Shame on Him (Fool Me Once 3)

“Could you hold, please?” I press my palm against the mouthpiece and hold the phone away from me.

“What?” I hiss at her.

“Tell him he’s an asshole and you deserve some fucking respect!” Kennedy shouts.

Shaking my head at her, I pull my hand away from the mouthpiece and press the phone back against my ear.

“Sorry about that. Where was I? Oh, yes. Well, I’ve decided that you and I will start working together to solve this case and when I find out who did it, you can just give me your fee from the police department,” I inform him.

He barks out a laugh. “When hell freezes over.”

I smile to myself. “Bundle up. We’ll get together this weekend to go over the rest of the information in those e-mails. Have a nice day!”

Ending the call without letting him say another word, I sit there for a few minutes and stare at my phone.

“I still think you should have called him an asshole, but you did good,” Kennedy tells me.

“So, when are you going to meet up with him? Do I get to dress you again?” Paige asks excitedly.

“I have dinner at my parents’ house on Friday night, so it will have to be after that,” I remind them.

Everyone is silent for a few minutes. They know this is the weekend I planned on telling them about my job here and how I wasn’t sure if being a lawyer was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

“Well, then, I think you should definitely let Paige dress you,” Kennedy informs me.

Paige jumps up from her chair and practically bounces over to us. “We can find something totally hot and badass for Lorelei and we can get your outfits for your romantic engagement weekend with Griffin while we’re at it!”

Kennedy groans. “Do I really still have to buy new clothes for this?”

I gather my things. “Remember how you said you’d owe me one for being Dallas’s lawyer? You’ll go shopping with Paige and me and not say one single word. We get to dress you any way we see fit and you can’t complain.”

“Ooooh, you’ll be like our own personal Barbie,” Paige tells her with a laugh.

“You did NOT just say that to me.”

As we walk out of the office, I ignore Paige and Kennedy as they bicker back and forth. A few hours of shopping might be just what I need to get my mind off of the coming weekend. I’m going to drop a huge bomb on my parents and then try to work with Dallas. Both events could be equally explosive.

CHAPTER 10

My parents live in Hamilton County. It’s about an hour-and-a-half drive from my home so I have plenty of time to think about what I’m going to say to them. And plenty of time to rethink the outfit Paige made me buy on our shopping trip.

As I pull up the drive to their palatial brick home, I take a deep breath before getting out of my car. I seriously consider getting back inside and driving to the nearest Neiman Marcus to buy a suit. It’s not that I’m dressed unpleasantly; it’s just that I’m not dressed for dinner with my parents. My mother will undoubtedly have on a dress and pearls and my father will be wearing one of his usual black suits.

Staring down at myself, I know that what I’m wearing is perfectly fine: a pair of black leggings with brown, knee-high slouch boots, a tan-and-black-striped long-sleeved shirt, and a black infinity scarf. As soon as Paige picked out this outfit I knew I had to have it. It may seem like everyday wear for some, but it’s not something I have ever worn and I love it. My parents will definitely hate it.

Closing my eyes for a moment, I think about all of the reasons I want to be a private investigator. I think about how happy it makes me and how overjoyed I am that for the first time in my life, I look forward to waking up in the morning, knowing I’m going to do something exciting. I play these points on a continuous loop in my head as I walk toward the front door.

The rumbling of a car engine in the drive gives me pause. I turn to see a familiar black Mustang pull up behind my car and dread pools in my stomach.

I watch in horror as Dallas gets out of the car and saunters over to me. Even in my moment of despair I don’t miss the way he takes me in from head to toe. I have an unnatural urge to touch my wavy hair, which Paige carefully sprayed into place, to make sure it still looks good.

“Well, don’t you clean up nice,” he says with a lopsided smile.

“What are you doing here?” I respond, whipping my head around to the front door to make sure my parents aren’t standing there. If I’m lucky, they didn’t hear the reverberation of his muffler coming up the drive and have no idea I’m here yet.

“I’m sorry; I thought you said we would be working together now,” he tells me casually as he slides his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “I swung by your place so we could have ourselves a little meeting, and when I saw you pulling out, I figured I’d follow you. I’m guessing you just failed to mention to me that you’d be meeting with Miles Harper tonight.”

Oh, my God, this is not happening right now. Of all the times for him to be pompous and cocky . . .

“I can see by the shocked expression on your face that you didn’t think I’d find out about Miles. Nice work blacking out his name on the e-mails, by the way, but I was able to figure out that information all on my own.”

Maybe if I jump in my car right now, I can just tell my parents I had a flat tire and won’t be able to make it to dinner.

“I didn’t feel like wasting my time looking up his address. Figured you could handle that for me and I could just follow you.” Dallas whistles appreciatively as he looks at the front of my parents’ home. “No wonder you’re a lawyer. Must be a pretty nice paycheck.”