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Fifteen
The brunette was Moira Cage.It hadn’t taken me long to find her. I’d picked up lunch and gone back to my office to do some research. Less than an hour later, I found her on the website for Evan Lee’s car dealership. She was standing next to him, smiling, and Evan was standing far too close to her. If I had to bet that his hand was on her ass, I was fairly certain I’d win.
Now, whether that meant that Evan was being overly flirtatious or that the two of them had been involved, I didn’t know, but that wasn’t what I’d been hired to find. Once I had a name, I compressed the video file I’d loaded onto my computer, attached it to an email that included a summary of what I’d learned, and then sent it off to Evan.
I was glad I’d asked him for his email address. Even though I had caught Jessica cheating, it didn’t mean I wanted Evan in my office again. The less I had to talk to him, the better. Considering how he’d leered at me before, I didn’t want to give him an opportunity to do it again.
After I sent the email, I went back to Jenna’s case. She hadn’t given me anything new to look at on the trafficking cases, and today wasn’t a good day to try for new photos of the addresses I’d already obtained. The weather was too bad to get anything clear. Jenna’s personal case, however, had tons of work to be done.
For a few hours, I managed to lose myself in research and planning, stopping only when my phone buzzed with a text from Jalen.
Want some dinner? I don’t feel like eating alone tonight.
Well, at least he didn’t say ‘we need to talk, and I’d take that as a good thing. Maybe he wanted to talk to me about meeting with Elise, or he truly just didn’t want to eat alone. Either way, I knew once I sent him a response, he was coming to see me, not going to see her.
And I refused to let my mutinous mind tell me any differently.
To prevent myself from overthinking, I went home, took a shower, and picked up a few things until he showed up with pizza, breadsticks, and a side of wings.
“Hey,” he said as I opened the door. “You look nice.”
I was wearing a pair of comfy jeans and a long-sleeved cotton t-shirt, both of which were clean and presentable, but nothing special. Score one for Jalen. When I saw that he’d gotten one of those pizzas with all the different kinds of cheeses, I awarded him another point.
“What do you want to drink?” I asked as he followed me into the kitchen. “I pretty much have water, orange juice, and alcohol.”
He laughed, the warm sound slithering over every inch of me. “Whatever you’re having.”
It was probably a good thing that I didn’t have any hard liquor here because the way my nerves were going, I could’ve used a shot or three. I reached into my fridge and pulled out two beers. I didn’t drink it a lot, but it was the perfect complement to pizza, in my opinion.
We went into the living room, and I turned the volume down on the TV rather than turning it off. Pauses in our conversation would feel less awkward if there was some background noise, and I was uncertain enough about where things stood with us to want to plan for those possible uncomfortable moments.
After we’d both settled on the couch and served ourselves, I waited to see where he took things first.
“I’m glad you wanted to share dinner,” he said. “I really needed to see a friendly face after the day I’ve had.”
That sounded promising, but I tried to keep that thought from showing on my face. “Things didn’t go well?”
He shook his head as he chewed. He took a long drink, then explained, “First, I had three programmers call in sick with that nasty flu bug that’s going around, and of course, they’re the ones doing a lot of the base coding, so other programmers can’t do their work. Then, I get a call from Elise, saying she wants to talk about signing our divorce papers, finally. So, I ask her to come to the office.”
I went still for several long seconds, then forced myself to pick up my beer and take a drink.
“But, when she gets there, all she wants to do is talk about how we can’t throw away all this history we have.” He scowled at his pizza. “Still, I had lunch with her, thinking I could maybe get through to her. She wanted to talk about it instead of pretending I’d never filed, and that was a step in the right direction.”
Another long drink of beer on his part while I took another bite of pizza I could barely taste.
“We spent an hour together and accomplished absolutely nothing.” He shook his head. “I should have told her that I wouldn’t talk to her again unless we sat down with our lawyers.”
“Do you think she’d actually agree to that?”
He shrugged. “Probably not, but at least I would’ve been able to eat my lunch in peace, and considering how my afternoon went, I could’ve used the break. As soon as I got back to the office, I find out that one of my techs, Matt, has just discovered a huge problem with a program that I’d thought would be ready for release next week. So I spent my afternoon trying to figure out who I could pull off of other projects to fix something that should’ve been taken care of weeks ago, and I can’t even blame anyone else because I completely missed it too.”
He sounded so frustrated that I felt guilty for even considering that he might’ve been hiding Elise from me. I was even more glad now that I’d walked away and given him the benefit of the doubt.
“How was your day?” he asked.
Instead of telling him that I’d closed a case where I was pretty sure that the client’s wife was cheating on him with his mistress, I leaned over and kissed his cheek.
“What was that for?” He gave me a puzzled smile. “Not that I’ll ever complain about a kiss from you. I’m just not sure what prompted it.”
