His Hush-Hush Baby - Holly Rayner Page 0,18

Taking her coffee, she settled at one of the barstools in the window and rummaged through her purse. Maybe her driver’s license had slipped from her wallet and fallen to the bottom of her bag.

It wasn’t there, though. She kept the belongings in her purse pretty sparse, and a double search revealed the license was nowhere to be seen.

Frowning, she tried to remember the last time she’d taken it out of the wallet. At the bar with Brie the other night?

No. The bartender hadn’t carded them. In fact, it had been quite a while since she’d been carded, since she usually haunted the same spots and the people who worked at them knew her.

Maybe she’d dropped it somewhere. Or it had slipped from her wallet and then out of her purse. She had gone through everything in the purse the day before at Kai’s. Maybe that’s where it was.

She didn’t want to take that as a sign to blow off her dad and go back to Kai’s. Even entertaining that thought felt too awful.

But she did need to find the license, or else it would be worrying her all day. And she really didn’t need to add any more stress to her life.

Pulling her phone back out, she texted her dad to tell him to expect her a little later, and then walked for the subway. He probably wouldn’t like the news, but it wasn’t like she was skipping out on her parents. Once she found her wallet, she’d happily spend the entire day with her mom.

Hell, maybe she’d even bring her to Kai’s. They could chat while she worked, and the odds of her mom ever remembering being there were so slim.

At Kai’s, she discarded the latte that she’d only taken a few sips of—because apparently pregnancy made you disgusted by the things you once loved.

The license hadn’t been in the foyer, and it wasn’t in the kitchen. Wearing a frown, she walked into the living room. Still nothing.

She started to turn, but something in Kai’s office caught her eye. A few papers lay on the floor between the desk and the open door. They looked off, since he was the kind of person who kept things orderly.

Walking across the living room, she picked up the papers, meaning to leave them on the desk before going. A few words caught her eye, though, and suddenly she found herself reading the first page.

It was nothing special, just a few emails back and forth between Kai and someone named Kyle Schwab regarding stock prices for Wingspan, a major airline.

She set the papers on the desk, but for some reason that she didn’t comprehend she felt compelled to look at the other papers.

The other few were also printouts of email conversations about Wingspan, except each was with a different person. And each named a different price for the same stocks, even though all the emails were from a week ago.

With no warning, Diane’s legs went weak. She took a seat in one of the leather chairs facing the desk and stared out the window at the building across the street.

Questions raced through her head. What was up with the emails? Why had Kai printed them out, and how could the price of stocks change so drastically within ten minutes?

That wasn’t the usual way of things, right?

She licked her lips, looking for an explanation. The only one she could find squeezed her heart tight.

Kai was lying to clients about stocks.

What was the official term for that? Stock manipulation?

Not that it mattered what you called it. When it came down to it, he was lying. He must have printed the emails out in order to keep track of what he’d told different people, after no doubt deleting the original emails so there would be no evidence of his deception.

“No,” Diane whispered out loud. She was going down a rabbit hole.

Or was she?

She got up and reread the emails. They didn’t look good, no matter which way you approached it. The simple truth of the matter was that Kai was a liar.

Tears ran hot and heavy down Diane’s face, and for a while she just sat there and cried. She wanted to pick the phone up and call someone to share what was happening, but she’d kept their relationship so on the down-low, there was no one to tell.

Except for the police.

Reaching into her purse, she took out her phone and stared at it. This was the father of her child. Did she really want