“You’re the one barging into my hotel room,” I mutter, stepping back and holding the door wide enough for her to enter. “You don’t get to critique my wardrobe choices.”
“So says the woman who’s always fabulously dressed who’s now, all of a sudden, wearingthat.” She waves a hand along my body, from bottom to top, fuzzy socks to pajama pants to Jace’s sweatshirt.
“Ah, now you’re going to hurt my feelings.”
“That being,” she says without missing a beat, “a sweatshirt that decidedly seems to belong to”—her voice becomes a stage whisper—“a man.”
I roll my eyes. “Stop messing around and tell me why you’re here torturing me when you’ve already been torturing me at the office.”
“I’ll have you know,” Attie says, “that I’m working overtime on this case for your boss?—”
“You’re working overtime for your husband,” I correct.
“Who happens to be one of your boss’s hockey players.”
“Yes,” I agree. “So we both benefit from putting this nonsense with Angela behind us—you get to solve your case and earn the undying love of your boy toy?—”
“I already have it.”
My heart squeezes at the confident words.
To have that, to know it with such assurance…
I can’t lie—there’s more than one thread of jealousy weaving through me.
“And,” she goes on, “you get to have your boss less stressed because his ex is in jail like she should be and you can get back to doing your job as you prefer—without drama and sabotage.”
I scowl.
“What?” she asks.
“I hate it when you talk sense.”
Her mouth kicks up. “You love it, same as you’ll love my update.”
The last has me biting back the protest that was already welling up on my tongue.
Her smile grows. “Thought you’d like that.”
“What’s your update?”
Part of the craziness of the last weeks has revolved around Jean-Michel falling in love and being out of the office more. The rest is because we discovered that Angela was trying to con Titan Capital employees into giving up confidential information (a thread that we shared with Attie and the FBI).
Angela, the ex from hell.
Angela, the absentee mom to Jean-Michel’s daughter, Chrissy.
Angela, who took her absenteeism so far that she pretended she was dead.
Angela, who reappeared last year, tried to take half of everything, and then was spotted working with—or for, no one is really sure yet—the Lyon family, an East Coast crime conglomerate who’ve branched out to expand their smuggling and human trafficking business here to this side of the country.
I’m sure there’s more, but I’m not privy to all the details of the investigation.
Angela seems to be both everywhere and nowhere, kicking up dust and chaos.
Working with lawyers and criminals alike.
But tonight, Attie tells me they’re closing in.
