Page 47 of Love Me Carefully
“Oh yeah, they’re engaged. They’re getting married in May,” Keesha chimed in.
Nikki’s angry glare toward the other girl confirmed to Jeff that she’d been prepared to deny any knowledge of that fact.
“Really? Well, that’s…interesting,” Jeff managed. This changed things drastically.
“Is that all, agents?” Nikki folded her arms over her chest, her eyes glued on Jeff.
“Ah, yeah, I think that’ll be all, for now.” Jeff turned to leave.
Something in the way he’d said those last words had Nikki shivering. She wanted these men out of the shop. She didn’t know what was going on, but she didn’t like it. Ms. Rosie had called yesterday morning saying that she and Donald were going on a cruise. Nikki had been shocked because Ms. Rosie hadn’t mentioned a cruise before, and something like that she definitely would’ve told them about ahead of time. But Nikki figured it was what engaged people did. Now all sorts of thoughts were going through her mind. She was going to call Leah as soon as these men left. Maybe she would know what was going on with Ms. Rosie and Donald, since she’d been working so closely with them on planning the wedding.
“Ah, we’ll be in touch, ladies,” Marty said as he turned to follow Jeff out of the shop.
“You know where to find us.” Keesha hurried to Marty’s side and walked him to the door.
“We sure do.” Jeff turned before opening the door, his gaze locking once again with Nikki’s. “We know exactly where to find you.”
The words seemed to be spoken to her alone, scaring her, so that Nikki rolled her eyes and turned to walk toward her station. For a moment—a brief moment that seemed to last an eternity—Jeff watched the gentle movement of her ass and the tenseness of her shoulders. Swallowing quickly, he turned and left the shop.
* * *
“Dammit! Where is she?” Nikki muttered for the millionth time today. She’d been calling Leah ever since those FBI men had left the shop. Melinda had wondered why Leah hadn’t come into the office, and told Nikki she’d been calling both Leah’s house and cell phone all morning as well. A call to Marsha didn’t help matters, since she hadn’t talked to her daughter in a couple of days.
It wasn’t like Leah to just go off and not tell somebody where she was.
As soon as she was finished with her last client, Nikki was going over to Leah’s apartment to see what was going on. She wished she had the phone number of Ms. Rosie’s son. Maybe he knew what was going on. If he didn’t, he probably should know that the FBI was asking questions about his mother.
* * *
“It’s gonna take a few hours to get a search warrant for the house. But getting in there is the best chance we have of finding some clue as to where he went. Until then, we’re gonna sit right here and wait.” Jeff and Marty were parked in front of Donald’s house. They’d gone there right after leaving the shop.
“So what do you think about this engagement thing?” Marty asked.
“I don’t know, Marty. I just don’t know.” Shaking his head, Jeff tried to think of anything other than Nicole Ayers. “I told you something was going on.”
“Yeah, something’s definitely going on,” Marty agreed as he opened a pack of peanut M&M’s.
