Total pages in book: 25
Estimated words: 23887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 119(@200wpm)___ 96(@250wpm)___ 80(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 23887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 119(@200wpm)___ 96(@250wpm)___ 80(@300wpm)
“Aren’t you a little young to be in here?” Mace is the first to speak.
“Well, hello to you too, Heath,” Briar sasses back, and I bite the inside of my cheek so that I don’t laugh.
I peek over at Mace and know he’s pissed. I don’t know why Briar pretends to mix them up every single time, but he should really be on to this by now. Heath shifts on his feet, and I can see it makes him uncomfortable, but he doesn’t get mad.
“Mace,” he clips to correct her.
“Right,” Briar giggles. “And you should know we’re 21 since you both showed up to our party at the beach house. Uninvited.”
“We live next door; we’re always invited.” Heath responds this time.
I hate him. His voice is low and gravelly, and just when I think he can’t get hotter, he does something like talk and my panties try to melt.
“Welp. This has been fun.” Briar grabs the small iPad on the table and takes out her credit card to pay. I reach out and take two mozzarella sticks for the road. We’re so ordering in when we get home. “We’d love to stay and catch up and do whatever else this is, but we have three guys we have to go meet up with.”
My eyes peek up towards Heath, and I’m ignoring Briar and Mace bickering. Heath is staring down at me, and it’s like I can feel his gaze on my skin.
“Three?” he asks, his voice firm and final. I wonder if that comes with his profession, but I think he might have always been that way.
“So I’ve been told. I saw a picture, and they are pretty cute.”
Heath’s hand comes down on the back of my chair, and it’s almost an intimate gesture. From the outside, it makes us appear to be together, or I might be reading it wrong. I must be. I know where Heath stands, and while it might be next to me at the moment, that’s all it is. A moment. I have to get out of here, and these kittens are already coming in handy. That’s a point for them.
“We need to—”
“Heath, sorry I’m late,” a tall blonde says as she comes up next to him. “Am I interrupting?” Her eyes bounce around to the four of us, and Briar jumps up.
“Nope,” she answers. “We were letting them have our table since we’re heading out. I think all the others are taken.”
“Oh, thank you,” the blonde says and smiles at us.
I go to slip down off my chair, but Heath pulls it out for me first before taking my coat off the back of it. He tries to put it on me, but I grab it out of his hold.
“I guess we’ll see you at the beach house in a few months.” I finally speak a full sentence as I push past Heath.
“Sooner than that,” I think I hear him say under his breath, but I ignore it.
That’s what I’m used to doing when it comes to Heath. I give him nothing, which is what he gave me all those years ago.
TWO
HEATH
“Everything okay?” Nelly asks as she takes a seat at the booth and grabs one of the untouched appetizers.
I look back at Meadow one more time and try to take a calming breath. Three guys? Who the fuck are these guys they are going to meet? A quick look at Mace tells me he’s thinking the same thing as me. I don’t need to be his identical twin to read his mind and know we’re sharing the same thought.
“Sorry if I ran your friends off. Dang, these pretzel bites are good.”
“It’s all right,” I say, although it’s anything but. I should have known we’d end up at the same bar, but asking Nelly to meet us here was just shitty timing. I guess that’s the story of my life with Meadow.
Mace and I take a seat on the same side of the table while the waiter comes over and takes our drink order, along with some of the empty plates.
“Okay, let’s get down to business.” Nelly pulls out her tablet and stylus and begins taking notes. “So you’ve got a couple of ideas who you think it might be?”
“I’m hesitant to give exact names in case it turns out to be someone else,” Mace says, and I nod in agreement.
“With all due respect, you’ve hired my husband and me as private investigators. Keeping things confidential is kind of our thing.”
“We’ve also hired one of the biggest forensic accountant companies in the country to go through the books,” I add.
“Good, they’ll take care of where the money went, but I’ll find out why they did it.” She makes a couple of notes and then shows us the screen. “These are a few of the people we’ve come across in a quick background check.”