His Princess (A Royal Romance)(87)

“It’s accredited,” I sigh. “If I could go to Harvard I wouldn’t be here, trust me.”

“You probably could.” He shrugs. “Go to Harvard, I mean. You seem pretty smart.”

I roll my eyes. “Thanks. All I’ve done is yell at you since we’ve met.”

“Yeah. Well, maybe I like a challenge,” he says, a little edge in his voice.

I shrink in the seat as I feel heat on my face. Damn it. He openly gives me an appraising look. I’m not exactly dressed sexy, but I suddenly feel like I’m sitting here in my underwear, in a good way. I haven’t felt that way in a while.

“I’d better go. It’s that building there.”

“Pick you up at nine,” he says as the car slides to a gentle stop.

“Yeah, see you then.”

I rush out of the car without looking back, afraid he’ll see how red my face is. I take a moment to stop and compose myself in the mirror in the hallway before heading into the classroom.

It’s no huge lecture hall, just a room that would hold about fifty people, tops, at cheap tables with cheap chairs. The class is about thirty strong. Business math.

I hurry to my seat, glancing at the clock. It’s one minute after the official start of class.

The professor, Dr. Calvin Hevermeyer, PhD, turns, and looks straight at me as I slink into my seat.

“Mrs. Dawson. So glad you could join us,” he says drolly.

I hate my life.





5





Quentin





Rose strides into the little brick building, and once again I find myself admiring the view. I’d like to chase her down and rip that skirt off and get my hands on her ass.

Snap out of it, Quentin, what are you even doing here? You’re supposed to be lying low.

I growl at myself, and the Impala growls as I ease out the clutch and swing her around to leave the parking lot. I drum my fingers on the steering wheel and lean forward to look up. The sky is growing ugly. Looks like rain.

Having nowhere else to go, I drive back to the house. The alleged pie sits in my stomach like a stone, and the thought of it twists my guts, but something about those kids made me cagey about hurting their feelings, so I choked it down. I still need real food.

The quest for real food ends up with heating a can of spaghetti in the microwave and eating it standing up in the kitchen. There’s not much of a point to this house. I’ve always been happy with a smaller space, but if I want to blend in, I’m stuck with it.

Doing a great job of blending in so far, aren’t I? I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Ever since I saw Rose soaking wet with hose water, I haven’t been able to get her out of my head.

After stuffing my face with the last of the spaghetti, I head out into the backyard and make sure the kid, Karen, didn’t see anything amiss. All the windows have curtains and blinds, and even when I crouch and press my hand to the glass to see better, I can’t make anything out. Good.

Back inside, I lock up. I could get drunk. No, wait, I have to pick up Rose. No booze. I could crash out in the living room and try to amuse myself with television.

Kids’ cartoons are weird anymore. Why is there a squirrel with a diving helmet?

Or I could find out something about this Burt.

I head into the garage. I moved all the shit out of the way so I could pull the Impala inside this afternoon, and it’s a good thing. The rain has just started.

The room has a musty smell, and all the house junk is exposed, the guts of the heater and air conditioner and the water heater or whatever. In the corner I’ve set up my computer, some workbenches, and a safe.

I’m playing it cool with the gear—nothing illegal in my safe. I’m keeping that elsewhere in case I need it. Not like that’s my greatest worry or anything, I mean, if I get caught I’m going up the river no matter what I do.

At the computer, I get ready to go fishing. First I check the security of the connection—I don’t use Windows or Macintosh but a form of Linux that’s built from the ground up for security. Everything stored on my hard drive is encrypted; I’ll spare you the gory details, but it would take every computer on Earth running day and night using all the electricity in the world a thousand years to crack my files.

More importantly, I access the Internet through a proxy system called onion routing, over a secured private network. It’s not perfect but with a little extra caution I’m virtually undetectable as I do my research.

Unfortunately it’s slow as hell, and while it takes its sweet-ass time to load, I put on a pot of coffee and pace around the room. I should work out. I have all the equipment I need, it’s just a matter of setting it up, but I’m stiff as hell and I have to watch out for these damned stitches.

When the goddamn thing loads, I type in the dentist’s name.

Burt Simonson, DDS.

A frightening array of information becomes available to me almost immediately. Almost, because it takes five minutes to load.

Somewhere Burt should be feeling a goose walk across his grave. A contract killer is gathering a dossier on him.

I’m not going to kill him.

I just want to talk about how he treats his employees, and how he looks at little girls.

I have a…thing about people who hurt little girls.

After a few sips of coffee, the information loads, and it’s amazingly boring. He has a great credit score, married, two kids, lives near Rose but not in her neighborhood, owns a Buick SUV, a BMW sedan, and just bought that Benz I saw him driving this afternoon.