Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99434 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Apparently, her mother’s bizarre, curt speech only extended to me. The woman leaned over to her daughter with an ear-to-ear luminous smile and pulled down the blanket a tiny bit to expose the girl’s eyes.
“I see you,” she said in a sing-songy voice.
The little girl shrieked and pushed the blanket down, revealing the same big smile as her mother. I watched the two of them, fascinated by the sudden change in the woman. Her cold had turned off as if her daughter were the sun that warmed her. They played for a minute, and then the woman unlatched the safety belt from the stroller and lifted the little girl out and onto her lap.
Her beautiful pale eyes were framed with the thickest dark black lashes. “Your daughter’s eyes are stunning.” I said.
“She gets them from her father.”
I couldn’t stop looking at the little girl. With pale eyes like Gray and dark hair like me, she looked like a child the two of us could have together someday.
I shook my head at that thought. The fact that my brain had even just gone there unnerved me a little.
“Say hi, Ella.” My strange client had become a different person. It was as if she’d forgotten how to be friendly until she had her daughter’s smile as a reminder.
“Hi!” She waved.
“Hi, Ella,” I said. “How was your nap?”
The little girl smiled and lifted a hand to her chin, almost as if she blew me a kiss.
Her mother pushed one of her unruly curls behind the little girl’s ear, and I noticed she wore a hearing aid. Ah. Sign language. She hadn’t blown me a kiss.
“Well, I should probably be going,” the woman said. “What do you need to get started?”
“The names and addresses of the parties, and the name of the bank and account number where the funds were stolen. That should be enough to at least get us a temporary injunction for the bank.”
She rattled off two bank accounts almost faster than I could jot down the numbers. The one-word woman certainly could machine-gun off information now.
“Great. And your partner’s name and address?” I asked.
She abruptly stood and started to strap the little girl back into her stroller. Once she finished, she adjusted the sunglasses on her face and looked at me. “Aiden Warren.”
Aiden Warren… Why did that name sound so familiar to me?
I tilted my head. “The name is familiar. Would you happen to know if he was ever a client here? I’ll need to check for a potential conflict of interest, if he was.”
“I don’t think so. But I believe we might have a mutual business associate.”
All of a sudden, a memory popped into my head. It was a conversation I’d had with Gray.
“When did you realize it was Max who had set you up?” I’d asked.
“About a month after I started my sentence, a buddy of mine came to visit. He’d been on the subway and happened to see Max, only she didn’t see him. She was too busy sucking face with Aiden Warren.”
“So you got suspicious because she was cheating?”
“Aiden Warren was the guy who we thought set us up.”
I blinked a few times. “You’re…”
Her face remained expressionless. “Mackenzie Cartwright Westbrook. My friends call me Max. And, yes, she is his daughter.”
Chapter 23
* * *
Gray
Where the hell are you?
I’d turned on my phone as soon as we touched down, but still had no response from Layla. After my delayed flight, it was already almost eight o’clock here on the east coast. I’d assumed when she hadn’t responded earlier in the day that she’d been busy with work. But my messages were showing as read, and she must’ve had two minutes to shoot me a quick response by now.
Stepping off the plane with my carry-on luggage, a bad feeling came over me as I headed to the airport exit. I dialed Layla’s number. It rang once and went straight to voicemail—which meant she’d pressed ignore.
I wanted to think the best of the worst—I’d pissed her off somehow, and she was letting me know it. But the protective part of me couldn’t help but worry. What if she’d been walking to lunch and some asshole driver was texting and blew the red light while she was in the crosswalk? Or she got sick in the middle of the day and was sitting in an ER somewhere. My strides ate up the walk out of the airport. Al was picking me up. He’d be idling somewhere nearby since you couldn’t sit outside of JFK waiting for a passenger, so I texted him to pull around to the arrival terminal.
“Layla’s apartment.” I spoke before even slamming the door shut.
“You got it, boss.”
Al looked in the rearview mirror before pulling away, but also checked on me. “Good trip?”
I settled back into the seat. “Yeah. Just a long day.”