“That’s convenient,” I say with a laugh.
“I’m trying to help you.”
“If you wanted to help me, you wouldn’t be trying to fob me off on skeevy guys.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “Skeevy? He was wearing Armani.”
“Even skeevy guys wear Armani. In fact, I’d say most guys who wear Armani are skeevy.”
She laughs. “That just goes to show how much you need to get out in the world and spread your wings a little bit. Or maybe just your legs.”
I shriek with laughter and slap her shoulder. “Oh my God! Shut up!”
“You know I love you, right?”
“Of course I do. Why? What are you about to do?”
Shelby dashes back to the trash can, fishes out the card, then runs around the counter, laughing like a lunatic.
I gape at her. “What are you doing?”
She pulls her cell phone out of her pocket, and it’s only then that I realize what she’s doing. I shriek and run around the counter, but still giggling like a maniac, she dances around the tables, keeping them between us as she dials the number.
“Shelby, stop!”
She winks at me and laughs as she presses the phone to her ear.
“Shelby!”
“Hey, Cole, this is Brynn from the coffee shop,” she says, trying to stifle her giggling. “I wanted to take you up on your offer to go out. Why don’t you swing by the coffee shop tomorrow around six and pick me up? Great. Thanks. See you tomorrow.”
She disconnects the call, my heart is in my throat, and my stomach’s turning somersaults inside of me. I swallow hard, trying to rid myself of the lump in my throat.
“Shelby—”
“You are going to thank me later, babe,” she says. “Trust me. After a nice evening out and some hopefully mind-blowing, world-class boning, you will thank me.”
“I hate you so much.”
“You don’t,” she says, then winks. “And I dare say, after tomorrow night, when you’re not able to walk right for a week, you’re going to love me even more.”
I sigh and shake my head. Shelby thinks she’s helping me and looking out for what she believes I need.
But there is no way in hell I’m going on that date tomorrow.
3
CHAPTER 3
BURKE
As a PI, I’ve got access to information most people don’t have. I can find out just about anything about anybody. There are, of course, limits to the nuggets of information I’m able to ferret out on my own, and when I run into a roadblock, I’ve got a workaround for that too. Having done this job as long as I have, I’ve learned to make friends with people in influential positions to get the information I need.
I sit in front of my computer, running the name Cole Dosset through every database I have access to, and the picture that’s forming is confusing. One that doesn’t make sense to me. And usually, when something doesn’t make sense to me, I’ve found that nothing good comes of it. Combine that with the bad feeling I got about the guy the minute I laid eyes on him, and I have a feeling this guy is really bad news.
Standing up from my computer, I begin to pace my office and try to piece together what I’ve learned about this guy. He graduated from Florida State with a degree in Economics. Graduated with honors, at that. He worked at a financial management firm fora couple of years and, from what I’ve been able to dig up, was fired, though there are no details about the reason.
After he was dismissed from the firm, though, he went off the grid. Became a ghost. As far as I can tell, he has no job. And yet, he’s wearing Armani, and because I hung around, waiting for him to leave the coffee house, I saw that he drives a late model Maserati. The plates come back registered to a company. No doubt, a shell company. Probably used to quietly move money around while also avoiding personal taxes.
