A Beautiful Lie (Playing with Fire #1)(30)

Annabelle had wished she could blame her father for everything. It would be so easy to just give in to the hurt and the anger and finally admit that if it wasn’t for his bad choices, she wouldn’t have needed to clean up his mess. In a sense it was true, but Annabelle wasn’t the type of person to do that. No matter the circumstances, he was still her family.

Annabelle had found out that Anthony Capuano was the head of the New Jersey criminal syndicate. In layman’s terms, he was in the mob. He ran everything and everyone on the entire East Coast. A few months into Annabelle’s mother’s illness, Joe Parker realized the medical bills were piling up. Through a few back door connections at work, he was put in touch with a man who could give him an immediate loan, no questions asked, no references needed, no copies of ten years’ worth of pay stubs and tax returns required. Joe was able to pay Anthony back with interest in the time allotted, and that should have been the end of it. But then there were more bills, along with funeral costs, and it snowballed from there. After Annabelle left for college, Joe borrowed well beyond his means and started gambling to pay back those debts, only to incur more on top of it. Week after week he was punished for not coming up with the money, and week after week he continued to fall further into the hole. By the time Annabelle was contacted, her father was in so deep with the mob there was no way out.

A call to Annabelle’s cell phone three days later by an “unavailable number” provided her with the name of a restaurant, a date, and time before disconnecting without another word. Annabelle almost skipped the appointment, but curiosity got the better of her. The man that had spoken to her on campus a few days earlier was the one to show up and sit down across from her. She would later find out that his name was Agent Brad Richmond, with the CIA, and they had been keeping her under surveillance for three years due to her father’s dealings with Anthony Capuano. When they realized how intelligent she was, that as a cop’s daughter she had a wealth of knowledge about law enforcement, and that before her mother got sick she was a member of the junior rifle league, and by the time she was thirteen could handle a weapon better than adult men three times her age, they knew they wanted her as one of their own. It was an added bonus that she was a self-imposed loner thanks to her father and that she was desperate to finish college.

Annabelle had been given all of the money she needed to finish school, her father’s debts were completely paid off, and the contract currently out on his head was forgotten. All she had to do was keep up her end of the deal: tell no one or her life or theirs would be at risk.



Garrett flopped back down on the gym mat after Parker had left and remained there for at least an hour, staring up at the ceiling. He wanted to feel bad that his and Parker’s first conversation hadn’t gone exactly as planned, but he could still feel her body pinning his to the ground and every other thought disappeared into the recesses of his mind. His hands ground into the mat next to him as he thought about how easily it would have been to grasp her hips and slide her down his stomach and over the hardness between his legs that he was surprised she hadn't felt.

Garrett's chest grew tight when he remembered the look in her eyes when he told her everything about her was a lie. He should have never said that to her. Regardless of the fact that she could kick his ass, and probably knew who killed JFK, she was still his Parker. And when Garrett had these thoughts, he didn't need to remind himself that by his Parker, he meant his friend Parker.

His best friend Milo's fiancée, Parker. She told him she needed her friend, and that was just what he'd give her.

When Garrett got back to the villa, he was surprised to find a sock wedged in the door. He figured Parker was just pissed off enough to throw all of his stuff on the front walk and make him sleep on the wooden chair by the door.

He crept into the dark room and saw Parker's sleeping form on the far side of the bed in the middle of the room. It didn't escape his notice that she had left plenty of room for him to sleep there as well, which hopefully meant she wasn't too mad anymore.

Garrett stood there at the edge of the bed, his brain at war with his libido. The logical part of his head told him it wouldn't be a good idea to sleep in the same bed with her. But the little head down below, that made most of his decisions, didn't see what the big deal was. Garrett and Parker had shared a bed numerous times.



"Why are you in my bed?"

Garrett had squinted at Parker out of one eye, watching her yawn and stretch her arms above her head.

"Milo left in the middle of the night for a mission. I thought I heard a noise and got scared. And you have better pillows," she explained as she rolled to face him and burrowed her face into said pillows.

Garrett had stared at the pillows beneath her and knew it would take exactly four days until her smell was gone from them.

"You talked in your sleep last night. And you have a serious boundary issue with your legs," she had complained.

"I'm pretty sure I know how to fix that, Parker. Stop sleeping in my bed."



Remembering that time Parker had shown up in his bed unannounced made Garrett smile. But then he remembered that Parker was CIA and the smile fell from his face as he wondered if she had really been scared by a noise that night or all the other times she "thought she heard something" and crawled into his bed when Milo was away. Garrett figured Parker knew at least twenty-seven different ways to kill anything that went bump in the night.