Muscles running along Carly’s shoulders tightened. “I thought so.”
“I can check with my friends and be out in a day or two. Thanks for letting me stay as long as you did.”
Carly nodded. “Leave the key on the kitchen table and lock the door behind you on your way out.”
Driving back to the yacht, Carly smiled. Ashton’s boldness is finally rubbing off on me. Now, if only I can be that brave with him…
She settled in on the back deck and read through her grandfather’s day planner, hunting for a clue that would help her with Rose Aurora’s case. Her grandfather kept his appointment entries to a minimum. Years ago, she asked about his cryptic notes.
“A good PI gets to the truth,” Grandpa Pierce had explained. “A great PI gets to the truth and is invisible. The best of the best can sit in the middle of a busy hotel lobby for hours and go undetected. By the end of the day, you’re part of the scenery. If someone finds my planner or my notes, the information is meaningless. When clients put their faith in us, we have to protect them and their identities.”
Carly flipped to the day before he died. Friday, February 22. He had a meeting that evening at eleven thirty. He never worked that late. He woke every day at five thirty and was in bed by nine thirty without fail.
11:30 PM: WS w/I — bring RA photo
She stared at his familiar handwriting. “What does that even mean?”
Over the next forty minutes, she plugged the initials WS into Stone Investigations’ database. Her search yielded no results. She flipped back to January and examined each page for a clue.
Pierce’s shorthand made no sense, so she crosschecked it with her own schedule. An evening event on February 13 snagged her attention. In all caps he’d written,
JC, DONOR EVENT
MEET GI, DC HOTEL
BRING RA PHOTO!
JC might stand for Joe Clark, Pierce’s alias. Carly checked her own schedule. She’d spent the afternoon tailing a wife whose husband wanted to learn if she was cheating with her grad school professor. After work, she’d met Ashton at the shooting range.
The morning bled into the afternoon. At some point, she went inside for a glass of water, then paced—back and forth— before stopping and staring out at the water. Normally, she wouldn’t have thought twice about this calendar entry, but Pierce had used his Joe Clark alias only a handful of times. And each time, he was hunting for a killer. That made her shiver.
“There’s my gorgeous wife,” Ashton boomed.
Carly whirled around. “Oooieeee.”
His massive body filled the doorway, but it was his smile that jolted her heart. His button-down shirt and dress pants clung to his body while hers heated in response. Tonight’s assignment at Greta’s was all about bringing him pleasure under the guise of blending in at a kink party. I won’t have to fake a thing.
He dropped his computer bag, then continued toward her. She couldn’t look away. She couldn’t step out of his way, either. When he wrapped her in his arms, she could only delight in his touch.
“What’s got you so jumpy?” With the tenderness of a lamb, he kissed her forehead.
“It’s nothing.”
He stepped back, crossed his arms. She wanted to tug him back, sink her fingers into his hair, marry their lips, and give her faux spouse the kind of hello he’d remember for hours.
“Talk to me,” he said, snapping her out of her fantasy.
“I stopped by my house to grab a few things and told my roommate to move out.”
As if pulled by a magnet, she’d inched so close she had to tip her head back to stare into his eyes. His smile, a mix of playfulness and a whole lotta sexiness had her checking out his mouth.
He didn’t back up, but didn’t wrap her in his arms again, either. What he did do was stroke her cheek with the back of his finger. “Don’t even think about moving out.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Good.” He furrowed his brow. “Now, what’s got you so tense? I saw you pacing, then stop and do that thing you do.”
“What thing?”