled the screen up.
“Oh God. That’s Colleen Crowder. She’s a nurse that works with me.”
“Didn’t she just transfer here to the island?” Seth asked. “Could she be following you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I’ve always gotten along with her. I never thought for a minute she could do something like this or why she would.”
“You said her husband lost his job though, right?” Seth asked.
She remembered now that Colleen had told her all about it. The debt and the struggle to find a job. But she still didn’t know what to think. “It makes me feel ill that I’m that bad of a judge of character.”
“We are going to have to bring the State Police in on this,” Griffin said. “It’s a felony and purchases were made outside of Amore Island.”
“Can you call Jarrett?” she asked. “I’d rather try to keep this with family if I could.”
Griffin nodded. “Let me see if he’s working and can bring her in. I’ll try to see where she is living.”
“Her husband works at Atlantic Rise,” Ava said. “They are staying there until they can get into their apartment. I just saw her at work. I’ve been working with her for weeks. I can’t believe she could have done this to me and I had no idea.”
Seth pulled her into his arms. “Relax. We’ll get the answers. Hopefully soon and can put this all behind us.”
Griffin was making another call to Atlantic Rise and spoke with Penelope. She was happy this was staying within the family and Griffin explained the situation, but she took the phone away from Griffin and he lifted his eyebrow at her at her nerve to do that.
“Penelope, I’m so sorry. I don’t want to believe this of her. Can you do this discreetly?”
“Of course,” Penelope said. “Have whoever is going to come get her for questioning call me and we’ll get her down in the lobby and to my office. We’d prefer to not have anything stand out too.”
She handed the phone back to Griffin and turned to Seth. “What a mess this is. I don’t want this to affect Emily and Penelope’s business either.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said, running his hand up and down her back.
“I know, but it feels like I’m ruining someone’s life.”
He snorted. “She tried to ruin yours.”
“I just can’t believe this,” she said. “I want to know what she has to say.”
Griffin hung the phone up. “Jarrett is working and is calling Penelope now. They will get Colleen in the room and question her on it.”
“I want to go there,” she said. “I need to.”
“I’ll be there,” Griffin said. “If it’s not her, I need to know what she knows and how she got the cards.”
The three of them left, Adele still in good hands with Eli, but Ava texted to let him know what was going on.
By the time they got to Atlantic Rise, they were being shown into Penelope’s office. Colleen was in there with another man, she was assuming her husband, along with Jarrett Bond in uniform.
“I didn’t do it,” Colleen said. “I don’t know what is going on.” There were tears running down Colleen’s face. “They are questioning me for fraudulent purchases and said it’s a felony. That I spent over forty thousand dollars. I don’t have that kind of money. Tell them I don’t, Ava.”
Her heart was going out to the woman that she thought she knew. “Someone stole my identity. They took out over forty thousand in credit card debt in my name. They got my social security number and all my personal information to do that.”
“It’s not me,” Colleen said, pleading. She looked at Penelope. “Please don’t fire my husband over this. We didn’t do anything. How could I even get that information? Those cards were a gift to me. I was annoyed they didn’t work and was lucky I had the cash to pay for my groceries.”
Ava turned to look at Jarrett and then Griffin.
“Who gave those cards to you?” her husband asked.
“Tracy. I mean they weren’t a gift. I bought them from her.”
“Why would you buy gift cards from her?” Ava asked.
“Because she was moving. She said she had a bunch of them and there wasn’t a grocery store she could use them at. She said someone gave them to her and
she offered to sell them to me for half price. I thought it was a good deal.”
“Tracy who?” Jarrett asked.
“Tracy Rogers. She worked with us. She was fired months ago and then got another job out of the area finally.”
“Fired?” Ava asked. “I didn’t know that.”
“That’s why I gave you that funny look when we saw you months ago out at the restaurant and you told Tracy that the office was going to miss her. She’d been gone at that point for months.”
“Why was she fired?” Jarrett asked. “Do you know?”
“She never said. I think she just wasn’t doing her job,” Colleen said, wiping her hand under her nose. Penelope handed her a tissue. “Thank you.”
“Do you know where she lives?” Griffin asked. “Or how she would even have access to personal information?”
“She worked in patient services,” Ava said. “I’m a patient at the practice too. She’d have access to that.”
Could it have been this easy all along? The question was why her though? Or was it more than her?
“Do you know where she lives now?” Jarrett asked after Griffin hadn’t been answered. “We need to question her and we ask you don’t tip her off. You aren’t being charged now, but until we speak with her, you are still a potential suspect.”
“She’s on Cape Cod,” Colleen said. “I’ve got her address in my room. I have it written down. I won’t tell her anything. I can’t believe she did this, but it wasn’t me. I swear to God it wasn’t me.”
Ava wanted to believe her. She really did. But she still didn’t know why Tracy would have done this. “Do you think she did it to more than me?” she asked Jarrett.
“We’ll find out,” Jarrett said. “Don’t leave the island,” he told Colleen.
“I won’t,” Colleen said. “I just don’t want anyone to know about this.”
“We’ll keep it quiet,” Ava said. “Right now only family is aware and if you are innocent, no one will know.”
“What do you think?” Seth asked her when they were driving back to the casino to get Adele.
“I couldn’t believe it was Colleen. I don’t know Tracy as well, but Colleen I did. It didn’t seem to fit.”