The Private Serials Box Set(22)

Everything I was trying to accomplish, Preston was single handedly and slowly going to ruin. I had only one goal at that moment and that was to prove my husband was a cheating, lying bastard, get what was owed to me, and move on with my life. Preston Reid was threatening to me in more ways than one.

“We need to talk,” he tried again.

“No,” I said immediately. “You need to go home and finish this job on your own. Get me my proof and then we can just go our separate ways.” I remembered that his money was on my kitchen table. “I’ll go inside and get your money. Give me one moment.”

“I don’t want your money.”

I halted at his words and turned to him, trying to be brave and act like I wasn’t affected by him.

“I hired you to do a job, so you’ll take the money. Unless you think I should hire someone else?” My eyes found his and even in the dim light from the streetlamps, I could still see the dark brown irises looking back at me. I thought, for just an instant, I saw panic flash through them, but just as quickly as the emotion flitted across them, it was gone.

“No. You don’t need to hire anyone else. I’ll get you your proof.”

“Okay,” I whispered. I opened the door and walked in, heading into the kitchen to find the envelope Sam had brought me with the two thousand dollars cash inside. I grabbed it from the counter and turned to walk back outside, only to find Preston inside my house, leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen. “Here,” I said softly as I held the envelope out toward him.

He took the few steps toward me and when his eyes met mine, I was a little surprised to see sadness there. He took the money and tucked it into his back pocket. His chin tipped up in a nod that said ‘Thanks.’ I found manners winning out and I couldn’t stop myself before I offered, “Would you like something to drink? Scotch, perhaps?”

“Neat,” was his short response, and it rolled through me like a wave, his dark voice deep and gravelly.

I nodded and said, “I’ll be right back.” When I made it to the liquor cabinet in the formal living room, I leaned against the bar, gripping the edge tightly, trying to rein in the heat coursing through my body. This was ridiculous. The very last thing I needed right then was some wild, gravitational pull to a man who wasn’t my husband. I didn’t even want my husband. But what I really didn’t need was some seriously sexy man tempting me into wagering my future life away. But I’d offered him scotch, so I’d get him scotch. Then I’d make him leave.

I set the tumbler down in front of him, noticing he’d made himself comfortable at the head of my dining room table. I sat in the chair to his right and sipped from my tumbler.

“You spend a lot of time in this big house all by yourself?” His question caught me off guard, but also offended me a little. I didn’t like him insinuating that I was often alone. I could have many friends I spent time with, or a ton of hobbies that kept me out. Zumba. Pottery. Cooking class. Then I remembered I was the jilted wife who hired him to tail her husband and his mistress. I wasn’t the poster child for happy, satisfied women.

“I have things I do. I jog sometimes. I see Sam often. I’m not a shut-in.”

He looked at me over the rim of his glass as he sipped his scotch. After a beat, he pulled the glass from his mouth and placed it slowly on the tabletop. “That’s not what I meant,” he said, his voice low again.

“Well, then please, elaborate.”

“I meant does your husband leave you here alone often?”

His question threw me again, and I didn’t know how to answer it. I suspected if I told him the truth, it might elicit a reaction from him I didn’t want to deal with. Then again, I suspected if I lied to him, he’d know. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I thought he already knew the answer to his question.

“Sometimes,” was the answer I settled on.

“Sometimes?”

I shrugged, offering him nothing else.

“I don’t like the idea of you being here alone.”

His words cut right through the pretense I had been trying to build for the last hour and a half. Sliced right through the wall I’d put up. It had been years since a man had shown any kind of concern for me. I’d been on my own for so long, I couldn’t have anticipated what it would feel like when a man, whom I apparently desired, showed concern for me. For whatever reason, Preston cared.

Before, in the closet, I could have written the whole ordeal off as physical – no, sexual – chemistry, but when he said things like that, basically telling me he cared about my well-being, there was no going back.

“I have an alarm,” was my brilliant response.

“A man shouldn’t leave his wife in a bed, alone, by herself, for any reason.” He paused, perhaps waiting for me to interject, but I had no argument. I agreed with him. “Why do you put up with it?”

“I don’t anymore.”

“Hmm.” His voice rumbled, even though he didn’t really speak any words. “If you were mine, you’d never get a chance to even feel the sheets getting cold.”

As if he’d reached inside, grabbed my breath, and dragged it from my body, I gasped.

“There wouldn’t be a thing in this world that could keep me from my bed, were you in it.”

He’d slayed me twice. A combo hit. TKO.