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honesty I’ve heard since you walked in this room.” Burnes placed the gun in the open register and leaned back against the counter, arms across his chest.
    “I’d just as soon shoot you for what you did to Arianna, but I really don’t want to go to jail for killing your sorry ass. And I know you’re not who you said you were because Ashford Thomas Revelin doesn’t exist. Trust me, I looked.”
    Ash might need Burnes’s help, but he was not going to be intimidated by his lawyer theatrics. “You’re right. I made the name up. Well, not exactly. Revelin was my great-grandmother’s maiden name. I didn’t tell Arianna who I was when we first met because I needed to know she cared about me for me.”
    “Right. And once she did, you’d unload the rest on her? What is it, Revelin? A jail record? A wife? Ten kids with five different women?” Quinn Burnes’s voice grew quieter, more menacing. “What the hell was so secretive that you couldn’t tell her?”
    “You know Lancaster Development?”
    “The condos and office buildings? Who doesn’t know about them? Did you scam those people? I hope you did because I heard the owner is one tough son of a bitch. He’ll nail you if he hasn’t already.”
    “He’s my brother.”
    “Your brother.”
    Ash doubted many people surprised Quinn Burnes, but judging by the tightness around his mouth, he’d just done it. Or maybe that was shock, starting at the corners of his mouth, spreading to his nostrils, the bridge of his nose, landing in those silver eyes that narrowed to slits. “Peter Lancaster is my brother. I’m Ash, the younger sibling, the one who plays while his brother works. Until now. I’m going to step in and help him out.” That thought had flitted into his head exactly three seconds ago, or maybe it had perched in Ash’s brain since his conversation with Pete. His brother needed his help, and whether it was office-related or personal, Ash would not let him down.
    “And what will you help him do?” Quinn Burnes glanced at Ash’s tattered jeans and T-shirt. “Change his oil?”
    The guy was a real pain in the ass. Lawyer-types always were and from what he remembered this one was only in it for himself—personal injury. He hated asking, but Quinn Burnes was his only hope. “I need your help.”
    “If it has to do with Arianna, you should know better than to ask me that.”
    At least he was loyal. Maybe if he opened his mind, he’d see the truth—Ash had left to protect her. “My brother discovered Arianna wasn’t exactly who she said she was. He didn’t trust her or her intentions. He threatened to expose her if I didn’t break it off.” He’d read the file so many times it was burned in his heart. The young woman on those pages was not the Arianna Sorensen he knew.
    Burnes laughed. “Expose her? What did she do? Pose for Playboy to pay for college?”
    Ash shook his head. “She has a degree in English from Rutgers, not NYU, like she said. And she’s never studied in Paris or Rome, or even been out of the country. She comes from some rinky-dink town in northwestern Pennsylvania. Her mother washed dishes in the local hospital and her father was a maintenance man in a factory. She stole eight thousand dollars from her parents, ran away, got pregnant, and lost the baby, all before her eighteenth birthday.”
    Those silver eyes sparked. “Arianna? The woman who was here a few minutes ago?”
    “Yeah, that’s the one.”
    Burnes laughed. “That’s crazy. There’s no way she did any of those things. I’ll stake my life on it.”
    “Then you’re a dead man.”
    “Why would she lie? People screw up all the time.”
    “People lie all the time, too,” Ash said. “Pretend they’re somebody they aren’t.” He should know; he’d spent years playing at being someone else, deleting details of his real life, like the luxury cars, vacations, the Black Card. He’d gone “bare bones” so people accepted him for who he was, not what he