Fatal Secrets - Desiree Holt Page 0,21
work?” she demanded.
“Like I just said, you’ll stay here, not at your apartment.” Sadie’s voice was firm. “And Sean will be like a second skin. Hank and I already discussed it.”
Zoe lifted an eyebrow. “You and Hank did? Without me?”
“Yes, and shut up about it. I am not going to lose a very special friend to some nutcase. How lucky it is that Sean arrived just at this time. Right?”
“Yeah, right,” she snorted. “How lucky I am to have a protector.”
Feisty, Sean thought. I like that.
“Then it’s agreed.” Hank gave her a piercing look. If you go anywhere, Sean will take you. Period.”
Again Sean sensed she was about to object, maybe even to him, but then apparently decided to leave the argument for now.
“Yes. Agreed.”
He had to wonder if she was thinking about last night as much as he was, and how they’d handle that. Did she just want to forget it happened? Could she? Because he was having a hard time wiping it from his brain, which for him was very unusual.
Sadie grinned. “So, as I said, let’s have lunch. Zoe, if it’s okay with you, while we eat you can give us a better version of what’s going on. And maybe fill us in on stuff we might not know. Then I think you and Sean should talk, so he’s filled in on everything about the case, all the way back to Justine’s murder.”
“Nail on the head.” Hank threw an arm around his wife. “But first, let’s eat.”
Zoe blew out a breath then looked around the table at everyone. Again, Sean wondered if she was going to object, but instead she managed a little smile.
“Okay. But at the risk of repeating myself yet again, I get a voice in how we do this. I can’t be restricted in my work. This is a very special project to me.”
“I hear you.” Hank nodded in agreement, even if a little bit reluctantly. “Whatever you say.”
But Sean figured the man was only smoothing the waters so they could have a decent meal together. Zoe might be accepting what Hank was telling her, but he wondered if anyone but him noticed the stiffening of her spine or the tiny set of her jaw. The firecracker who had set his sheets ablaze last night didn’t appear to be someone easily pushed aside. He could hardly wait to see what came next.
Chapter 4
He liked to think of himself as the Invisible Man, able to come and go about his business in such a way no one paid a lot of attention to what was really going on. They were all so used to seeing him one way that they never looked for anything else. He was very good at blending in. At hiding in plain sight. People saw what they wanted to see. Period. It not only helped with certain aspects of his work but also with what he liked to call his tasty side pieces.
He’d learned long ago that one woman alone was never enough to satisfy all his appetites. He had multiple tastes, especially in bed, and no one female was ever going to be enough to satisfy them. He’d tried with his wife. Really tried. Wanted to make the marriage work but something was just missing from it. As accommodating as Julia was, he’d learned there was a whole side of himself he had to keep hidden from her. He hadn’t wanted the complication of having to conceal a relationship, but what was he to do? Divorce was definitely not a possibility, not with everything else to consider.
He thought he managed things very well, and he had, until Justine DeLuca. He’d thought the attention he gave her would be enough to keep her in line, but she couldn’t keep from sticking her damn attorney’s nose into private areas of his life. Asking questions he hadn’t wanted to answer about women and money. It had all boiled over in one massive eruption of frustration, and he’d lost control, something he never did.
He’d been so sure everything had died down and faded away. Just one more unsolved case. He’d moved on with his life and his career, sure that that particular devil was destroyed. Apparently, it was going to haunt him forever, unless he figured out how to get rid of that nosy bitch, Zoe Young. So she was going to write a book about this. Fuck. He did not need that at all.
He needed to figure this out. Find a way to