Which was why, on rare occasions, she’d go to evening functions—to maintain her own status quo. But it was usually only when the Smyths were vacationing elsewhere.
And they weren’t going to be this time. He’d heard the night before that they’d be attending the library event. It was turning out to be the event of the year. Everyone was going to be there.
Except his sweet sister, who was helping to put on the event?
Julie went back to her grapefruit and toast. Colin scrolled on his tablet and thought about the woman he’d met the night before. Thought about the fact that he was still thinking about her.
About ensuring that, aside from murder-mystery business, he’d be seeing her again. Soon.
“She really had an effect on you.” He was deep in thought about him and Chantel on a yacht on the ocean—something about a private dinner at sunset—when Julie interrupted him.
Glancing up, he saw her studying him. This time minus the grin. “Who?”
But he knew who.
“You were grinning again,” she told him. “And not scrolling.”
Did Julie spend every morning watching him scroll, for God’s sake? Making a note to read his news before or after he got to the breakfast table—to spend those few minutes every morning paying more attention to his sister—he said, “There’s something different about her, Jules. She’s not like the rest of the women I know. I’m eager for you to meet her.”
Julie did smile then. “And I’m getting more and more curious.”
He hoped so. He wanted Julie to like Chantel. Not just because he did and hoped the woman would be around awhile, but because her publishing experience, her own drive as a writer, could help Julie take enough of a step out of her shell to submit some of her work for publication.
Maybe she’d even be able to help him convince Julie to attend the murder mystery gala. It would be a miracle.
But who knew? Colin being preoccupied by a woman was a bit of a miracle, too.
CHAPTER SIX
ON DUTY AT four on Friday, Chantel finished off a pint of chocolate ice cream for breakfast and lunch at a computer at the precinct, looking up names from the party the night before. Pulling police reports for any that had them. She already had everything there was to have on the Morrisons. Today she was looking at the others on the guest list.
A break-in, never solved. Several traffic incidents. A couple of DUIs.
First and foremost, she’d gone straight to the Fairbankses. And hadn’t been surprised to find not one single reference to them in the police database. You didn’t run a law firm as successful as Fairbanks, most particularly not with the types of clients they represented, if you were prone to mischief.
Still, a girl could never be too careful. If she was going to pretend an interest in the rainmaking attorney—and she was most definitely going to if she could persuade him to pursue her—she needed to be certain that he was going to help her case, not hurt it.
After brunch, already in uniform, she stopped to give the captain her report and then headed out in her car, driving by Max and Meri’s house—completely unnecessarily, given that the man who’d tortured Meri was in prison for life in Nevada, but it was something she still did several times a week, just the same. And she took a drive by The Lemonade Stand, too, going around the block twice, just watching. She was glad to see that the shops that fronted the unique women’s shelter were conducting business as usual. There was no reason for them not to be.
But the women who were fighting for their lives inside those shops, fighting for fresh starts, striving to live without violence, deserved to be watched over.
Then she went to the beach, to sit on a bench and watch the ocean. To clear her mind, relax a bit, so that she’d be prepared and focused when she hit the streets that evening.
What she saw, as she sat there, was an empty beach with an inner vision of her and Colin Fairbanks transposed onto the sand. They were walking, hand in hand.
And there the vision stopped. Even when she’d been in a serious relationship, Chantel hadn’t been the type who held hands on the beach. Or had her doors opened for her, either.
But boy, if ever she had been, a hand like Colin’s wouldn’t have been horrible to hold...
Giving herself a mental shake, she thought about Leslie Morrison and replayed their meeting the night before over and over. Making note of the “tells” the other woman had given her. There’d been too many to ignore.
Even accounting for the fact that Chantel had been specifically looking and could have made something out of nothing a time or two, she hadn’t imagined Leslie’s completely changed manner after her husband had joined them.