Chasing Shadows (First Wives #3)(48)

“One step at a time. That’s how you do this. If there is something in the road that is going to hurt, walk around it, or over it. Or through it. If it stops feeling good, end it. If it only gets better—”

Avery cut her off with a moan.

“There is the crux of this issue. You’re afraid it will get better.”

“I will do something to fuck it up.”

“I’m not sure where that is coming from.”

She crawled onto the freeway. “Why is this so hard?”

“Relationships aren’t always perfect.”

“It’s not a relationship.”

Shannon filled the line with laughter.





Chapter Twenty



Avery was systematically closing up one room at a time in the Lankford estate. The ones that took the most time, and were often the most lucrative in terms of lost treasures, were offices and attics. She had every intention of lowering the ladder to the top floor of the house after one last run through the home office.

She’d boxed the trinkets she’d suggested Sheldon look over after he denied the need. The paperwork that might come into play was in temporary file folders and boxed for storage until everything in the estate was sold and gone. Then it could all be tossed in an incinerator.

Avery started on one end of the room, looking for the unconventional, but almost always there, hidden spaces. The built-in bookcases didn’t look suspect, but she tapped on them anyway. She climbed on a ladder to look above the dust and see if there was something that might be concealed.

When she didn’t see anything, she stepped out of the office and looked at the span of walls between one room and the other.

Nope. No hidden room.

She pulled cushions off the sofa and dragged it away from the wall. Only dust.

The unused chair behind the desk was pushed out of the way, and Avery dropped to her knees.

She chilled.

This she’d done before. For Trina. The idea had come to Avery because she’d found a hidden drawer in her father’s desk as a child. She’d been hiding in his office, a place she wasn’t welcome to play, and stumbled upon it. Her father kept papers in his hidden space, papers that at the time, Avery couldn’t read. By the time she was old enough to see what was so important that they were hidden where no one else could find them, she’d forgotten they were there.

Until the Hamptons.

Until the weekend Trina had gone off to meet her now husband for a weekend trip and Avery was rummaging around Trina’s late husband’s space.

She hadn’t found treasures.

She’d found blood.

And that’s when everything started to fall apart.

Avery pushed away the painful memories, straightened her shoulders, and closed her eyes. She ran her fingers along the edges of the desk to feel for any abnormality. It would be something you couldn’t see but could only feel. Like a ripple in the fabric of the wood. Kinda like . . . she pressed the ripple, and her hand was knocked back.

“Kinda like that.” Her eyes sprang open. Using her cell phone light, she guided a small drawer free of the underside of the desk. In the light, she gently blew the dust off the contents.

Pictures.

She turned them over one by one to see them.

Just pictures.

Avery froze.

“Why, Mr. Lankford . . . who is this charming young woman who isn’t your wife on your arm?” She flipped through a half dozen pictures, faded and yellow at the edges. “And who is this?”



“Okay, who is she?”

Liam had been attempting to find the perfect bouquet of flowers to send to Avery for the past thirty minutes. How hard could it be? Roses were a staple for any man’s romancing toolbox, but how many men had sent her roses in the past? Tons, he’d bet.

There were spring arrangements and tropical sprays, live plants . . . maybe he needed to call his sister for advice.

“Hello?” Carlos tapped his hand on the desk that separated them. The two of them were supposed to be researching companies that specialized in modern art mosaics, which the owner of the loft space wanted. Only somehow Liam became sidetracked.

“Sorry. What?”

“You’ve been somewhere else for weeks. Now you’re looking up . . .” Carlos stood and glanced at the screen on Liam’s phone. “Flowers. Since you’re smiling, I’m guessing it isn’t for a funeral or someone in the hospital. Who is she?”

“Her name is Avery.”

“Is Avery the reason you were gone for a long weekend?”

“Yup.”

Carlos added a nod while Liam scowled through the next page of floral arrangements.

“So what’s the flower occasion?”

“No occasion.”

Carlos put down the pen in his hand and cocked his head to the side. “There is always an occasion. You fight, you buy flowers. It’s a birthday, you buy flowers. Anniversary.”

“Yeah, none of those things. I just want her to know I’m thinking of her.”

“Ahh . . . I’m thinking about the great sex flowers.”

Was he that obvious?

“Roses are too tricky. Red means you love her. White is too pure. Yellow says thank you—”

“There’s a meaning behind roses?”