You Betrayed Me (The Cahills #3) - Lisa Jackson Page 0,80

would interview Cissy Cahill Holt, someone who intimately knew all of the skeletons tucked away in the prestigious, if scandalous, Cahill family closets.

Smiling to herself, she passed by the gatehouse where she’d bullied her way past the guard, then turned into a tree-lined street, joining the thin flow of moving traffic, taillights glowing ahead of her, headlights streaming in the opposite direction.

As for Lenora Travers, Charity was certain that bitch would get hers. What goes around, comes around.

If not, Charity would make sure of it.

* * *

Rebecca beat back her rising panic.

So she was going to meet James, so what?

She’d forced this issue, had barged into his hospital room, and then sneaked into his house, only to be found out, but she wasn’t ready for this, the emotional onslaught of dealing with James and Megan, and the aftermath of their betrayal, and . . .

“Oh, hell,” she muttered, giving herself a quick mental slap. She’d started this, and she’d better damned well see it through. The nasty little thought that if she played her cards right and enlisted James’s help in locating Megan, he might realize that he’d gotten involved with the wrong sister crept through her mind.

“Stop!” she said aloud. Whatever she’d once thought she’d shared with James, it was over! O.V.E.R.

“Just keep reminding yourself of that,” she muttered as she looked in the mirror, snapping her hair into a messy bun. Her reflection looked haunted, as if she hadn’t slept in a week. Still, she ignored her makeup kit. “What you see is what you get.” Pulling on boots and a jacket, she grabbed her wallet and was out the door.

True to his word, James was waiting for her just inside the hotel’s double doors, a Stetson covering most of his hair and bandage, his bad arm hidden beneath his jacket, looking for all the world like some long-legged action-movie hero in battered jeans and beard shadow.

Ignoring the knocking of her wayward heart, she moved toward him with more confidence than she felt.

He looked up and caught her eye. “Hey,” he said as some kind of greeting.

“Hi. You ready?” Before he could answer, she pushed into the street.

“You know where you’re heading?” he asked, following her out.

“There’s a restaurant across the street.”

“That’s where you want to go? A noisy restaurant?”

Beats the alternative, she thought, imagining being alone with him in her hotel room. And the lobby was out. She’d figured that out as she walked through. It was crowded. There were two people on the circular sofa near the Christmas tree, both heads bent over cell phones, a thirtysomething couple arguing with a desk clerk, their luggage surrounding them, their trio of children playing hide-and-seek around potted plants and chairs and yelling while faintly the strains of “Jingle Bells” added to the general cacophony.

“Doubt we’ll get a table,” James said.

Rebecca looked across the street through the restaurant’s windows and saw a crowd within. The booths were all full, and there was a group gathered in front of the reception area just inside the doors. And hadn’t she witnessed Sophia Russo going into it not fifteen minutes earlier? Did she really want to run into the blonde while she was with James? “Where then?”

“Your room?” he suggested.

Hell, no. She thought of the messy bed and lack of seating. And the last time she’d been in a bedroom with James. Shaking her head, she said, “Don’t think so. I thought I made that clear.”

“Then—?”

“You’re the local. You tell me.”

“Don’t suppose you’d want to go back to the house?”

She remembered hiding in his attic and the disarray. “Isn’t it a mess?”

“Being straightened up.”

“There must be somewhere closer.”

He glanced outside, and his eyebrows slammed together. “There’s a bar two blocks down. If we’re lucky no one from the press will see us.”

“This is a pretty small town. It’s not like there are dozens of reporters or the paparazzi waiting outside.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “No one from the newspapers has contacted you?”

“Okay, fine.” She was anxious, ready to get it over with. “The bar sounds good.” It didn’t, but they were running out of options. James held the door for two women who were hurrying into the hotel, a woman in a full-length coat holding tightly to the leash of a French bulldog in a tight red sweater. The taller of the two women, a redhead who seemed about fifty, was dragging two roller bags, a scarf covering the lower half of her face as she made her way to the desk, where