Ghost Mortem (Ghost Detective #1) - Jane Hinchey Page 0,54

than you."

"I like older men." She sulked, crossing her arms across her chest.

"Let me give you some advice. When this all comes out—and it will—it's you who will come out of it worse off. You'll be labeled the other woman. The homewrecker. No matter that it's Steven doing the cheating. It's your reputation that will be dragged through the mud."

She gasped. "You can't tell anyone. That's against client privilege."

"I'm not a lawyer or a doctor," I pointed out, "so that doesn't apply, and also, your dad didn't hire Delaney Investigations to follow you. But you're right, I'm not telling anyone, that's not how I roll." I looked her up and down. "You seem a smart woman so let me give you one piece of advice, woman to woman. Once a cheater, always a cheater."

"Steven would never cheat on me!" she gasped.

I shook my head at her naivety. "Oh yeah? Whose bed does he sleep in every night? Who does he kiss good morning? He might tell you he doesn't love his wife or their marriage is dead or whatever way he spun it, but he's still there. With her. Because what he told you is bullshit just to get into your pants. And I'll bet you a hundred bucks he is most definitely having sex with his wife."

"Whoa!" Ben said, "Harsh."

"But true." I nodded my head emphatically. Which puzzled Sophie, because, of course, I was talking to a ghost. Damn it, and I had been doing so well. I cleared my throat and tried to cover the slip. "You're young, Sophie. You have your whole life ahead of you. There's plenty of time to find the right man. And a man who is married to someone else is not the right one. I think you know that, yeah? And maybe, on some level, you pursued this relationship to get back at your dad, but in the end, the one person you're hurting the most in all of this...is you."

19

Rather than park my ailing Chrysler on the street, I parked it in the garage next to Ben's Nissan. Maybe now I'd remember to take his car and let my old bucket of bolts enjoy her retirement.

Ben had grilled me all the way home about my speech to Sophie and how he thought I was talking from experience. I assured him I wasn't. I hadn't had an affair with a married man, and I hadn't been cheated on. But I'd had work friends who had. As a temp, I breezed in and out of people's lives, but believe me when I say I saw a lot of the fallout from those situations in the workplace. It was never pretty.

"Oh good—" Thor began when I opened the door leading from the garage to the house.

"Don't tell me." I cut him off. "You're starving?"

"Very good, human. You're learning." His British accent still slew me and I grinned as he trotted by my side on the way to the kitchen. As predicted, there was still kibble in his bowl. Rather than add more, I reached down and rearranged what was there, merely covering the empty spot in the center of the bowl. Thor didn't even notice. As far as he was concerned he had more food. I picked up the second cereal bowl that had an inch of water in it and took it to the sink for a clean and top up.

"You would have known when you took those photos of Steven kissing Sophie, who she was," I said to Ben while I worked.

He leaned against the kitchen bench, legs crossed at the ankles. "Yeah," he agreed.

"So I'm wondering if you didn't close the cases because of that connection? Sophie. In both cases, she wasn't the person you were hired to investigate, but there she was, right in the middle of both. I think you were planning on speaking with her—like I did today. Technically she hasn't done anything wrong. She's of legal age, she can see who she wants, but morally..."

Ben was nodding. "You're right. I was probably going to give her a lecture, in my cop voice, about the consequences of the choices we make."

"How much do you weigh? One eighty?" I measured him up out of the corner of my eye.

"Thereabouts." He shrugged.

"And Sophie? She's around five seven and a hundred and thirty-something pounds. Small frame."

"In that ballpark," he agreed. "And I see where you're going with this. She'd have struggled to get me into the woods. I'd have been dead