“Okay. Drake is the son of a sweetheart conman. He grew up around this shit. When his old man went to prison, he decided to continue the family legacy.”
“No wonder he was so convincing.”
“Yeah, he was trained his whole life. He went into real estate-type cons. Smaller scale at first, then getting bigger as he got more confident.”
“He was definitely confident.” It was probably what appealed to me the most. If he approached me with even a hint of uncertainty, a single ‘if this doesn’t work,’ I would have runaway. But he was so certain. He made it easy to believe him, even if I rarely trusted anyone.
“Then what?”
If I wasn’t so close, I wouldn’t have felt how his body tensed. I wondered for the barest of seconds if he was going to lie to me.
But then he exhaled slowly.
“This is as far as Arty and I got before I got the call from York, so I can’t give you more details than this.”
“Okay.”
“One of Drake’s victims ended up murdered.”
“Huh.”
“Huh? That’s it? Huh?”
“I probably would have been shocked before tonight. But, clearly, he’s not above that kind of thing.”
“Yeah,” Raff said, arms tightening around me.
“Can we figure out more?”
“Absolutely. Maybe not tomorrow. He made it a point to say he’d be busy. But we wanted to binge eat. And you are very excited to watch more romantic movies.”
“Yeah. Me,” I drawled. Though, it was starting to sound really nice.
Raff’s hand started to slide up and down my back, short-circuiting my mind, making all other thoughts disappear.
“There’s a hopeless romantic in there somewhere, I just know it.”
Just this once, I didn’t argue against that.
Because that warm, swelling sensation in my chest? That felt a hell of a lot like the books, movies, and songs claimed.
And I drifted off to sleep before I could convince myself otherwise.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lula
I allowed one day.
One day of eating delicious, soft, awful-for-me food while lounging in pajamas and watching movies I pretended to object to but was actually charmed by.
But the questions nagged at me.
About Drake, his past, his current movements, anything else that Arty might have found out about him.
I’d never been good at staying still, at wondering. I liked movement. I liked knowing.
“I sense you’re about two minutes away from demanding I call Arty,” Raff said as he handed me a warm coffee. My gum felt fine, but he was being extra careful about what I ate and drank until I could get in to see my dentist back in Shady Valley.
