Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
“I’ve fucked a lot of women.”
“This one got to you. Nick, damn it. You got me involved in this because of one word: murder. Let’s recap. You find a million dollars in checks written by your father to this woman’s mother, who is now dead by the same means as your father, thus making Faith Winter the biggest suspect, and you choose to fuck her.”
“I’m crystal clear on the details. And murder is still on the table. I just don’t think she did it.”
The doorbell rings, and I curse. “Leave it to North to be early.”
I scrub my jaw, and I’m about to get up when Abel says, “Nick. Man. Many a good man fell over a woman, and I’m pretty fucking sure the same can be said in reverse. Watch where you stick your cock.”
“Says the guy who can’t stop banging his ex,” I remind him, standing and heading for the door, my booted feet heavy on the pale wood of the living room floor, only to have him shout out, “She has magnificent breasts.”
I laugh, and she must, because that’s not the first time I’ve heard that. But his warning about fucking Faith has hit a nerve, and my own warning replays in my mind, when I swore I wouldn’t let it again. You never find guilt when you’re looking for innocence.
I open the door to find North standing in front of me, looking like Clark Kent if Clark Kent was skinny and geeky. But that’s the thing about North. There’s more to him than meets the eye. He will slay you with facts. Superman-slay you. And damn it, there is more to Faith than meets the eye, too. I know it. I feel it. And I need to find out what and now, before a surprise slays me.
It’s eleven when I finally have my house to myself again, and I walk into my office and bypass the pine carpenter-style desk that is the centerpiece. Instead, I walk to the oversize brown leather chair in the corner, a floor-to-ceiling window beside it, and sit down. Beside it is a stack of paperwork from my father’s office and another from his home, which led me to Meredith Winter in the first place. I’ve been through it all ten times, and there is nothing that gives me the answers I need. Who killed him? I’ve told myself that it is simply my need for closure, but the truth is, the idea that that man was thwarted by anyone but me in his death claws at me. Bastard that it makes me, I wanted the man around just to show him his son would always be better. Someone took that from me. And my gift to myself is to find that person. That’s my form of grief. There is no guilt to it.
Guilt.
That’s what I keep sensing in Faith, but my mind goes back to lying in bed with her last night. When she’d asked if I had cried for my father. When she felt she should have for her mother.
Guilt.
Acceptable guilt that I can live with and help her live with. It’s nothing more than that. I let that thought simmer for several minutes, with space between myself and Faith, and I still feel the same. She didn’t kill my father or her mother.
I remove my phone from my pocket and dial her. She picks up on the second ring. “Nick,” she says, and damn it, how is it that my name on this woman’s lips can make my cock hard and my heart soft?
“Hey, sweetheart.”
“Did you finish your prep?” she asks, once again showing concern about my work that I’ve never given another woman a chance to express. Maybe they would have. Maybe they wouldn’t have. I just didn’t care to have them try.
“We’re ready,” I say. “We’ll kill it at every turn.”
“I’m glad,” she says. “I was worried I’d distracted you.”
“You do distract me, Faith, but in all the right ways. Where are you?”
“My house,” she says.
“I thought you were staying at the winery?”
“I was inspired to paint.”
I lean back in the chair, shutting my eyes, imagining her standing at her canvas, beautiful, gifted, focused. “Are you painting me, Faith?”
“Yes,” she says. “Actually I am. I’m still trying to understand you. Now that you’re gone…”
“Now that I’m gone, what?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
“Something,” I repeat, opening my eyes and standing up, facing the window, the glow of the lights on the Golden Gate Bridge before me. “There is something, Faith,” I add, wanting her to tell me what I sense. “What is it?”
She’s silent for several beats. “Are we talking about you or me, now?”
“You,” I say. “I’m your attorney and the man in your bed and life. What haven’t you told me?”
“We’re new, Nick. There’s a lot I haven’t told you.”