A Million Dirty Secrets (Million Dollar Duet 1)

I was not a vulnerable woman. I was strong. I was resilient. I had done everything within my power to help my parents in the face of the impending loss of my mother, the foundation of all that we were. I had blindly sold myself to the highest bidder to make sure that she, that we all, had a fighting chance.

I could get over this. I had to.

Noah

The next morning, I found myself sitting at my desk with my hands tearing at my hair in frustration. I hadn’t been able to sleep well the night before. I couldn’t get that look on Delaine’s face out of my head. It haunted me. Something was different about her eyes. I’d seen that look before. I just couldn’t place my finger on it.

She’d lied to me. She had been crying, and since she wouldn’t tell me why, I was left to draw my own conclusions. It didn’t take me long to figure it out. She was a prisoner in my home. Although I’d pretty much given her free rein, she was still a prisoner who was forced to submit to my primal urges whenever the mood hit me. Why had it never crossed my mind before that she might actually find that demeaning? Sure, a lot of women threw themselves at me, but they did it of their own accord, not because they’d been paid to and therefore had no other choice.

I stood up and went into my private bath. I turned on the cold water and let it pool in my hands before splashing it across my face. I did that over and over again until I realized it was having no effect. Nothing was going to shake me from the numbness I felt. I grabbed a hand towel to dry my face, but I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and froze. I could see it then. I had become the one person that I despised most in the world: David Stone.

After all, what I’d done was something he might have done, except I paid for a long-term contract instead of using her as a one-night stand. I was using her for my own benefit and with total disregard for how this might affect her in the end. And I did it all with the safety net of telling myself that she had chosen to do this, so she knew what she was getting herself into. While that might have been true, it certainly didn’t mean I should’ve taken advantage of that fact. What if she was mentally ill? She didn’t really seem to be to me, but who in her right mind did something like this? Someone with her back to the wall, that’s who.

If I was taking advantage of her desperation, how was I any different from David? Ignorance really wasn’t a good excuse. I should’ve known that anyone, whether it was Delaine or some cracked-out whore, would only do something like this as a last resort. So, regardless, I was still in the wrong.

I went back into my office and looked at the phone sitting on my desk, willing it to ring. Like the masochist I apparently was, I wanted to know what had happened in her life to force her down this path. The savior in me wanted to help her. Truth of the matter was, I was no savior; I was an enabler.

I must have had some sort of super ESP, because it was at that moment that the damn phone actually did start ringing. All of a sudden, I wasn’t too sure I wanted it to be Sherman, because if he told me what I suspected was true, that Delaine was in a wretched place when she decided to do this, I just didn’t know how I would handle that.

I took a deep breath to calm myself and steady my nerves and then picked up the receiver. “Crawford.”

“Hey, Crawford. Sherman here. Got that information you wanted. Hope I’ve caught you at a better time.”

I sighed and it sounded despondent even to my own ears. “It’s as good a time as any,” I answered. And then I waited with bated breath.

“Yeah, well, got a pen and paper handy?” Sherman asked in his all business voice.

I grabbed a pen from my pocket and slid my notepad in front of me. “Shoot.”

“Delaine Marie Talbot, aka Lanie Talbot.” Like I needed to be reminded.

“She’s twenty-four, lives at home in Hillsboro, Illinois, with her parents, Faye and Mack Talbot. I’ve got an address if you want it,” he offered.

“Isn’t that what I’m paying you for?” I asked, agitated.

Sherman rattled off the address and then got right back to it. “High school records show she was a straight-A student, but I couldn’t find any record of her ever having attended college.”

I wasn’t surprised at all that she was smart; maybe she needed the money for tuition.

“Also doesn’t look like she was much into the social scene. Not surprising with a straight-A kid. They tend to be recluses.”

I had been one of those straight-A kids, so I knew damn well that nothing could be further from the truth.

“Seems pretty boring, if you ask me.” I hadn’t asked. “There really wasn’t much more on her, so I went digging on her folks. Her father used to be a factory worker until he recently got fired for attendance issues. There were doctor excuses on file, but they weren’t for him. Apparently he’d been taking care of his ailing wife, Faye. Faye Talbot is terminally ill, like at death’s door terminally ill, and in need of a heart transplant,” he said, and paused.

Memories of my mother’s closed casket flashed before my eyes and I dropped my pen, suddenly losing control of my motor functions. I had lost the only two people I had ever truly loved at the same time, so I was all too familiar with how Delaine must be feeling. And she was there with me, instead of by her mother’s side. Why?

I could hear Sherman shuffling papers in the background, and then he continued. “They recently came into a large sum of money, donated by an anonymous source. Before that, looks like they were going under fast. Lots of medical bills, maxed-out credit cards … You’d think health insurance would pay for some of this. But then again, no job usually means no insurance.”

Son of a bitch.

“No police record on Delaine. That’s all I’ve got.” He sighed, and waited for me to say something. The problem was that I didn’t know what to say. My brain was still processing the fact that Delaine’s mother was dying. For the first time since my own mother passed away, I wanted to cry.

“Crawford? Crawford, do you hear me?” he repeated.

I couldn’t say anything. I was choking back the flood of emotions that suddenly rushed at me and threatened to overtake the dam I had carefully constructed to keep those emotions in check, like it was made of twigs instead of 330 feet of reinforced concrete. The grief that I’d felt when I lost my parents had nearly destroyed me. I would’ve done anything to save them if it had been possible. Anything.

I barely even registered hanging up the phone in my state of shock.