Page 49 of Taking Denver

“Hm?”

“I’m Ms. Luxe. I never changed my name to Ledger.”

He stares at me. “Of course. Mrs. Luxe.”

I twitch at the probably deliberate misuse of the term missus.

Twisting my wedding ring around my finger, I approach the mantle. The wedding photo is out of place. Everything has a place here, and he’s disturbed it. I push it back to where it should be, my gaze lingering on Wyatt’s smiling face.

He was lying even then.

“Did you ever find his wedding ring?” Hayes asks, and I face him.

“They took it off him, didn’t they?”

He looks up at me. “Who?”

“The carjackers. It was an expensive ring,” I say. “The last I heard, the police assumed it had been stolen with everything else.”

“Nothing has shown up in pawn shops, and no one has called the station and reported it as being found. And no one will keep it. It’s a very unique ring.”

It was unique. It was engraved and custom-made. I hated the thing. It was a disgusting show of wealth that wasn’t even Wyatt’s to display.

Wesson wanders into the room, having probably sniffed out everywhere and deciding this is definitely home. He sits by my feet.

“Nice dog.”

I scratch Wesson’s head for a moment. “So, you don’t think they took it?”

“Hm?”

“The ring. You think something else happened to it?”

Hayes taps his thigh thoughtfully. “Possibly. It seems unusual for it to have not been sold by now. They wouldn’t keep it. It’s too well known. I think that ring has been plastered over every magazine and gossip site in America.”

“Maybe they got rid of it.”

“Maybe,” he muses. “But I have a feeling it’ll show up.”

“Cop intuition?”

“Common sense.”

I huff out a laugh. “If you’re handing some of that out, let me know.”

He smiles and leans back, his elbow resting on the back of the couch, his ankle resting on his opposite knee. He has a nice smile. What a shame it’s attached to a cop.

“You don’t think you have common sense?”

“Well…” I finally take a seat on the couch across from him. “My husband was murdered, and I ran. As common sense goes, it wasn’t my smartest move. I look guilty as hell.”

He tilts his head. “Are you guilty?”

“No,” I say. “But it looks like I am, and sometimes, that’s all that matters.”

“Why did you leave?”

I look at him for a beat, then sweep my hair over one shoulder, and his gaze drops to my neck. It’s a fraction of a second, but now I’m gaining control. Now all I have to do is let him see a crack in my armor and reel him in. It’s almost too easy.

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