Thorne Princess(28)

“Yeah. Haven’t heard from him in a week.”

“So? Are you two having an affair?” My eyebrows shot up. “Why would you be talking to this random ass person more than you talk to your mom?”

“I don’t have a mom, and you damn well know that,” Tom muttered. “Ian and I talk pretty regularly. He’s got a lot of insight. Has been in this business for decades. Speaking of affairs…” Tom scrubbed the stubble on the front of his throat, grinning. “Nice banter you had there with Miss Thorne.”

“Don’t go there,” I warned. The image of her smoothing my dress shirt last night with that lopsided, siren smirk assaulted my memory every half hour or so.

“I’m not suggesting you’re having an affair with her,” Tom explained. “But…if she wasn’t business, would you?”

“Absolutely not.”

Tom had no idea about my sexual life, how depraved it was. But even if he had, he seemed to think even the biggest fuck-up could be reformed. He said he was living proof of that. He was wrong. I was ten times more damaged.

“She’s not your type,” Tom mused, unimpressed by the death glare I was sending him.

“Naturally.” I rolled my window down. “My favorite type is without a pulse.”

“Bet that sounded more warped than you intended it to.” Tom tapped the steering wheel, flashing a shit-eating smile at nobody at all as we passed by palm trees and half-naked people. “You usually go for women you wouldn’t ever bring home for a family dinner or a double date with Lisa and me. Which begs the question, do you still use call girls?”

“Jesus. No,” I murmured, scowling at the view. That was so far back in our past. And not something I’d done by choice. I had no way of avoiding it. Avoiding them. Why would he bring it up now? “In case you haven’t noticed, the girl’s an airhead.”

“Nah.” Tom shrugged, and I could see in my periphery that his smile was widening. “She just has a big attitude, and it’s all L.A. But once you strip that down…well, I think there is someone interesting behind the persona. She just called me out on my ride…pretty impressive.”

“You mean rude.” I flicked my Aviators on. “Good thing I’m the one vetting personnel in our company. You are always off when it comes to reading people.”

The rest of the drive, Tom caught me up to speed about Ian Holmes. Apparently, Ian and he had been real close the past couple years, ever since Ian had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

“It’s just not like him not to answer,” Tom explained. “Usually, if he’s busy, he’d text back.”

He pulled in front of a white, Spanish villa in a sleepy cul-de-sac in Huntington Beach, a stone’s throw from the ocean. “He has a pretty strict routine, especially since his wife passed away.”

We both got out of the car and made our way to Ian’s front door. Only two more immaculately taken care of houses lined the cul-de-sac. Upscale neighborhood, for sure.

Ian’s front door had three days’ worth of rolled up newspapers in front of it. The first telltale of trouble.

Tom frowned and picked one of them up. “Not a good sign.”

“Does he have any living relatives?” I peered around, craning my neck past his garden’s gate.

“One daughter. She lives in Modesto, up north. She calls him once a week. Rarely visits. Some daughter she is.”

Tom didn’t always have a judgmental attitude, but fatherhood did that to him.

“Hey. Some parents don’t deserve the respect. Maybe he went to visit her?”

He shook his head. “He’d have gotten one of his neighbors to take care of the newspapers. He’s no rookie.”

I checked my watch. I did not like the idea of leaving Brat without proper supervision. Even though my main job was to scare her off from pulling any stupid shit, I still took it seriously. For all I knew she could be filming a sex tape right this second.

With whom, ass-face? Lisa?

“Problem is, we can’t just break into the place,” Tom murmured somewhere to my right.

Couldn’t we? Why not? If anything, we’d be helping the old man. He was obviously not doing too hot if he hadn’t picked up his newspaper in three days. Elderly people—especially sick ones—told people when they left town. Ian never did.

I took out a bobby pin from my lockpicking kit and bent it to a ninety-degree angle, tampering with the door lock. I pushed it open in less than twelve seconds.

“Problem solved, I guess,” Tom deadpanned. “You like skirting the edges of right and wrong, don’t you?”

I shot him a look, shouldering past him inside. I wanted to get this over with as soon as possible.

We saw no obvious breakin signs. The house looked relatively neat—considering it belonged to a retiree widower, anyway—and it didn’t appear ransacked—as if someone had been looking for something to steal. The place was modestly decorated, but even the belongings worth a dime or two were intact. Vases, paintings, an especially hideous decorative golden bowl. Nothing was out of place.

I ran a finger over the fireplace. No dust. “Been cleaned recently.”

Tom threw the fridge door open. “That may be, but half the food in here is expired. I’m going upstairs to the bedrooms.”