Found in You(125)

“Yeah?” I turned to look at him.

“Let’s not be like them, okay?”

He didn’t have to specify for me to know exactly what he meant. “You mean the hateful, spiteful, backstabbing family thing isn’t appealing to you?”

“Not really.”

I stared at him in the dim light. He seemed younger than usual, more boyish than I tended to think of him. A week before, I thought he was out of my life. Now he was asking not to be.

My smile was weak but sincere. “Then it’s settled. We won’t be like them.”

Without even undressing, I fell onto the much too large, much too lonely bed. Burying my sobs in the pillow that smelled the most like Hudson, I cried until dawn when sleep finally swallowed me in its welcome black void.





Chapter Twenty




When I stumbled out of bed the next morning, I felt hungover. Emotionally hung over, I guess, since I hadn’t been drinking. I stripped out of the dress I’d slept in and replaced it with my robe. I found a pot of lukewarm coffee in the kitchen, and after heating up a mug in the microwave, I set out to find Brian.

He turned up on the balcony. He was sitting at the patio table flipping through a stack of papers. Something for a case, I supposed. Brian was the take-work-with-him-everywhere type of guy.

“Good morning.” He looked at his watch. “Or should I say good afternoon?”

“Sorry. I didn’t get much sleep last night.” I pulled my robe tighter around me and sat in the seat across from him.

“You look like shit.”

“Thanks.” I took a swallow from my mug, wincing when I burned my tongue.

“Are you supposed to be at work today?”

“Tonight.” I was meeting with Aaron Trent at eight that evening. Good thing I’d prepared earlier because I certainly wasn’t in the shape to do it now. “Thanks for asking, Dad.”

“Got to start practicing.”

Jesus, I was a lousy sister. I’d forgotten that his wife was pregnant. I hadn’t even asked him anything about it. “How far along is Monica, anyway?”

He smiled in a way I’d never seen him smile before, all proud and happy. “Four months. We find out the sex in a few weeks.”

“That’s pretty cool. And a little bit scary too.”

“Tell me about it.”

Brian as a dad. Wow. So exciting and weird and that meant I was going to be an aunt. That hadn’t clicked yet. God, I wasn’t ready to be an aunt. How could Brian be ready to be a father?

I took another sip of my coffee, this time blowing on it first. Yeah, I needed the caffeine to calm me down. That sounded about right.

Brian went back to shuffling through the papers in front of him and I caught the logo of a phone company at the top of one. “What are you looking at?”

“Celia’s cell log. She left a printout here.” He rifled back a page. “I was looking at the calls she made. She called The Sky Launch once. Last Friday. Here it is.” He put the paper on the table and turned it toward me, pointing to a familiar one. “Isn’t that the club’s number?”

“Yeah, it is. But she never called me at the club. Wait, I know that number, too.” I pointed to the one above it. “That’s Aaron Trent’s office.” Things clicked into place. “That bitch. She’s the one who canceled my meeting with him.”

“What are you talking about?”

Celia had known about the meeting with Trent and about Sophia’s birthday dinner. She had to have guessed that if Trent rescheduled that I’d end up at the party. She had caused a scene. How good was she?