As I pulled out, my phone rang. Using my car’s Bluetooth feature, I pressed the button on my dashboard to answer it.
“Yeah, Joel?”
“Don’t ‘yeah, Joel’ me, boy? Where the hell you been? You were supposed to call me an hour ago,” my father demanded into the speakers of my truck.
I chuckled. He could be an ornery son of a bitch when he wanted to be. “I got tied up with … something.” I started to say work, but that wasn’t the full truth.
“Make sure that same something doesn’t come up next Thursday.”
“What’s next Thursday?”
“Your cousins are coming to town.”
I grunted. “All of them?”
“Nah, the oldest one, his wife, and his father and wife.”
“You mean your brother? The uncle you failed to tell us we had for years?”
He groaned into the phone. “Here you go with that shit again. I had my reasons, all right?”
There was a long ass story about my father and the surprise half-brother he’d revealed to us. As it turned out, my father was brothers with Robert Townsend of Townsend Industries based in Williamsport. He’d only told this to my brothers and me months earlier.
“If you say so,” I grunted and started my truck, ready to back out of the driveway. “What are they coming to town for?”
“To visit the ranch and to talk shop.”
I stiffened. “You’re not inshopanymore.” I hadn’t been one hundred percent truthful with Jodi at dinner. LS Investigations hadn’t started as an up and up PI firm. Joel worked for his good for nothing father when he was younger. That business consisted of him digging up secrets and doing all sorts of illegal shit for Townsend Industries. He was his father’s dirty little secret in more ways than one.
From his connections, after his father died, Joel formed LS Investigations, working mainly with high paying customers. While I’d kept the exclusivity of the company pretty much the same since my father’s days, the illegal aspects of the job weren’t something I readily engaged in.
“It’s not what you’re thinking. Make sure you have your ass here at six next Thursday.”
“Are you cooking?”
He chuckled. “What the hell do you think? You know I don’t like having strangers in my damn house cooking, and I don’t trust anybody else’s food.”
I shook my head, knowingly. “I’ll be there.” I paused a moment and thought. “I’m bringing someone with me. Make sure you make extra of whatever you’re serving.”
“Who the hell are you bringing to my house?”
“You’ll find out when we get there.”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone, followed by a whistle. I didn’t feel the need to explain things to my father or anyone else. If I said I wasn’t showing up alone, that was my explanation. He knew me well enough to know I wasn’t bringing anyone unimportant to his house.
Joel deviated from that conversation to ask about clients and how shit was going at work. A dialogue I engaged in as I turned off the road that led away from Jodi’s house. If I’d remained there a few minutes longer, I might’ve spotted the dark sedan that slowly crept by her home that night.
Chapter Eleven
I could feel him on my lips more than ten hours later. I’d gone to bed with the feeling of his kiss deeply embedded in my skin, and awakened to it as well.
Sighing, I pushed the covers off my body.
“I shouldn’t be feeling this damn good,” I reminded myself before standing and stretching my arms overhead. One kiss from one man shouldn’t have me waking up with a giddy ass smile on my face. I was a grown woman who had plenty of experience in the relationship department. Sure, none of them had worked out, and I didn’t even need to get started on how my last relationship ended. Yet, no matter how hard I tried to suppress the bemused feeling that bubbled up every time I thought about that kiss, it wouldn’t go away.
After a quick workout, followed by a cup of coffee and some avocado toast for breakfast, I showered and was ready to leave. Noticing the two bags of old and useless papers that I’d collected from around the house, I grabbed them to take out to the porch to discard later. I didn’t feel like carrying the bags all the way out to the street. Making sure they were tied, I left them a few feet from the door to remind myself to take them out later. Grabbing my keys and bag, I was out the door and headed to LS Investigations.
The drive wasn’t long, but I felt myself growing excited the closer I got to the office. Again, that school-girl crush feeling overcame me, and I finally let myself admit that I was anxious to see Micah again. I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror and saw that I was smiling.
