Page 76 of Locked In Ice

“She wants extra security in the crowd.That’s where we will come in.We just need to blend.Pretend to be a couple.Keep our eye out for the ex who could be a major problem.”

Pretend to be a couple.“I think I can handle that.”

“I figured you could.”Her hands tightened on the wheel.

“Why you?”Lane asked her.

She accelerated.“Why me—what?”

“Why did this Isabelle decide you needed to be the one to keep an extra eye out for the ex?”

“Because I’m the one who broke them up in the first place.”

He had not expected that.Fine, this woman will always surprise me.“You’re gonna need to elaborate.”His phone vibrated.He pulled out the device.Read the text from Memphis.

WTF?Thomas Bass is dead?You good?

Good wasn’t the right word.

“Isabelle’s grandfather left her a substantial amount of money.She came to my office about a year ago.She had been dating a man named Gerald Baldwin.He’d burst into her life.Swept her off her feet.Three weeks after their first date, he proposed.He swore he loved her.Wanted to do nothing but make her happy.”

“But she had doubts.”Or else this Isabelle wouldn’t have gone to a PI.

“She wanted to be told that he was perfect.That she could follow her heart and marry him.That she’d live happily ever after.”

“You believe in that?”Lane asked.“That anyone gets a happily ever after?”Then he wished he could take the words back.Right then.Right there.

“For a long time, I believed my happily ever after bled out in an alley when I was sixteen years old.”

You good?

He read the text from Memphis again.No, no, he was not good.Will text later.His fast reply.

“But, yes, actually, I do think that people can get happy endings,” Ophelia revealed in a considering tone.“I think we have to make them ourselves.I wanted to be able to tell Isabelle that she was wrong to doubt Gerald, but when I started digging…” Her voice trailed off.

Lane knew how this story would end.“Let me guess.He was a fortune hunter.”

“Gerald Baldwin didn’t exist at all.There was no paper trail on him.No job history.Everything he’d told her was a lie.Then he found out that I was looking into his life.”

Text right now.The vibrating response came from Memphis.

“Gerald—or at least the man calling himself Gerald—followed me home one night.”

He dropped the phone.It clattered on the floorboard.“The sonofabitch did not.”

“He did.”A pause.“That is the second time that an unwanted man has tried to get into my home and hurt me.Because of my first encounter—with Sam—I had a top-of-the-line security system at my house.No one was going to get into my home without me being instantly alerted.”

“What happened?”He wanted to rip Gerald Baldwin apart.

“He set off the alarms when he tried to break in.As the alarms started blaring, he broke and ran.I chased him—

“Of course, you did,” he muttered.

“I did.I’m not sixteen any longer.I don’t sit in an alley and bleed while people die.I give chase.”

His heart seemed to squeeze in his chest.And he admired the hell out of her, even though he was absolutely terrifiedforher.

And when was the last time he’d been terrified?When he thought his sister’s life was in danger?

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