Son.
Fiancé-to-be…
Fucking hell.That last one has to go. I cannot, and will not marry Jenica Chadovich. No matter what.
In need of enough whiskey to take the edge off but not enough to get sloppy, I open the cabinet and reach for a highball glass.
Then I stop.
There’s a water glass out of place. I’d never put it back there, not like that. Not with that smudge right on the rim.
And thereisa smudge. When I hold it up to the light to be sure, there it is. A lip pressed into the glass. It’s half-erased, like someone tried to rub it in a hurry but didn’t quite finish the job.
Instantly, I know:It was her.
She put her mouth to this glass.Thisfucking glass. The thought has my dick hard and my mind racing all over again.
I fill the glass with two fingers of rye and take it to my office, setting it down under my desk lamp so I can see the half-lip-print.
I don’t drink at first. I just stare. I just imagine.
Her lips, touching things that belong to me…
Her eyes, wide and dark, innocent, but… notthatinnocent…
Her scent.Fuck, her scent… It has this way of snaking around my lungs and seeping into my cells, intoxicating me to the point of being dizzy.
I take a sip.
It has the intended effect. As my nerves ease up a little, I think about Maverick and the conversation we just had. That’s another scent that has more power over me than I care to admit.
Everything about the garage floods my head with memories of my brother. Nik was always in there with us, taking cars apart and putting them back together. Laughing with us, joking with us, just fuckingbeingwith us.
I need to bury those memories before they get out of hand. So I take another sip, and down the hatch it goes.
And Nik stays where he ought to be: six feet deep.
I settle back in my chair. As I do, my eyes wander the room, stopping on the office closet. My gaze narrows.
I don’t open that door often. I don’t keep much in there, so there’s no need to. But it’s ajar. About three inches.
I get up and pull the door fully open. My eyes scan from top to bottom and—hold on.
What the fuck is that?
I bend down, picking up a foreign object off the floor.
It’s a hairclip. Gold, shiny, with a… phoenix, I think? … carved into the metal. Instinctively, I bring it into my nose and my senses are immediately flooded, like a wave breaking through a dam.
Jasmine. Rose. Patchouli.
I turn it over in my hand, and my frowning lips tug slowly into a smirk. Two details missed. The lipstick on the glass, and now, this.
“Amara…” I whisper, closing the closet. “You’ve been a bad girl.”
12
AMARA
