All In (The Naturals, #3)(16)

Get it under control, Cassie. If you feel it, he’ll see it. So don’t feel it.

“Can I tell you about our specials?” A waitress appeared beside our table. The six of us managed to place both drink and food orders before Michael turned his attention to my side of the table. I could feel him working his way up and down my face. He glanced briefly at Dean, then back at me.

“Well, Colorado,” Michael mused out loud. “Slight tension in your neck and jaw, eyes cast downward, brows pulled together ever so slightly.”

I felt naked under his gaze, laid bare.

I’m angry. I’m angry that the police found a body and angry that it took them five years to find it. I’m angry about what your father did to you.

“You’re sad and you’re angry and you feel sorry for me.” An edge worked its way into Michael’s voice. He wasn’t a person who let other people feel sorry for him.

Nothing hurts you unless you let it.

“And you,” Michael said, pointing a chopstick lazily at Dean, “are having one of those oh-so-Dean moments: self-loathing and inadequacy, check. Longing and fear, check. Constant, seething anger, bubbling just under the surface—”

“When you lose the remote control to your television, four percent of the time it ends up in the freezer!” Sloane blurted out loudly.

Michael glanced at Sloane. Whatever he saw there must have convinced him that now wasn’t a good time to be stirring things up with Dean and me. He turned back to Judd and said, “I believe your line is ‘This is why we can’t have nice things.’”

Beside me, Dean snorted, and the tension that had settled over the table dissolved.

“Check out the company.” Lia nodded to the bar. I turned to look. Camille Holt. She was sitting at the bar, wearing black shorts and a backless top, sipping a red drink and talking with another woman.

“Person of interest number five,” Dean murmured, eyeing Camille’s friend. “Tory Howard.”

Next to Camille, Tory Howard—stage magician and rival of our second victim—drank beer from a bottle. Her dark hair was wavy and damp, like she’d come here straight from jumping out of the shower. No muss. No fuss. I tried to reconcile that with the fact that she was a performer, an illusionist, pulling off tricks that were larger-than-life.

“This,” Judd muttered, “is why we can’t have nice things.”

He’d tried to tear us away from our work—and there work was, sitting at the bar.

“Mr. Shaw.” The hostess’s voice broke into my thoughts. I glanced toward the front of the restaurant, expecting to see Aaron. Instead, I saw a man who looked the way Aaron would in thirty years. His thick blond hair was tinged silver. His lips were set in a permanent half smile. He wore a three-piece suit as comfortably as other people wore a T-shirt and jeans.

Aaron’s father. My stomach twisted, because if this was Aaron’s father, he was Sloane’s father, too.

Beside him, there was a woman with light brown hair coifed at the nape of her neck. She was holding a little girl, no older than three or four. The child was Korean, with beautiful dark hair and eyes that took in everything. Their daughter, I realized. Aaron’s little sister. As the hostess led the trio to a table near ours, I wondered if Sloane knew her father had adopted a child.

I knew the exact moment Sloane saw them. She went very still. Underneath the table, I reached for her hand. She squeezed mine, hard enough to hurt.

Several minutes later, our food was deposited on the table. With great effort, Sloane let go of my hand and pulled her gaze away from the happy threesome, just as Aaron slid into the empty seat at the table to join his family.

His family. Not hers.

I tried to catch Sloane’s eye, but she wouldn’t look at me. She concentrated all of her attention on the sushi in front of her, carefully disassembling it and dividing each roll into its parts. Avocado. Salmon. Rice.

At the bar, Camille and Tory finished their drinks. As they gathered their possessions and turned toward us, I noticed two things. The first was the thick silver chain Camille wore looped multiple times around her neck.

The second thing was Aaron Shaw noticing Camille.





Five minutes after Camille Holt and Tory Howard exited the restaurant, Aaron excused himself from his family’s table. Half an hour after that, Mr. Shaw carried his delighted little girl through the room to get a cherry at the bar. As father and daughter returned to their seats, I saw Shaw register Sloane’s presence. He never faltered, never altered the pace of his stride.

But my gut told me he recognized her.

This was a man who oozed power and control. Based on the son he’d raised, I was willing to bet he knew everything that went on in this casino. Aaron might not know that Sloane is your daughter, but you do. You’ve always known.

Beside me, Sloane looked so nakedly vulnerable that my eyes stung for her.

“Sloane?” Michael said quietly.

She forced her lips upward in a valiant attempt at a smile. “I’m digesting,” she told Michael. “This is my digesting face, that’s all.”

Michael didn’t press her on it, the way he would have if it were Dean or Lia or me. “And what a pleasant digesting face it is,” he declared.

Beside me, Sloane developed an intense interest in her lap. By the time dessert arrived, she was moving her finger back and forth over the surface of her skirt. It took me a moment to realize that she was tracing out numbers.