Page 61 of Perfect Order
Slowly, I replace the receiver and reach for the picture of me and Lee on her end table. “You would, wouldn’t you? I can’t rest until I know for certain, Lee.”
Her image blurs, even as an insidious thought races through my mind.I have to protect them if you died because of me. Even if that means separating myself permanently.
“What’s your family like?”I reach over and drag the bowl of popcorn next to me. I don’t dare tap into the video in the office Kane’s using. Not yet. If I did, I’d be down there instead of sitting in Lee’s condo running scripts to suss out some of the people who are sniffing around her hard drive.Idiots. Do they think she didn’t have me watching her six? Just because I’m supposedly “dead” doesn’t make her an easy target. Asswipes.
But I tune in when Kane’s smile infiltrates his voice. “They’re a hoot. My sister and I believe our mother should have her own television show. She’s a trip.”
“Really? Tell me about her.”
I listen as Kane tells me a few stories about his mother and almost upend the bowl laughing when he shares about his mother, cocks, and the day he met Beckett Miller. “Stop it. She can’t be real,” I manage to gasp.
“Completely, one hundred percent, no lies. That’s my ma.” And in his voice is so much love, it’s palpable.
“She sounds amazing.” I hear the wistfulness in my own words.
There’s a pregnant pause. “You’re not close with your own folks?”
I shake my head before realizing he can’t see me. Too often as of late, I’ve forgotten we’re not in the same room together. It’s something I want to rectify soon, but I need to focus on the mission at hand. And that includes what I’m about to share. “We were. Weallwere. And then Lee died.” I pause for a moment, gathering myself before I try to give voice to some of my innermost thoughts. “My whole life, I shared my soul and face with someone I loved more than any other person in the world. Now, she’s gone.” I take a few deep breaths to control the tears threatening to pour down my face. “I just never knew it would become my fault I died before she did.”
Long seconds go by where the only thing keeping time are the beats of my heart. Finally, Kane speaks. “They blame you for your sister’s death?”
“Maybe? I don’t really know. I know my mother can’t bear to look at me, and my father has to care for her.”
“That’s not how it should be,” he declares hotly in my defense. It makes me want to race down to Hudson and throw my arms around him and pepper his face with kisses.
And yet, I still don’t know what he looks like. Maybe for me it’s meant that I fall in love with a person’s soul before their face. After all, that’s what happened with my Lee. And with her, we never exchanged a word for it to happen. With Kane, all we’re doing is exchanging them, and I’m already feeling the same bonds snap into place, locking me to him. “It will work out the way it’s supposed to,” I whisper philosophically, though I have no idea if my mother will ever be able to look me in the face ever again.
I feel a small buzz against my leg. Swiping up my phone, I frown at the message.Less flirting and more working.I growl and lift my middle finger, waving it around the room. I’m not certain if he turned on my phone—something I taught him, ugh—or if he arranged to have my place bugged, but either way, let him deal with my very visible answer. I mumble under my breath, “You have no idea what my flirting would be like.”
“Oh, I don’t?” comes the amused voice on the other end of the line.
Christ, I wasn’t muted, and Kane thinks the comment was for him. I drag air into my lungs before I return, “No idea.” I pop some of the salty, buttered goodness into my mouth, chew like I don’t have a care in the world, and wait for his rejoinder.
But in no way am I prepared for his voice to drop and his “Neither do you, Leanne. But I’m game if you are.”
I promptly choke on a kernel. “Oh, holy hell.”
There’s lazy amusement dripping in his voice when he asks, “Are you all right? Do I need to send paramedics?”
“To get my heart started again, maybe,” I admit.
His sexy laugh causes parts of me that have been dormant to rise. Hell, even the hair on the nape of my neck feels like it’s floating independent of my skin. There’s a fire burning in my blood caused by a maelstrom of emotions, none of which is vengeance. But sorting them out is for another night when my heart isn’t jumping because it’s just run the gamut of emotions from today’s earlier castigation to a ridiculous longing for the faceless man on the other end of the line.
Get a look at this fabulous picture of Kylie Miles one of our dedicated fans snapped today as she dashed out of a SoHo loft. This isn’t a woman feeling nothing; she’s feeling too much. And all I have to say is, welcome back, Erzulie. You’ve been missed.
With this picture, maybe I’ll need to stroll by. After all, the photog told me he saw my dream man slipping in not long before Erzulie dashed out—Beckett Miller. I’d love to bump into him, if you know what I mean.
— Sexy&Social, All the Scandal You Can Handle
There’s a small storm outside that caused the studio to cancel my solo time for today when all I wanted was to escape my thoughts. I wander around aimlessly searching for something, longing for something. Needing more. And I know this emotion well. It’s a prelude to trouble, the kind of trouble that could tumble this house of cards I’ve precariously balanced amid a windstorm.
It was my choice to surround myself with the essence of Lee, but after yesterday, I need to escape. “What the hell is happening to me?” I shout aloud.
I’m certain one of the agency’s shrinks would have some psychobabble about the stress of being undercover as my sister finally getting to me. And they'd be right. I was barely given a moment to grieve her loss before I was swept up into this quest for vengeance. For what? “To be abandoned by the same people who I was hell-bent on getting answers for?” I yell. Well, to be fair, my father knew I was going to be investigating Lee’s death, but to this extent…
I’m so far from the sane, stable woman who fearlessly negotiated the hell out of a contract inside a windowless room for days with nothing but my mind and my fingers as the primary commodities.
My phone buzzes.Go over the facts. From the beginning. “Fuck you, you ass. Get the hell out of my devices!”
