Gone (Deadly Secrets #2)(11)

Nerves humming, she grasped her coat and pushed back from the table.

Jeremy stopped whatever he’d been saying to Jamison and looked up at her. “Where are you going?”

“Sorry. I forgot an appointment.”

“Now?” He turned toward her. “It’s dark outside.”

“I know.” She snatched up her purse. “And I’m sorry. It’s a family thing.”

“But . . . Raegan, you don’t have any family here. Your mother’s still in Europe and your dad’s in New York.”

He was right. Her parents were divorced and led very different lives on opposite coasts—her dad was a high-profile attorney in New York and her mother happily lived off her divorce settlement in California or wherever she chose to travel next. Raegan didn’t have any family in the area to have an appointment with, but she wasn’t about to tell Jeremy she was leaving him to see Alec’s family.

She leaned in and kissed Jeremy’s cheek halfheartedly, catching more air than skin. “I’ll call you later. Thanks for dinner. And I’m sorry to run.”

“But—”

“Greg, Chloe.” She nodded and stepped away. “Have a good night.”

Jeremy’s sputtered protest echoed at her back as he pushed to his feet, but she ignored it and him and rushed toward the entrance of the posh downtown restaurant.

He wouldn’t follow her. They hadn’t been dating that long, and she knew she didn’t mean more to him than his precious station, which was the purpose of this dinner in the first place. Pulling on her coat, she stepped out into the cool night and drew a lungful of air that felt like the first she’d breathed in days.

Hope swirled inside her like the wine in her glass as she stepped to the curb and waved for a cab. Tonight she wasn’t about to let it go still. Tonight she was determined to show Alec he was wrong, that their daughter was out there somewhere, and that together they could find her.

She just prayed she could get him to listen for five minutes before he turned and walked away.



Twenty minutes.

Alec decided he’d give his parents twenty more minutes before ducking out of the cloistering party and beating feet back to his place where he could breathe.

“Alec.” Ethan’s fiancée, Sam, stepped up at Alec’s side and slipped her arm around his. “There you are. Rusty here was just trying to explain to me why hair color and IQ go hand in hand.” She peered up at Alec with an amused expression. “You’re blond. What do you think?”

Alec cut a look at Rusty on Sam’s other side. Hands tucked into the black slacks that matched his shirt and hair and eyes, Rusty shrugged his wide shoulders and waggled his brows in a watch me get the smart girl going way.

A frown pulled at Alec’s lips. He was not in the mood to get caught up in sibling teasing. But it was better than the alternative—schmoozing with his parents’ friends who knew he was the kid who, even as an adult, still had “issues.”

“He’s right,” Alec said to Sam, flipping Rusty the bird at his side where she couldn’t see. “Ethan’s hair is brown, and we all know he’s full of shit.”

Sam rolled her eyes and smiled. “And what about Rusty?”

“That one’s easy. He doesn’t have an IQ.”

“Why not?”

“Because that black mop of hair on his head was transplanted straight off his ass.”

Sam laughed. Rusty scowled and narrowed his eyes.

“It’s true,” Alec said, feeling marginally better for the first time in hours. “When he joined the family, he was as bald as a newborn baby. Our parents took one look at all the hair on his ass and said, problem solved!”

Sam’s shoulders shook with laughter. At her side, Rusty frowned and said, “Ha-ha, very funny.”

“What can I say?” Alec muttered, glancing toward his parents, who were talking with someone in a tan trench coat on the far side of the room. “It’s my blond IQ. Hey, who are Mom and Dad talking to over th—”

The words died on his lips when his father stepped to the side and his mother leaned in and hugged the mystery woman.

“Shit.” The air left his lungs in a whoosh as he watched Raegan smile and hug his mother back.

“What the hell is she doing here?” Rusty murmured.

“She who?” Sam asked. “Who are you looking at?”

“Alec’s ex-wife.”

Alec didn’t catch the rest of their conversation or what Rusty told Sam about Raegan. All he could hear was the pounding rhythm of his pulse thundering in his ears.

His first reaction was shock that she was here. His second was panic that something had happened. But as he headed toward her, all he could think about was how gorgeous she looked in the low light of the private room, how soft her hair appeared, how much he wanted to grab her and kiss her and never let her go. Just as he’d wanted to grab her and kiss her today at that hospital.

He stopped next to his father and didn’t miss the happiness in his dad’s eyes and the excitement in his mother’s when she let go of Raegan and noticed him.

“What happened?” he said to Raegan, ignoring his parents and their reactions. “Is everything okay?”

“Nothing. I mean, yes, everything’s fine.” Her cheeks were rosy, her face flushed, but more than that, there was a light in her eyes he hadn’t seen earlier in the day. A light that put him on instant alert.