Moonlight Scandals

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  She, on the other hand, felt like she was starting to sweat sugar.

  Walking back to her bag, she glanced over at him and couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing afterward. Was he going straight home to bed or did he have someone, somewhere, waiting for him? After last night, she imagined he had a legion of women he could call up, no matter the time, and be ready for him.

  As long as he kept his mouth shut.

  She bit down on her lip as she placed the recorder and the EMF meter back in the bag, along with the spirit box. Devlin hadn’t kept his mouth shut tonight and he’d been . . . nice to talk to. Even when he was being annoying with the questions while she was doing the EVP reading, she was having . . . fun.

  With Devlin de Vincent.

  Fun with him wasn’t something she exactly thought was possible. Well, fun outside of making out with him. That had certainly been fun.

  What came afterward had not been.

  Yawning, she zipped up the bag. It was time to get her butt home. “Do you know if someone will be here tomorrow?”

  He watched her from where he stood just inside the kitchen. “There can be.”

  “We just need someone to come in at some point and get the cameras out. I left the boxes by them,” she explained. “Someone can leave them out on the porch.”

  “I can bring them to you.”

  There was an annoying little wiggle in her chest. “That won’t be necessary.”

  He arched a brow. “Why not?”

  “Just won’t.”

  Devlin’s gaze turned knowing. “I’ll make sure they’re on the porch tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Perfect. So what will happen next is, we’re going to review the tapes. See if we find anything. If we do . . .”

  “If you do, then contact me.”

  She leaned forward, crossing her arms. “I don’t have your number and you probably don’t want to give it to me.”

  “I think I can trust you with my number.”

  “You never know. I could post your number online.”

  “Or write it in a bathroom stall. Call for a good time?”

  “More like call if you want to be annoyed but yeah,” she replied.

  Devlin laughed softly. “Got your cell phone on you? I’ll give you my number.”

  “Yep.” She pulled it out of the front pocket of the bag and after Dev gave her his number, she pulled up her Uber app. “Well, that’s all I’m going to do tonight. Thank you for doing this and not . . .”

  Both his brows lifted. “And not what?”

  “And not making . . . me want to throw myself down a flight of steps.” She grinned as she pulled her bag off the counter. “So, thank you for that.”

  Devlin stepped forward and without saying a word, he took her bag from her. They were quiet as they walked outside. As he locked up, she looked to see if there was an Uber nearby. Luckily, one was less than five minutes away.

  “Well, I’m going to call an Uber,” she said when he turned to her. “Thanks—”

  “I can take you home.”

  Surprised, she wasn’t sure what to say at first. “I’ll just call—”

  Devlin pinned her with a look. “Get in the truck, Rosie.”

  It was kind of stupid to turn down the offer. Right? She glanced down at her phone and then made up her mind. “Can you say please?”

  Coming to stand at the passenger side, he opened the door. “Can you please get in the damn truck?”

  Rosie flashed a smile. “Since you asked so nicely and said please, yes, I shall take you up on your offer.”

  “Honored,” he murmured as she climbed in. Devlin leaned in and placed the bag next to her feet.

  Relaxing, she leaned back and closed her eyes as he opened up the gate. Tonight hadn’t been bad at all. She’d gotten several hours of recording, and hopefully, the recorder had caught the noise they heard. Not for one second did she think that was the helmet, so maybe the recordings would pick up a voice or something.

  Dev returned to back the truck out, but he had to stop again to close the gate. Once he was back in, she opened her eyes.

  He was looking at her in that intense way of his. “Are you cold?”

  “A little.”

  Turning on the heat, he then tossed his arm over the seat and started down the street. Her gaze roamed over the interior. This truck was not new, but it had been kept well. Nice and tidy.

  Curiosity filled her. “Okay. I have to ask. Why this truck?”

  “Why not?”

  She looked over at him. “It’s a pretty old truck.”

  “So?” His gaze was focused on the road.

  “So? Look, I’m not talking smack about it. My car is pretty old, but you’re worth what? A gajillion dollars? And you drive an old, outdated truck?”

  “I’m not worth a gajillion dollars,” he replied, and she rolled her eyes as she wiggled into the comfy seat. “I like the truck.” He glanced over at her. “Why? Is there something wrong with it?”

  “No,” she laughed. “Why would you think there was?”

  “You’re asking about it?” he pointed out. “That’s why.”

  “I’m just surprised. Figured you’d be in a Porsche or, like, a Ferrari or something.”

  He refocused on the road. “I have a Porsche.”

  “Of course,” she demurred.

  “I don’t have a Ferrari.”

  “Gasp. What does the club think of that?”

  “Club?”

  “I assume rich people belong to some kind of private, secretive rich-people’s club,” she explained. “I imagine this rich-people’s club has rules. Such as what kind of car you must drive.”

  “You are . . .”

  “What?”

  “Odd.”

  Rosie let out a tired laugh. “So, no rich-people’s club?”

  There was a heartbeat of silence. “There are clubs.”

  “Knew it!”

  He pressed his lips together. “I do not belong to them.”

  “Oh. Well. That’s boring.” She sighed dramatically. “I was hoping you could tell me about their rules and tell me my theory is correct.”

  “What theory?”

  “That the Illuminati is real.”

  The laugh that came from him was deep, but short. Too short. “Odd,” he repeated. “You are odd.”

  “You know,” she said, letting her head rest against the seat as she watched him. “You’re allowed to laugh and smile.”

  His gaze shot to hers. “I know.”

  “Do you?”

  At the stoplight, he stared at her for a few moments and then turned back to the road.

  Oh no.

  Apparently, she’d gone too far, because he didn’t speak for several minutes.

  But then he did. “Sabrina hated this truck. I think she rode in it once.”

  Okay. She was not expecting that statement. “Sabrina sounds like a bitch.”

  He snorted as he turned onto the highway. “I’m curious about something myself.”

  “Ask. I’m an open book.”

  “You are not an open book,” he replied, dropping one hand to his lap. “How did you meet Ross?”

  “At a secret club for conspirators and scheming liars.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  She grinned as she closed her eyes. “We met about two years ago. He was doing this piece on ghost tours in the Quarter.”

  “Two years ago?”

  “Yep. I haven’t even known him all that long.” She covered a yawn. “We were friends. I mean, never really personal or anything, but we’ve shared drinks and always chatted when we saw each other. Not recently,” she added before he latched on to that. “When he showed interest in Nikki, I honestly thought it was legit.”

  When he didn’t respond, she opened her eyes. He was focused on the road. It took a moment to see that they were close to Canal Street. She glanced back at him. “You don’t even seem tired.”

  “I’m not much of
a sleeper,” he responded. “So I’m usually not even in bed by this time.”

  “Wow.” She blinked. “I could sleep for twelve hours if I didn’t have stuff going on.”

  “That must be nice.”

  “Why aren’t you much of a sleeper?”

  “Haven’t been.” The truck slowed as traffic picked up. There were always people out, especially on the weekend. “Not since I was young.”

  Rosie mulled that over and she thought she’d figured out what that meant. “Not since you had the accident, the one where you had a near-death experience?”

  “Not since then.”

  That was the last thing Devlin said. The rest of the short trip to her apartment was in silence, and she wasn’t sure if it was because something was said or if he didn’t have anything else to say.

  He pulled up to the curb and started to reach for the keys. “I can walk you up.”

  “No need,” she replied, unbuckling her seat belt and reaching for the bag. “Thanks for the ride, Devlin.”

  She started to reach for the door, but then looked back at him. Their gazes collided and held. A warm, unwanted feeling curled in her lower stomach. “We . . . we got along tonight.”

  “We did.” Those thick lashes of his lowered. “Which probably means we should end this now before that changes.”

  She looked away then, but her eyes went to the stupidest place imaginable. His mouth. There was no forgetting the way his lips felt against hers. The warmth in her stomach spread and there was a little reckless, utterly dumb part of her that wanted to invite him in.

  But common sense won out. “Good night, Devlin.”

  Devlin drew in a deep breath, and Rosie saw how tightly he was holding on to the steering wheel. His knuckles were nearly bleached white.

  “Good night, Rosie.”

  Chapter 21

  Jilly picked up the cameras while checking in with the Mendez family Sunday afternoon. They were boxed and waiting for her, and Rosie just knew that it had been Devlin who’d gone over there, taken the cameras down, and placed them on the porch.

  Liz and Jilly were going to review the tapes, and Rosie was planning to have the audio cleared by tonight, Monday by the latest, and that meant her ears needed to be glued to her headphones, but that wasn’t what she was doing.

  Instead, she was still in bed, lying on her side, and internet stalking Devlin de Vincent.

  Not exactly one of her proudest moments.

  But here she was, for the last . . . Lord, how many hours had she been at this? Too many hours, but there was a lot of stuff out there on the internet about Devlin, from when he was a child up until the more recent weeks, where news of his broken engagement with the missing Harrington heiress was discussed.

  There were articles about their mother and some of them seemed to revel in how her life had come to a jarring end, going into grotesque detail about how she’d jumped from the roof of their home. All these old, archived articles mentioned something that Rosie had forgotten.

  The sister had gone missing the same night their mother had committed suicide.

  Madeline de Vincent.

  No one ever talked about her now, did they? In the news, at least. She wasn’t sure if the brothers did. If they wondered what happened to their sister. She imagined it must’ve been the hardest for Lucian since he and Madeline were fraternal twins.

  There were several pieces on their father’s death, and it made Rosie think about how he never called the man Father or Dad. It was always Lawrence. And that was . . . odd.

  And she’d found a plethora of pictures of Devlin and his ex-fiancée. Rosie had a vague memory of what the woman looked like, having briefly seen her pictures in the papers over the years, but she had forgotten how beautiful she was.

  There was a picture of them that she found herself staring at for a creepy amount of time, but she couldn’t seem to pull her gaze away from it. They stood side by side, both dressed as if they were at some kind of gala. Devlin looked . . . goodness, he looked like a god dressed in a black tux, and Sabrina looked like a goodness. Her blond hair was pulled up in a chic, elegant twist and her pale skin as flawless as her bright red smile. She wore a gorgeous black strapless dress that was tight down to her knees and then billowed out.

  If Rosie wore a dress like that, she would look five inches shorter and about fifty pounds heavier, but someone as tall and thin as Sabrina was, she looked like a Parisian model.

  They were utterly beautiful together.

  And there wasn’t an ounce of warmth between them in the photo.

  In any of the photos of them.

  But it was so evident in this one, it was painful to even look at. Their posture and stance were stiff as a board. Sabrina’s smile was perfect, but the slight narrowing of her eyes showed annoyance. Devlin, on the other hand, looked cold and aloof standing beside her. What little she did know about their relationship was evident in the pictures of them.

  These two people didn’t love one another. Rosie wasn’t sure if they even liked each other. Why would combining two fortunes be worth being stuck, even if it was only by name, to someone you couldn’t stand? There had to be more than that.

  At least Rosie hoped so, because what did that say about Devlin to have gone along with his father’s wishes for so long?

  Closing the laptop, she rolled onto her back. There were things mentioned in the most scandalous of articles, stories about how many deaths and mysterious illnesses plagued the de Vincent family over the many decades. The curse was brought up. They were stories that Rosie had already known, because they fed the whole mythology of the de Vincent curse.

  But these deaths and disappearances were very real. These were once living and breathing people. Family. Not myths and entertaining stories to be gossiped about. If this was her family, she’d probably feel the same way Devlin did when it came to protecting his family. There really was no wonder he was so . . . paranoid.

  A kernel of guilt blossomed in her stomach when she thought about how she’d researched the curse and the haunting. She had done so without really ever considering the fact that these were real people. She was so detached from it all until now.

  She dragged her teeth over her lower lip as her thoughts wandered their way back to the one thing she had noticed; the one thing she couldn’t unsee.

  Not that what it said about Devlin should matter to her, but there wasn’t a single picture of him smiling and these photos she found on the internet spanned years. He wasn’t smiling in the ones taken with his brothers or his father. Not even older ones when he was a teenager and with his mother, who was as blonde and fair as Lucian. He was always so incredibly . . . still in the pictures. If his eyes were closed, he would appear to be standing asleep or . . . dead.

  God, that’s how he appeared, as if he were dead.

  Rosie didn’t know a lot about near-death experiences beyond a few cases she’d read on the internet or the psychological and biological explanations of what people experienced when death was seconds away. But she had read about those experiences changing someone.

  She wondered if Sarah had any insight on that that went beyond the science of it all, because Googling it would be a rabbit hole she really didn’t need to fall down.

  What was Devlin like before his accident? He’d been young, so even if he was a happy and carefree child, that didn’t necessarily mean he’d be the same as an adult. The personality was nowhere near set in stone at that age, but what if . . . what if the death had changed him?

  “Too far,” Rosie murmured as she tucked a curl behind her ear. “I’m going too far.”

  She didn’t know Devlin well enough to even begin to hazard a guess if his near-death experience had any impact on him.

  And it didn’t matter if it did.

  If there wasn’t anything to find at Lucian’s house, there wouldn’t be any reason to be in contact with him again. And if they did find something? Rosie knew what she needed to do.

  She would r
emove herself from the case.

  That was the only smart option. She and Devlin might’ve actually gotten along for several hours and she might’ve seen a different side of him, one that included smiles and laughter, but the man was complicated.

  Too complicated.

  And despite all that, he’d sparked an interest in her that needed to be squashed. She may not know everything about Devlin, but she knew enough that her interest would only grow, especially if the Devlin from last night was the real one, and that interest mixed with the attraction she felt even when she was mad at him . . . She was certain that meant only one thing.

  It would not end well for her.

  Rosie finally dragged her butt out of bed and reviewed the EVP recordings. Okay, that wasn’t exactly true. She reviewed the EVP recordings while lying in bed. Once she was finished, when it was close to seven in the evening, she headed over to Liz and Jilly’s house.

  “Hey.” Liz led her into the living room, where Jilly was watching the film from Lucian’s house. “So how was last night?”

  “It was actually good. We didn’t kill each other.”

  Hitting pause on the laptop, Jilly pulled off her headphones. “I heard that. Good news.”

  Rosie grinned as she sat in the moon chair they had under one of those hanging spider plants. “Yeah, so that’s kind of why I’m here.”

  “I thought you just missed us.” Liz pouted as she sat by Jilly.

  “I did. I swear.”

  Jilly smirked. “No, you didn’t. So anything on the EVP?”

  “Work. Work.” Liz leaned in, kissing Jilly’s cheek. “Good thing I love you.”

  “Good thing you’re interested in the same things,” Rosie pointed out. “So, I’ve finished the EVP recordings. The crash and footstep sound I texted about when I got home this morning? It was picked up on the recorder. It’s pretty muted sounding but it can be enhanced.”

  “Awesome.” Jilly placed the headsets on the coffee table.

  “And there were a couple of things I’ve flagged for Lance,” Rosie continued, sliding down in the thick, cushioned chair. “There were a couple of other things that the recorder picked up. I swore one of them sounded like a name, when we were upstairs in one of the bedrooms, but I can’t make it out.”