The Truth About Comfort Cove

“I care, Ramsey.”

“I didn’t ask you to care.”

Her expression fell, but she was a hell of a lot classier about the situation than he’d just been. She was off the bed and dressed before he’d managed to do more than pull on his underwear.

“I’ll wait for you in the kitchen,” she said. “And you’r

e absolutely right. I apologize. You didn’t ask and I shouldn’t have pushed. And…thank you for satisfying my curiosity. You are a better lover than I’d even imagined. I’m glad I had the experience.”

It was the nicest kiss-off he’d ever had.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Lucy tried to be angry with Ramsey for being such a guy. She tried not to be hurt at his curt rejection. Failing at both, she went back to work. Until they had their answers, they had to keep looking. There was no such thing as a perfect crime. And bodies did not disappear into thin air.

She was back at Jack’s phone records when Ramsey walked into the room ten minutes after she’d left his bedroom.

“I’m sorry I pushed,” she said before he had a chance to get close enough to sit down. “I don’t want any of this…today… to get in the way of what we do best, and do so well together.”

She didn’t want to lose her friend over a roll in the hay, as incredible as it had been.

Or over hurt feelings, either.

When he sat down without saying anything, Lucy feared that it was already too late. She’d already ruined things.

“I had a sister.”

He knew that she knew that.

“Her name was Diane.”

Lucy closed the folder on Jack Colton. And looked at her hands, clasped together on top of it, giving Ramsey as much space as she could. Then she held her breath.

“She was two years older than me and the sweetest girl I’ve ever known.” His voice spoke from far away. “Our small village was like a ghost town after the tobacco industry tanked. People bugged out left and right, shops closed, homes were boarded up. Until all that was left were a couple of thousand hearty people and a few stores. What used to be a happy thriving town, where folks called out to one another in the square and you were never short of a smile, turned into a commune of worried faces and petty arguments. Except for my sister. She loved Vienna. She loved the small-town life. She was always helping out, insisting that we’d all bounce back. She was determined to get married and have a hoard of children to instill new life into Vienna.”

She already knew the ending to this story. She just wasn’t sure how they got to it. Or what Ramsey had to do with it.

“But not me. I was bored and unhappy and used every excuse I could find to get out of town. Our high school closed and we were bussed to Greer, a neighboring town that had always been twice the size of Vienna and was still growing and thriving, and I started hanging out with all of the kids there, rather than the kids I’d always gone to school with.”

He paused and Lucy looked up. He had his suit back on— complete with red tie knotted perfectly at his throat. And he was watching her.

“I’m giving you useless information instead of telling you what you really want to hear about.”

“I want to hear all of it. It’s your life, Ramsey.”

“I was a senior in high school when I introduced Diane to a friend of mine, Tom. He’d seen Diane around school and wanted to meet her. I had a crush on his older sister and after they’d been seeing each other for a while, Tom set up a double date. We were going to some parties in the next town. It was spring break, so things could get kind of wild, and my parents made me promise to stay with Diane the entire time.

“But Tom’s sister wanted to go for a drive in her daddy’s new convertible. She wanted me to take her out to the lake. Diane was having fun at the party we’d stopped in at and told me to go on ahead. She said it was embarrassing to be on a date with your kid brother watching your every move.

“I left. That was the last time I saw Diane alive.”

Her breath stuck in her throat, Lucy watched him. She’d been afraid he’d been leading up to something like this.

“What happened?”

“Tom gave her some pills. She’d never done drugs before. He had, but apparently didn’t know what he’d gotten hold of. By the time we made it back to the house, they’d both been rushed to the hospital. They died later that night, within an hour of each other.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”