Emory conceded with a wry smile. Amelia couldn’t discern the faint scar on his lip in the low light but searched for it as if it might lead her back to his good graces; that moment they shared as strangers and his touch warm against her skin.
“You’re right, except you backed out. You’re nothing like him, never could be. Where are you heading again? Arizona? You want your freedom, an escape, a place to hide and pretend this never happened. I saw you at the party and you know what I thought? Lost. You looked lost. No one and nowhere to belong to. Whyelse were you so eager to touch yourself for me? You need someone to claim you, make you whole. Is that it?”
His statements calcified and pelted her like rocks, one after the other, until the last few crushed like boulders. Tears surfaced, not for fear but humiliated exposure. He might as well have stripped her naked and read her like a poem, the ones she’d written, but never shared, the ones buried deep.
Voyeur to her misery, Emory watched her cry. He leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. Tattoos inked the outside and inside of his thick biceps. Beneath them, a collection of long, thin scars had healed and marred the images that adorned his skin.
“Your old man isn’t the only one keeping tabs. I keep up with him too.”
Amelia licked the tears off her lips and let the rest dry on her cheeks. She could unravel later. Now wasn’t the time.
“He isn’t like Richard,” she said. “He won’t have the kind of money you’re looking for.”
Emory’s brows lifted with genuine surprise. “You think I wanna ransom you? No, that’s not why you’re here.”
“Why then?”
His gaze roamed her body, peeling back layers again with cutting precision. Something like fondness softened his eyes momentarily, that gauziness of sweet recollection. On him, it just looked deadly. Amelia yanked on Brian’s sweater to cover more of her thighs. Emory smiled at that.
“You tell me. Something was off last night. I know you felt it. The people who shouldn’t have been there, the ones watching you. It’s why you ran, wasn’t it? Anyone else would’ve gone home, but you ran. Why?”
Faltering again beneath his unremitting gaze, Amelia said nothing.
“Residual haunts,” he answered for her, plucking the words from her lips, though she had no intention of speaking them. “Burt and his big, bad secret. Nice of him to offload it onto you. He didn’t kill himself, by the way. The Velascos murdered him.”
Still comfortably seated with a smirk, Emory observed herclosely. She meant to rob him of the reaction he wanted, but she was easy to read in the best of times, and it seemed Emory Holt had a knack for laying her bare.
Amelia steadied her breath and looked away, but it only stoked his curiosity. Emory leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees.
“You don’t look surprised. To most people, that’d be shocking news. Not you. Why is that?”
It didn’t matter how little she gave. He already knew how she wore shock and horror, the way it stole her breath and painted her face. Amelia cleared her throat and clung to the lie for dear life.
“I didn’t know he was murdered.”
“But you suspected it. The way it happened, the timing. It didn’t add up. Burt uncovered something important enough that the Velascos wanted him dead. Whatever it was, you know it too.”
They arrived at the heart of the matter, and Amelia stood trapped in a minefield at the center. One move too sudden, he’d blow the lid. She pursed her lips and shook her head.
“I don’t. I was just his intern.”
Emory slid to the edge of his seat, and his long fingers stretched as if he considered placing a hand on her knee. He dipped his head to force her stare, but Amelia refused. Still, he dominated her downturned vision. She glimpsed the ropes of defined muscle slatting his forearms and recognized the subtle sweetness of his cologne.
Ensnared once more, her eyes flicked to him, but they weren’t on even ground. He was beautiful and awful, and she was a terrified mess. Amelia looked away and sunk back in her chair until the spindles dug into her spine.
“Look at me,” Emory rasped.
She obeyed but focused on how the dim light played against his cheekbones.
“You know, and you’re here because you’re gonna open up and show me all those secrets you have inside.”
Worse than his explosive anger was the slow simmer of a dangerous man and the calm that slackened his voice to a gravellywhisper. If only exhaustion could turn her fear into flippant resignation.
The closest she came was indignation. Amelia’s dirty fingernails dug into her palms. She held the tension in her body until it was tight as a bow.
“Why would I tell you anything?”
“Because you know who I am.”
