“So you’re involved in an investigation, but not as a suspect.”
Her silence told him what he wanted to know. But if she’d denied the allegation, he’d have known she was lying.
And that’s why it had been wrong to sleep with him. She’d handed him the keys to her heart—to the ability to read through her subterfuge.
“Who are you?”
She didn’t answer. She tried, but no words formed.
“What are you?”
“What does that mean?”
“Are you a cop?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
Mark’s jaw dropped. He swung around toward the door. Swung back. Stared at her as though she’d sprung up from the sewer, turned and left.
And Addy learned something new.
It took only one second for a heart to break.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
MARK MADE BACON. And eggs and toast, too.
He sat at the kitchen table and forked food into his mouth, chewed and swallowed, all the while pretending that he didn’t see his grandmother’s knowing stare.
He couldn’t answer to her. Not this morning.
Sometimes a man just needed space for himself.
It was something he couldn’t help.
“You slept with her!”
“That’s none of your damned business.”
“Uh-oh. What happened?”
Mark jabbed at the last piece of fried egg on his plate, turned his fork prong down and shoved the egg into his mouth.
“You didn’t hurt her, did you? She’s different than the girls in Bierly. Some girls are just raised more fragile. Don’t you worry none about it....”
Taking his plate to the sink, Mark ran water over the egg yolk and left the dish and his silverware to soak.
* * *
SHE HAD TO TURN over the
list. No matter how much Addy loved Mark, the fact remained that his scholarship posed the most risk as being the cause of the threats against Will. The timing was right. The letters had started arriving almost to the day that Mark had accepted entrance into the university. It was too much of a coincidence for her to ignore.
Will was counting on her.