A Beautiful Lie (Playing with Fire #1)(71)

Now he wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

The maid at the hotel remembered seeing Milo every couple of months routinely for the entire seven years she worked there. He always arrived alone, stayed one night, and left the next morning with a girl. She stressed that they were girls, not women. The maid never saw the girls arrive, so she didn’t know when they came or if they came alone. She never recognized any of them.

Until the last one: Catalina Olvera.

She’d recognized the girl’s picture when an article was printed in the paper about her death. Several months prior to the article, she’d seen Milo walking out of his hotel room with his arm wrapped around the teenage girl’s shoulders. She remembered the girl because it was the only time one of them ever made eye contact with her, the only time one of them looked terrified and desolate. It was the first time she felt the need to tell someone. Her manager told her if she valued her job, she would keep her mouth shut about the man and his girls. The American had connections that could ruin all of them.

After that, the maid never saw Milo at the hotel again.

Brady didn’t say anything to Garrett on the way back to the resort. He was sick with the thought that someone he knew, someone he trusted and went into dangerous missions with could have been mixed up in something as ugly as this. Brady knew it was only a fraction of what Garrett was feeling.

When they got back Garrett told Brady to look into Catalina’s death more closely. He wanted copies of her autopsy and police reports and anything he could find on the investigation. Garrett started to walk away but stopped after a few feet. He spoke without turning around.

“Also, I want everything you can find on Milo from the day he was born.”

Garrett stalked out of the room he shared with Parker and made his way down to the beach, taking a healthy swallow of rum every few feet.

All he wanted to do was come back here and see Parker, tell her he’d made a mistake, and ask for her forgiveness. No matter what had happened between them, the things he found out at the hotel were going to crush her, and he didn’t want anything hanging in the air between them when he told her.

He dreaded every single step he took as he walked into the lobby knowing it was one step closer to breaking Parker’s heart yet again. Garrett stopped dead in his tracks at the sound of Parker’s musical laughter as it carried through the air.

He saw her sitting at the bar, close to Cole, laughing while he leaned into her and whispered in her ear. Garrett stood there long enough to see just howhurtshe’d been by their earlier fight as she drank and laughed and talked to another man

Garrett wondered just how screwed up in the head he was when he started stalking across the room, the only thought in his mind picking up Cole and punching the laugh right off of his face, the face that was making Parker smile and giggle and flirt.

He stopped himself before he got too close to making the biggest mistake of his life. Punching Cole wouldn’t solve any of his problems. It wouldn’t erase the memories of Milo eating dinner with him and his parents, Milo convincing him to sneak out after curfew to go to a party, Milo jumping on Garrett’s bed first thing in the morning when he had a hangover from hell, or Milo working so hard in the Navy just to make Garrett and his parents proud.

It wouldn’t take away the pain of seeing Parker give Cole a laugh that was supposed to be Garrett’s.

Garrett turned and fled from the lobby, unable to watch whatever was happening between Cole and Parker unfold.

By the time he made it down to the water and sat down on one of the beach chairs, he had a nice buzz going but his anger hadn’t diminished. He wondered if Parker would go back to Cole’s room. If she’d let him undress her and run his hands over her soft skin, between her warm thighs, and inside her welcoming body. He wondered if she’d make the same moans and sighs with him that she did when Garrett pushed his fingers into her, slid his cock against her, and made her come.

“FUCK!” Garrett screamed as he hurled the half-empty bottle of rum into the ocean and put his head in his hands. He clutched at his hair so hard it made his eyes water and his hands shake.

She couldn’t do this to him. He wouldn’t let her just forget about what they’d done no matter how pissed she was at him. Somewhere in Garrett’s mind he knew he shouldn’t talk to Parker now, not when he was buzzed and angry and imagining her naked and wrapped up with another man.

He pushed himself off of the chair and made his way back to the lobby.



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Parker said goodbye to Cole and thanked him for keeping her company as she made her way up the walk to villa she shared with Garrett. She felt around her hips for the key when she realized she didn’t have any pockets and therefore had no key.

She cursed herself for not changing out of the black wrap dress when they got home from the palace. Parker let her forehead fall against the door with a thud, not looking forward to the walk back to the lobby to have another key made. She was tired and she was drunk. All she wanted to do was curl up in bed and go back to feeling sorry for herself.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart, did your date leave you high and dry?” Garrett asked sarcastically.

Parker whipped around at the sound of his voice, irritated to see that he still had a bug up his ass, but happy that he could at least let her into their room before he stalked off to pout somewhere.

“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked him angrily.