Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 105813 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105813 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
The trembling in her shoulders as she clung to him was too much. Her arms wrapped so tightly around his neck as if afraid he’d let go was too much.
The stream of pedestrians parted around them. Collin spoke in her ear, and her fingers slipped into the hair behind his, her head nodding against his neck.
It was hard to watch and impossible to look away. Whatever her reasons for sleeping with me, she loved him. It was too much.
I rubbed my chest, tried to massage away the resentful awareness. I resented Collin for having her. I resented hurting her. But most of all, I resented feeling this way. It was a foreign, unexpected emotion, and I fucking hated it.
The voice of reason told me everything about her was calculated, from her reserved poise to her sexy-as-fuck heels. She was Trent’s protégée after all.
But the seething I fucking hate you she’d said to him stabbed my chest with doubt. Trent had a hold over her that was deeper than her greed for money and power. Did she even want those things?
When Trent played the video, I’d braced for a flinging string of spit, a scourge of insults, and a major-league explosion of drama to fit the treachery I’d committed against her. Instead she’d held her chin high, her eyes open and dry, and calmly punched my face.
I prodded my cheekbone, tracing the swelling. It twinged beneath the touch, but nowhere near enough.
She should’ve kicked my balls to my stomach and ridiculed my performance in bed. She should’ve threatened my life with venom in her eyes. That was what I expected going in. That I could’ve handled. Anything would’ve been easier than the quiet, lonely hurt that had shattered beneath her brave expression.
Amidst the flux of traffic, standing beside his fancy, black limo and comforting his wife, Collin lifted his eyes and aimed them directly at me. I leaned away from the building, straightening to my full height, and stared back.
He wouldn’t know who I was, wouldn’t be able to differentiate my face from the dozens of others moving between us. Yet he looked at me for a deliberate heartbeat, one that extended into endless more. Too long to be cursory. Too pointed to be unintelligible.
He knew.
Knew who I was? Knew I’d fucked his wife? Whatever he knew would not inspire an introduction with handshakes. I flexed my fingers at my sides. My muscles heated and bunched, ready for an ugly confrontation.
I wasn’t sure what shocked me more. The fact that he picked me out of a crowd or the sight of him turning his back to me and pulling her into the limo.
My eyes blinked rapidly as the limo motored forward and merged into traffic. What the fuck? I rubbed my neck beneath the strangling collar. Had I just imagined all that?
I must have, because if I were her husband, I would’ve beaten her lover into the sidewalk until he stopped breathing.
As I walked back to the Trenchant Tower, it niggled. While I sat on the couch in Trent’s office—my office—lots of things about Collin Anderson niggled.
What had he done to incite his wife to cheat on him? Not that he was to blame, but why would Trent frame him for murder? Was it an empty threat or did he have legitimate proof?
It was a strong enough threat to convince Kaci to stay on as my direct report. Which worked to my advantage. I needed her employed so I could monitor her activities.
Trent’s moving crew scurried around me. Trent had left for the day and evidently wasn’t keen on leaving me alone with his equipment. My burly babysitter from the day before stood by the door, eyeing every twitch of my finger.
He stepped to the side as a younger man rolled out a cart loaded with Trent’s computer equipment. When I’d given Trent the video, I’d watched him move a copy of the file from the flash drive to his laptop. But I’d embedded a logic bomb in the video file. Twenty-minutes ago, the time-activated malware destroyed every copy except the one that remained safely hidden in my warehouse.
A sex tape scandal was one threat Kaci didn’t have to worry about and one of the many reasons I wanted to talk to her when she ran out.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. Christ, my head pounded with so many unanswered questions.
When I’d walked into Trent’s office unannounced this morning, he’d greeted me with his palm out and a sleazy smile on his face as he said, “Give me the video.”
Of course Holden had contacted him, but how did he know I’d gone through with the trap?
But what bothered me most was the scene in his bathroom. It wasn’t just the tension between him and Kaci that had set my teeth on edge. It was the way they were standing, his body too close for a man with his daughter-in-law. Was he in the habit of harassing her? Did he touch her, force himself on her?