“Thank you, Sana. Seriously. This is so helpful.”
She sighs. “It was fun, honestly. I felt like a detective. Lost a lot of time looking into his daughter though. Charlotte Reed is a bit of a wild child.”
I snort, remembering the last few times I saw Aiden before we drifted apart. The excitement in his eyes when he told me he found his girl. The One. The disappointment when he realized she was using him to make another guy jealous. Her subsequent apology and their reconciliation, and then months later finding out she was using him to piss her dad off.
Charlotte Reed might be a fun girl, but she’s not a nice one.
And Aiden, as far as I can tell, hasn’t been the same since.
“I don’t know if I’d call her fun,” I say.
Sana shrugs. “Fun to watch?”
“As long as you don’t get too close.”
Sana raises an eyebrow. “I’m intrigued.”
I flip through the folder she gave me. “Anything else?”
“Not really. Lots of uninteresting stuff in there. Wild daughter, contentious relationship with ex-wife—I guess the brother took Reed’s side—no other family to speak of. He owns a couple properties in town, which you probably knew.”
I close the folder, taking a sip of my coffee. “I didn’t, but it doesn’t surprise me. I knew he owned his house.”
She nods. “Couple other residential properties, hidden by LLCs, two of which have liens against them. My guess is they were inherited at some point since there’s so little information there.”
“Addresses?”
She stands, smoothing down her skirt. “In the folder. Looked like a whole lot of nothing when I googled them though. But to be fair, I didn’t spend too much time on them once I figured out his little restoration business scheme.”
I nod. “Thanks, Sana. You really are a jack of all trades.”
She gives me a big grin as she heads for the door. “And that’s why they call me Chief Operating Officer Sana Basu.”
36
EVE
“So you’ll never guess what I discovered today,” Ryder says as we pull out of the parking garage and merge carefully onto the street.
Our bags are in the backseat, my dress hanging in a garment bag.
Before Ryder got home from work, I threw in some laundry and returned his apartment to the pristine condition it was in when we arrived. Of course, I realized once he asked if Delilah had been in that he has a maid that just wasn’t scheduled while we were there.
But itwasnice that he took one look at our packed bags and said nothing more than, “You ready?”
Like he’s as anxious to get back to Sunflower Hill as I am.
I probablycouldhave stayed in Manhattan a few more days, especially if there were more fancy parties to attend, but I think that’s just the price of being a farm girl. I inhale the occasional reprieve just like he inhales Sunflower Hill.
And something about that feels poetic. We’re each other’s break from hectic everyday lives. Like the first breath of spring after a long winter.
It’s a relief that he went back and experienced his life as it was and he didn’t fit into it like an old glove, but an experienced professional. Like he knows all the right things to do and say but maybe his heart isn’t in it.
And I don’t let myself think that maybe it’s because his heart is in Sunflower Hill.
“What did you discover today?” I ask, settling into my seat as Ryder focuses on the road.
“I was right about Reed,” he says, glancing at me only for a moment before returning his gaze to the road.
