A Secret Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

juice.
    “The confidential files. Every business has to keep them.”
    “Whatever.” She capped the shaker and swished it from side to side.
    He rounded the breakfast bar and commandeered the shaker. “Getting drunk is not going to help.”
    “Who’s getting drunk?”
    He popped the lid with one thumb and dumped the martini mix down the sink.
    “Hey!”
    “Read my lips—”
    “No, you read mine.” She mouthed a pithy curse.
    “I can’t believe you just said that.” Anthony had never imagined a word like that forming in Joan’s brain, never mind coming out her mouth.
    She reached for the shaker. “Believe it.”
    He snagged her wrist. “Oh no, you don’t.”
    “Let go of me.”
    He didn’t. “We need to focus here, Joan.”
    Her green eyes sparkled in the sunlight streaming through the window. “I am focused.”
    “Not on cosmopolitans.”
    “I was talking about the tea.”
    “Well, I’m focused on how Samuel is going to sue us.”
    She moved a little closer, her perfume wafting around him. “Done deal, Anthony. Samuel’s already won.”
    “Because you’ll feel compelled to confess to the judge.”
    “Exactly.” She compressed her lips. “I tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
    Anthony paused. “Say that again.”
    “Huh?”
    He had an idea. It was a wonderfully simple, yet brilliant idea. “You’re going to stand up and tell a judge Bayou Betrayal is based on an Indigo murder scandal?”
    “Yes, I am.”
    Merry Christmas, Anthony.
    His grip loosened on her wrist, and he had to fight himself to keep from turning it into a caress. This wasn’t the time to think about her soft skin, the scent of her perfume, the sweet puff of her breath or the rounded curves beneath her tailored clothes.
    He took a step back. “I know how we can skip the judge part.”
    “We write a big fat check?”
    “You tell it all to Ned Callihan.”
    Her coral lips pursed, and for a split second he imagined kissing her. It was a fleeting, intense fantasy, where he pulled her flush against him and tasted that tender mouth for the very first time.
    “From the News Network?”
    Anthony nodded, tamping down his inappropriate reaction.
    “How would that—” Her eyes went wide, and she took a step back. “Oh no, you don’t.”
    “You tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth to Ned on camera. Five minutes. Then whiz, bang, we cut Samuel a check.”
    She shook her wrist out of his grip. “I can’t believe you would suggest that.”
    “It would solve two problems.”
    “You have no soul.”
    While that was probably true, it didn’t mean this wasn’t a great idea. And he sure wasn’t giving up on it without a fight.

    H EATHER HAD NO IDEA where to find Samuel. His blue pickup truck had turned the corner of Cypress Street two minutes ago, but by the time she got there, he’d disappeared. There were no tire tracks, no dust, nothing.
    She slowed her rented Audi to a crawl and checked out the parking lot of the general store and scanned the streets around the town lawn. Then, just when she was about to give up, she caught a glimpse of a blue tailgate. The truck was tucked beside the old Indigo opera house.
    She shifted into second.
    The man might run, but he couldn’t hide from Heather Bateman. She followed the crescent around the town lawn, pulling into the opera house parking lot. She shut off the engine and set the park brake, exiting into the sharp sunshine and deep humidity of the Indigo afternoon.
    The pillared front porch of the old building was covered with building materials and equipment—a circular saw, two-by-fours, a box of hand tools and bundles of cedar shakes. A machine chugged away on the gravel at the corner of the building, with a hose that wiggled all the way up the white siding. Loud, rhythmic cracks came from somewhere on the roof.
    Looking up, Heather maneuvered carefully across the uneven gravel in her new Etienne Aigner heels. A leg came into view up on the