Page 79 of Playing With Temptation

“You think Mercer’s a hitman?”

“I don’t know what he is, but you’ve got him in the same place with the ex-boyfriends. Both women strangled. Both women dumped in water. Mercer shot you not even five hundred yards from where Ashley lay dead. He’s your man, Jase.”

Fucking, fucking hell.

“I’ll put a bug in Elias’s ear about the bars. He’ll catch my meaning and run with it.”

“Elias Radcliff caught the case?”

It didn’t surprise me Dylan knew of the other detective.

“Yeah.”

“Thank fuck if it’s not you and Ethan, it’s Radcliff. The dude is relentless.”

Elias had earned that reputation from years of good policing.

“If that’s all you got, I gotta change and get my family to Rainy’s mom’s house for dinner.”

“That’s all I got. Talk soon.”

“Thanks, Dylan.”

I grabbed my phone and rushed into the house.

I yelled out my hellos as I bounded up the stairs to change.

When I was done, I passed out proper hellos, including a lip touch with my woman and a hug from my daughter. The boys were bouncing at the door, raring to go, so they got the order to get into my SUV.

I was getting ready to close Rainy into the car when she asked, “Ready for this?”

And that’s when it hit me—she was nervous.

I could remind her that I already knew her mother, that I’d sat at her mom’s table hundreds of times, hung out on her couch, spoken to her on the phone countless times, hell I’d even run into her at the store in the last sixteen years.

But instead, all I said was, “Absolutely.”

I knew I’d made the right decision when Rainy smiled and I watched the nerves slip away.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“Surprise!”

Lucas, who was leading the charge into my mother’s house, stumbled back and slammed into me.

“Granny J!” Juni yelled from behind me.

And indeed, Jase’s mother Janis was in my mother’s living room standing next to my mother, who was beaming.

Chaos ensued. Juni rushed past me and Lucas to get to her grandmother. Jase shuffled us forward even though I wanted him to pull me out of the house and take me back to his house so I could hide under his thick, white, goose down comforter on his bed.

No I didn’t snoop. Juni invited me upstairs Wednesday night so I could see her bedroom. It was adorably decorated in pastel purples.

I also saw Colson’s room, which unsurprisingly had a ton of skateboarding posters on the wall.

There was also what I was sure Jase called a guest bedroom, though I didn’t ask him to confirm my assumption that he thought a lone bed in a room fashioned a guest room. And another room that was mostly empty with a few boxes stacked in the corner.

Then of course, Jase’s room, which Juni had taken me into. That was the only part of the house that screamed bachelor, crash pad. There was a king-sized bed. No headboard. Ugly nightstands that came from a big box store, and two dressers—one tall one, one short, long one. Neither were worth mentally filling away their appearance because they were dire and in my humble, garage sale diva mind, they both needed to be thrown away.