Gilded Craving - Olivia Jaymes Page 0,1

he always known how this phone call was going to end? He wasn't a bad son, per se. Yes, he was a disappointment to his parents but he hadn't ended up in prison or rehab.

He didn't want his mother to be sad or even worse...cry.

"I'll see what I can do about my schedule," he finally said. "But I can't make any promises."

"You'll be there," Liza replied confidently. "I know my brother and you'll make it happen. This is important, Ryan."

"You only think you know me."

Liza thought she knew everything. Or at least she had when they were kids. For the youngest in the family, she'd been quite the know-it-all.

"I have to go," she said. "I'm having lunch with Mariah."

Mariah Campbell. His sister didn't have to say the last name. In Ryan's world, there was only one Mariah. His fingers tightened on the cell phone in his hand, the knuckles turning white. His good mood was rapidly dissolving from this conversation. Liza knew where to hit him.

Right in the heart.

She meant well. She'd never given up on Ryan and Mariah as a couple. He had, though, long ago, but that didn't mean he'd forgotten. How could he? At one point in his life she'd been the most important thing in the world.

"Good for you. I don't need to know anything about it or her."

"But you want to, right? I don't think she's dating anyone."

Mariah had never lacked for male companionship if she wanted it. If she was single, it was by choice.

"Once again, good for Mariah. Now I have to go. I'm supposed to be working. Talk to you soon."

He hung up before Liza had another chance to fill him in on his ex-girlfriend's life news. He didn't need to know because he didn't care. She was the past. His career was the present and future.

"So you're going to a birthday party?" Luke asked, glancing in Ryan's direction and then returning his eyes to the road. "Your mom?"

"My mother's sixtieth and it's rude to listen in to other people's conversations."

Ryan was just busting Luke's balls. He didn't care that his friend had overheard.

"Excuse the hell out of me," Luke joked back. "It was hard not to hear unless I wanted to drive from the hood of the car."

A mental image of Luke doing just that had Ryan chuckling.

"I was only giving you a hard time. That was my sister Liza and she wants me to attend my mother's birthday party."

"And you don't want to?"

Ryan's friend was aware that he had issues with his family, he just didn't know what those issues were.

"It's...complicated."

Luke glanced at him again. "Okay, I won't pry. It's none of my business anyway. Now, do you want to tell me who Mariah is? Because I've never heard her name before. Is she someone from your murky past?"

Ryan didn't even know where to begin when it came to Mariah.

"Mariah and I dated on and off for a long time," he finally replied. "Then we broke up. It's been years now. She got married eventually but I heard they divorced. Liza won't give it up, though. She's constantly trying to talk to me about Mariah and tell me the latest going on in her life. They're best friends and Liza always wanted them to be sisters."

"But you're not the marrying type?"

"Something like that."

"So you'll see this Mariah when you go home for the party?"

Absolutely. Ryan's parents adored her as if she was one of their own children.

"Yes, but it's not the big deal that Liza makes it out to be. It was all a long time ago. I doubt Mariah even thinks about me anymore."

"No shrine to her first love?" Luke chuckled.

"Hardly. She's not the shrine type."

"What about you? You don't spend evenings paging through your old yearbook thinking about what might have been?"

"I don't even know where my yearbooks are. Mariah's a wonderful person but she and I never could have made it work. We're far too different."

"I guess Liza is destined to be disappointed then."

"I guess she is. She's a big girl. She'll get over it. I'm not ever getting back together with Mariah."

Luke didn't reply to Ryan's declaration, instead parking the car in front of a bungalow on a residential street. They were supposed to try and speak to a witness from a cold case they were both working on. The murder had happened twenty years ago and this witness had been able to give a vague description to the cops but the killer had never been

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