she’d learned to be leery of. The kind of serious that said, I may have failed to mention I have a wife and three kids back in California and even though I said I love you, I can’t leave my family. Ack. She watched too much television. “Okay. What?”
His cell phone rang on the night table. “Shit,” he said softly. He sat up and checked the number. “It’s Zach.”
“Take it,” Julie said. They weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Troy punched the screen and flipped the covers off as he got out of bed. “Hey, Zach.” Julie watched as he paced the room, listening to his father. “Let me check with Julie, but it’s probably fine.” A few minutes later, he disconnected the call and tossed the phone at the foot of the bed. “Zach wants us to have dinner with him tonight.” He headed toward the bathroom. “I told him I’d get back to him.”
“Sure. That’s fine. He’s got a lot of years to make up for, Troy. He wants to know you. I don’t blame him.” She heard him flip the toilet seat up as his phone rang again. Probably Zach. She picked it up and the caller ID surprised her.
Sophia Nepali.
Interesting. She hadn’t even realized Troy had met Sophia, since she spent most of her time in London. The phone continued to ring as the toilet flushed and the faucet went on. Troy came out and Julie handed it to him.
“Why is Sophia Nepali calling you?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” He didn’t make any move to answer it.
“Are you dodging her?” She smiled because it seemed so out of character for the man who ran in front of bullets to be leery of a phone call from Ari’s wife. But the serious expression on Troy’s face had her wondering about the phone call. “I didn’t realize you’d ever met her.”
Troy wiped a hand down his face and stepped farther into the room. “Look, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you for a few days now...”
Julie hated the tone of his voice, noticed the underlying edge of nerves as he paced in front of her. He snatched his shorts from the end of the bed and put them on. Apparently this conversation needed clothes. She threw on her T-shirt that she’d lost under the sheets.
Troy paced in front of her and every bit of spit in her mouth ran dry. Not a good sign.
“I wasn’t actually working for Ari all that time.”
Julie waited, nodded. She refused to say a word.
“I was working for Sophia.”
“Is there much of a difference?” she asked. The money came from the same household, so what did it matter?
Troy canted his head. “Well, yeah, it matters because Ari didn’t know I was working for her. He thought I was on his payroll.”
Shrugging her shoulders, Julie said, “I don’t understand.”
Troy ran a hand through his hair, and a prickly feeling raced down Julie’s spine.
“Sophia hired me to...to watch Ari.”
“Right. I figured that. That’s what bodyguards do.”
“I’m not a bodyguard. I’m a private investigator. Sophia thought...thinks that Ari is having an affair with someone.”
Julie snorted. “She’s probably right. He can barely keep his pants zip—” Private investigator. The words slammed around in her skull. She put a hand out, finger up, trying to put the pieces together. “Wait a minute. You were hired to watch Ari and find out who he was screwing, is that it?”
Troy nodded. “Yeah, but I hated it and quit when I told you I quit.”
The pieces slowly connected and Julie struggled to make sense of everything. “You quit the morning of the car bomb.” The morning after they’d spent the night together. A cold chill zinged down her spine and she covered her face with her hand as she backed out of the bed. No, no, no, this was not happening. “Are you telling me that I was the one you thought Ari was having an affair with? And you slept with me before you quit the job?” Her stomach turned over as a few more pieces clicked into place. The night they’d slept together he’d knocked on her door a minute after she’d hung up with him because he’d been in front of her house waiting for Ari to show up. Holy shit. Ari had been there and kissed her in the doorway. She’d called Troy and she’d looked out the window to see the coyotes on her front lawn. Her stomach flipped again and she did her own pacing on