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Not with him when he died. I close my eyes, searching back to when I left his room. Was he breathing?
He had to have been breathing. If he wasn’t—
I can’t think about if he wasn’t.
“He was alive when I left,” I tell Tana, fully awake and mind ticking with alarm. Awake and… Noam. “Nothing happened between us.”
“You don’t have to tell us anything,” Tana says gently. “You cared about him.”
“But not like that. We’ve never had sex. But if anyone knows I was in that room last night, that’s what they’ll assume happened. And that I killed him somehow.”
The AC in the room clicks on and I tense, more about the situation I’m in than because of the cold air. Noam is gone, and if anyone knows I was with him, I know exactly what will happen. Older man. Younger woman. No matter how long we’ve been friends, and how much he’s helped me over the years, I will be somehow responsible for his death.
I killed him with sex. I killed him with a pillow. I killed him for his money.
And then my life, and everything I have, will be splashed everywhere for the world to see. And judge.
They’ll judge me so hard.
“Did anyone see you go in or out?” Travis asks, crowding into the screen with his wife. “Because that—”
“Would be bad,” I finish. “What are they saying?”
“It hasn’t hit the news yet, but I have my sources,” Tana says. “I don’t know if the family has been notified yet.”
As Tana says that, I check my text messages. Eighteen notifications.
Stomach twisting, I scan them. Fourteen from Preston Tate, the last coming in two minutes ago. Three from his brother, David. And one from his wife.
All threatening and accusing, even from Penelope.
If they can put me with Noam, it will be everywhere, and then people will start digging. I’ve hidden my past well, but Travis and Tana can only do so much to shield me without Noam’s help. He kept his family from finding Catrina Quinlan.
I don’t know what I can do to protect my secrets.
“They know,” I tell Tana in a hollow voice.
“Okay, okay.” From her tone, I know she’s switched into gladiator mode. “Go back, walk me through the night.”
This is a standing conversation, so I pull myself out from under the covers.
This is a pacing conversation, and I start a lap across the room. “We ate dinner in the hotel restaurant,” I start, my mind flying over the events of last night to remember who saw me where. “The waiters, Owen, the sommelier, Gus, the manager who greeted me with a kiss hello. That woman when we were leaving…”
Marcus.
I draw in my breath.
Maximus Steele. The elevator, after I left Noam’s room…
I close my eyes.
Noam’s family hates me. Hate may be a strong word, but they strongly dislike me. If they find out I was with him…
“Dinner took place in a public place, so no one can say anything.” Tana pulls me back to the present. “What happened after dinner?”
“We took the back elevator up to his room,” I report, keeping my voice steady and calm even as my heart gives anxious thumps. “He doesn’t like the staff to see him with the cane, so he never goes through the lobby. The room was in his name.”
“So there’s no way to place you with him after dinner.”
