Secret Weapon Spouse - By B. J. Daniels Page 0,10
with her.”
Her movements were slow, purposeful. He found himself watching her rather than looking for evidence of Preston Wellington III in the condo.
At first glance, Samantha Peters wasn’t the type of woman a man would even notice. Hell, he wouldn’t have given her a second glance under other circum-stances. It was the way she dressed, he realized with a jolt.
Not that he knew anything about women’s clothing, but even he could see that the suit she wore was too large for her slim, small frame, the cut all wrong. She wore it like armor, as if protecting herself, he thought with surprise.
And her hair. It was colored too dark for her pale skin and cut shoulder length, long enough that it often covered part of her face.
And those tortoiseshell glasses. The frames took away from the gold in her brown eyes.
He frowned, wondering why she dressed like that. The woman was too savvy for it to be anything but a calculated choice. Almost as if she was hiding from something, he thought, even more intrigued.
He realized she was looking intently at one of the men’s shirts hanging in the closet. “What is it?”
She let go of the sleeve. “Nothing.”
Like hell. As she came out, he slipped past her to reach for the shirt, wondering what she wasn’t telling him. Was she trying to protect him? Why else wouldn’t she tell him?
One glance at the shirt and he saw it was old, looked more like it might belong to one of the construction workers. “Her fiancé left behind only his old clothes, nothing he would bother to come back for. Is that it?”
She turned from where she had stopped midway into the room. “None of this proves anything.”
“You still want to believe this guy really loves my sister and isn’t just using her, don’t you? I admire your optimism,” he said as he joined her in the middle of the large room. “I guess optimism is something you have to have in your line of work given the divorce rate, but I’ve got to tell you, I don’t like any of this.” He glanced around the room. “What the hell is Caroline doing here? You’ve seen her more than I have the last six months. Doesn’t this strike you as odd?”
Samantha seemed to hesitate. “A little. Maybe.”
He looked at her and shook his head, unable not to smile. He actually did admire her for holding out hope that Preston Wellington III was a good guy with good intentions.
“Earlier today I had the feeling that Caroline wanted to tell me something and that’s why she asked me to meet her at your office.”
“You had no idea what it was?” she asked.
He shook his head. “But I can think of only one reason my sister would be living like this. She’s broke. What if her fiancé has taken all of her money and skipped out on her and that’s what she was going to tell me today?”
Samantha frowned. “But why go to the trouble of moving the wedding up three months if that’s the case?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe she thought she could save the relationship by getting him to the altar sooner.”
“Wouldn’t she just elope if that were the case?”
He laughed at that. “My father would cut her off without a cent of her inheritance if she did. No, she has to go through with the big wedding. It’s required of the only daughter of C. B. Graham and she knows that.”
“They were celebrating something,” Samantha said as she nodded toward an empty champagne bottle and two glasses on a nightstand beside the bed.
He’d been so upset over everything he hadn’t even noticed them until now. What would Caroline and Preston have had to celebrate? “He was probably just saying goodbye and she didn’t know it,” Alex said as he moved closer, noticing the lipstick on the rim of one glass and feeling a horrible sinking feeling as he imagined maybe one of his sister’s last happy moments.
That’s when he saw it.
He let out a curse.
“Nonalcoholic champagne?” Turning, he stalked into the bathroom where he found what he was looking for in the small wastebasket beside the commode.
“Holy hell, Caroline’s pregnant,” he said as he came out of the bathroom and saw Samantha Peters’s expression.
She didn’t look the least bit surprised and he realized she’d already figured it out and was way ahead of him.
Hell, he had the feeling she was way ahead of him on a lot of things.
SAMANTHA SAW ALL