A Dangerous Dance Read Online Free PDF Page B

softened. “I was his bodyguard, not his confessor.”
    “Did he have one? A confessor?” She kept hoping that she could get some of her questions answered, but he shook his head.
    “Not that I ever saw.”
    “I guess my parents had that in common,” she said, unable to stop the hint of bitterness that colored her voice. It seemed that her parents’ secrets would always stand between her and her memories of them.
    Titus looked like he was going to say something, but was diverted by a discreet beep from his cell phone. He looked at the message, then at her. “We have more company.”
    “Who?”
    “Bubba Joe Henry.”
    “Really?”
    Bubba wasn't his real name, of course. That was Robert Joe, but half the men in the South were Bubbas, Dorothy had found. The trick was keeping them all separate, hence the “Joe” add-on. What made this particular Bubba's arrival interesting was his position of her list of possible suspects.
    “Do I have time to see him before the interview starts?” She looked at her watch, trying to do the math in concert with her racing thoughts.
    Titus nodded. “You still have something over half an hour.”
    “Let him in, then. I'll see him in the sitting room.” Pity the library was taken. She'd liked to have seen him with Magus's face in the background. She resisted going to the long windows that overlooked the drive where he'd arrive and instead seated herself on an elegant velvet couch. In the past, this had been the room where the ladies of the house received their guests, so it was an overtly feminine room, while still managing to be quite impersonal. Dorothy knew she'd never taken possession of it, during her short time here and it appeared her mother hadn't either. Or her presence had been swept away when she left. It would have been nice to have something of her mother here, something that would help her build a bridge between the past and the present that included her mother. Sometimes it felt as if she'd not just died, but been erased from Dorothy's life without a trace. Other than some old snapshots, she had nothing. Anything of value had been sold to pay medical bills.
    She heard footsteps in the hall and straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. As Bubba Joe entered, she rose to her feet, her head tilted as she waited to see how he intended to play the scene.
    He stopped in the doorway, his gaze drifting around the room before settling on her. He was a tall man, with a ruddy face and light, wavy hair that some women seemed to find attractive. Dorothy had never seen the appeal, finding his ready smile a bit too practiced for her taste and too much calculation behind his light, blue eyes. She'd heard he had charm, but she appeared to have been born armored against it. She'd also heard that he saw the governor's mansion as a path to the White House. He wouldn't have liked Magus forging ahead of him, using up his window of opportunity to power.
    He'd come alone, thank goodness. His wife was the coldest fish Dorothy had ever met. Thin and pale and ruthlessly determined as any man around, Suzanne Henry was also rumored to be charming and intelligent. Not to mention AC/DC in the bedroom. There was the stink of scandal about them both, but nothing ever seemed to stick to them, not unlike another famous presidential couple.
    Bubba Joe and Magus had maintained the appearance of a friendship, but he'd disappeared pretty quickly from Dorothy's life after the funeral. She knew from the file, Magus didn't trust him and would have done what he could to block him from ever running for office. She also knew Bubba Joe didn't like being thwarted. Oddly enough, he hadn't moved to fill Magus's position ten years ago. Ten years was a long time to put ambition on hold. He hadn't wasted the time, though. He'd held a couple of offices in the state house and senate, avoiding any national service so he could run as an outsider when the time came.
    An outsider. A man who'd never held a job and been on