Forever After (Unrestrained 5)

tment but she cried out. I checked the time and she was right on schedule. I went to her room and picked her up, sat down in the rocker beside her crib, and fed her. While I was remembering the interview, Drake arrived home. I heard the door unlock and the coat closet open and close after he entered the apartment.

"I'm up here," I called out. I heard his footsteps as he came up the stairs to Sophie's room.

“There you are,” he said and kissed me, then stroked Sophie's cheek. “Are you okay?”

I nodded and took in a deep breath, not wanting to upset him.

“I’m fine,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. “Dana, Lara’s intern, thinks that things will all work out fine in the end. This is the cops doing what they’re supposed to do.”

“I hope so,” Drake said. “I got a call a few minutes ago and have been invited down to the precinct myself for a little chat tomorrow. I've already talked to Lara. She'll come with me.”

“Oh, Drake, you too?” I said, and pulled Sophie off for a burp. Drake reached out and took Sophie from my arms. “My God, haven’t they interviewed you enough either?”

He shrugged and put a receiving blanked on his shoulder than held Sophie up for a burp, patting her back. I followed him downstairs to the sofa. We sat down together and finally, after she'd given a small burp, Drake handed her back to me. When I finally had her latched on the other breast and feeding nicely, I looked into Drake’s eyes. He was watching me with an expression of such warmth and affection that it made my breath catch in my throat.

How could they be so wrong about Drake?

It upset me so much to think of the police putting Drake through the wringer over the lies that Lisa told them.

“We’ll get through this,” he said and stroked my cheek. “We have each other. The three of us against the world.”

I smiled, but after reading about men falsely accused and wrongly imprisoned, I knew we had to be on our toes.

Chapter 7 : Drake

I met with Lara an hour before my scheduled meeting with Detectives McDonald and St. James. She was waiting at her office, and greeted me with a hug and peck on the cheek as per usual. The expression on her face was somber, and I knew she wasn’t feeling all that comfortable with the fact that the detectives were interested in me as a possible suspect.

I unbuttoned my jacket and sat down across from her, bracing myself for what was to come.

“So,” I said, wanting to get right to it with no small talk. “What do you think? Why are they interviewing me yet again? Don’t they know from talking with Lisa that we have no relationship – that it’s all in her head?”

“You’d think so.” Lara shrugged and opened a file. Inside were hand-written notes on a yellow notepad. She read over the notes for a moment.

“Tell me everything again. Right from the start. I know about the encounters at Derek’s dungeon, but what about since then? Did you ever see her socially between the last dungeon scene and the first time she showed up in your course?”

I shook my head, unable to remember any single time we were at the same function together.

“I honestly can’t think of one time.”

“I spoke to one of my contacts in the major crimes unit and he said she claims you saw each other at a benefit concert that was sponsored by Doctors Without Borders.”

“That’s news to me,” I said. “If she was there, she never came up to me or spoke to me.”

“She claims you snuck off together and had sex in a broom closet in the concert hall.”

“What?” I said, a shock of adrenaline coursing through me. “Believe me, I’d remember if I had sex with her in a broom closet at Carnegie Hall…” I shook my head and ran a hand through my hair. “Seriously? She’s making shit up. What else did she claim?”

Lara flipped through a few pages. “She claims you met her for dinner several times over the past years. She has dates from when you were working on staff at New York Presbyterian. Seems that she has a half-dozen dates, all of which match up with time you were between surgeries.”

“None of it’s true,” I said and frowned. “I never once saw her between the time at Derek’s dungeon, which I can barely even remember, frankly, and the day she turned up in my Fellowship course. Not one time. It’s all lies.”

Lara shrugged. “I believe you, Drake. I know your sex life and submissives probably better than you do, because I arranged most of them. I have a list of them,” she said and handed me a sheet of paper. It was a spreadsheet, neatly done with columns and names and dates.

“Holy crap,” I said. “You sure are thorough.”

“Do you have anyone to add?”

I checked over the list. There were seventeen names.