Owning Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy 3)

“Oh, no, not at all.”

“That’s good to hear,” she said, smiling again. She looked younger when she smiled.

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about Bruce.”

“I was so sorry to hear of his passing,” she said, shooting me a sympathetic glance.

“Thank you,” I said.

“The papers reported it was a suicide.”

“Yes, they did,” I said. “The coroner came to that conclusion, but I’m not entirely sure that’s the case.”

“Why not?”

I peered at her, trying to decide if I could trust her or not. I decided to play it safe for now.

“It’s just a feeling I have. Bruce and I were very close and I know he would have reached out to me if something was bothering him.”

“Everyone handles depression differently, Mr. Dalton.”

“I understand that but you knew Bruce, too. He was gregarious, full of life. None of this makes sense.”

“The Bruce that I knew was tense and irritable,” she said.

“Well, yes, and overworked. But since he gave up the DA position, he’d really gotten back to his old self. He was shaking all of that. Did you have any contact with him after he left the department?”

“No.” Her reply was firm and ended with her pressing her lips together defiantly. She crossed her arms and sat back in her chair.

“No?” I asked. “Do you know if he had contact with anyone else here?”

“How would I know? Not to my knowledge…”

Bruce had been isolated up there at the cabin and he’d avoided talking about work at all once he’d left, but I always assumed he’d stayed in touch with some of his colleagues. Maybe I was wrong.

“Were you and Bruce close, Ms. Vance?”

“We worked side by side for many years, Mr. Dalton.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Not to be rude, Mr. Dalton, but why are you asking all of these questions? Why now?”

“I’m just trying to get some insight into my friend’s death. That’s all. Did you work on his last case with him?”

“I don’t really remember…”

“How could you not remember?” I asked. “The Santiago case. It was huge. Bruce was devastated that Santiago only got a few years time. Even I remember that.”

“Yes, of course,” she said, with a dismissive wave.

“Was there anything in that case that might have put Bruce in danger?”

Her eyes widened and then she quickly looked away. She put a hand on her neck and shook her head, replying without looking at me.

“Of course not.”

“I see,” I said, doing my best to feel her out. Something wasn’t right here and my intuition was telling me to dig deeper. But I could tell by the set of her jaw that I wasn’t going to get anything out of her.

“Well, thank you for your time,” I said, standing up. Relief flooded her face.

“Yes, I have a meeting soon,” she said, walking me to the door. “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Dalton.”

“Yes, nice to meet you, too.” She was closing her office door when I turned back to her.

“Ms. Vance..or is it Mrs?”

“Mrs.”

“Mrs. Vance, one more question. Do you recall Santiago ever mentioning a woman named Rube René?

“I really can’t discuss the specifics of a case with you, Mr. Dalton.”

“Of course, I understand. May I call on you again? In case I have more questions.”

“Absolutely, Mr. Dalton. Have a good day.”

She closed the door firmly, leaving me and my uneasy feelings solidly on the other side.

Chloe

Violet Balducci was a force of nature. Tall, statuesque, with a take-no-prisoners attitude. As soon as she walked into the penthouse and shook my hand with a firmer than necessary handshake, I decided I liked her. She launched into a discussion right away, asking me a million questions about what I expected from my new venture.

She asked questions I’d never even though of and it made me feel even more inexperienced. But we worked through them all, and by the end, we’d come up with a plan of action.

The best part? She was going to take care of everything. I’d make all the bigger important decisions, but with her taking care of the business aspect, it allowed me more time to focus on the creative stuff.

Which is exactly how I wanted things.

“Chloe,” she promised, “I am going to put everything I have into making this a success. I think you’ll be quite pleased.”

“I already am!” I said. “Thank you so much, Violet.”

“It’s my pleasure! Bear’s one of my favorite people in the world and I’m so pleased he’s found such a lovely wife.”

“Oh, thank you, that’s very nice of you to say,” I said, a flush running up my neck.

“So, when are you due?”

“Late July,” I said. “We still have a few months and a lot of work to do in the meantime.”

“Well, I’ll take the heavy lifting and you just work on those creative decisions.”

“Will do,” I said, running through my assigned tasks in my head. The first thing I had to do was come up with a name. The fact that I’d not done that yet was ridiculous, I know. I was just so indecisive about it and I kept coming up with ideas and rejecting them. Nothing was sticking. I’d enlisted Bear’s help, but so far he’d not provided any acceptable options, either. I knew when the time was right, the perfect name would come to me.

Violet left in the early afternoon, our meeting taking up most of my day. I spent the rest of the afternoon working alone, finishing up sketches and working up new patterns. I had a team of seamstresses coming in tomorrow to start work on creating a small inventory from the patterns.

I sat out on the terrace, sipping tea and contemplating all the work I had to do. I still had to finish the nursery, too. All the furnishings were being delivered in a couple of days.

Bear and I had gone to see Dr. Reynolds a few days ago and everything was moving along perfectly with the pregnancy. Lying there with him holding my hand while they were doing the sonogram had been amazing. Hearing the baby’s heartbeat, seeing her face…it sent tears flowing down both of our faces.

I was still calling her a ‘she’ even though we couldn’t determine the sex for sure during the sonogram. We were going to try again soon, but I’d never had such a strong feeling about something before, I just knew she was a girl. We’d left the doctor’s office full of joy, and as usual, talking about how crazy it was that we’d done a complete one-eighty about having children. Seeing the realness on that sonogram screen only made us more ecstatic about it.

Although Bear had been a bit distracted since we’d arrived home from our honeymoon, he was still going out of his way to make sure I had everything I needed, that I was feeling strong, eating healthy and not taking on too much. He was treating me like I was made of glass these days, which was totally unnecessary. I’d never felt stronger.

To be honest, it was him that I was worried about. His grief seemed to have returned once we’d gotten back home, and I was back to trying to make it a little better each day.

I was completely ignoring the issue with Randy. I really didn’t want him in my life, but I was curious to hear what he had to say. Not curious enough to try to contact him, but it was there. Thankfully, he’d not come around again and I was happy for that because it was one less thing I needed to think about.

We were both dealing with a lot of changes and both overwhelmed, but all in all, I think we were handling the load decently.

Our future looked bright. Our love was strong.

Even though everything was a work-in-progress, I felt invincible.

Bear

My meeting with Lacey Vance had left a

bad taste in my mouth. Something wasn’t right and after seeing the way she’d blown me off, I was even more sure of it now.

Luckily, I had other resources.

First of all, I’d not finished going through Bruce’s journals. After a lovely dinner with my beautiful bride, I locked myself up in my library and pulled them out again. The flames of the fire I’d made earlier flickered beside me as I slowly sipped my whiskey and read the private words of my best friend.

I picked up where I’d left off previously, but it was obvious that Bruce had quickly become disenchanted with his work.

Being an ADA isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. I think I’m gaining ground, showing the DA that I can do the work, that I’m willing to go the extra mile, but it’s a competitive office and all the other ADA’s are showing just as much initiative. Of course, that just means I have to work even harder, and longer hours, and I think it’s starting to get to me. I’m so fucking exhausted and there just aren’t enough hours in my days. What I’d give for a nice run on some fresh slopes right now…

I fucked up. I missed a filing deadline and now I look like an incompetent fool. I’m going to have to work even harder to show the DA that he didn’t make a mistake appointing me to this position….

I skipped through the entries, flipping through to later ones that were written a few years later.

I hate elections. They’re so nasty, especially this one. My opponent thinks he’s going to win, but I’m not so sure. I’m getting a lot of good feedback from everyone in the office and I’m pretty sure the outgoing DA wants it to be me. Time will tell, I guess. Just a few more weeks until election night…

I couldn’t help but smile. I remembered all the stress he was under back then, trying so hard to win over the vote of every single person he crossed paths with. It worked.

I won! I won! I won! I’m elated…and very drunk after celebrating with Bear all night. My opponent was actually a gracious loser, which I was happy to see. Now, I’ll have the power I’ve always wanted, the power to make changes, to make the world a better place. All those long nights working have finally paid off. I can’t fucking believe it…