Page 43 of Trip Through Your Wires

Her face brightens. “Yeah?”

“Yup. Go home, shower, and have some soup.”

“Thanks.” She smiles sheepishly and gets up from the couch slowly. “You won’t tell anyone?”

I pretend to zip my lip and toss the key. “Not my business, not my gossip.”

She exhales with obvious relief and turns for the door. Just before she reaches it, she stops and looks back at me. “Do you think I should keep it?”

“Not for me to say,” I shrug. “Only you can decide.”

She swallows and nods. “Would you?”

For me, the answer was easy—no, I would not. I never had a chance to be a kid and wanted to live my life before being responsible for someone else’s. But it wasn’t my place to tell anyone what to do. The choice was no one’s to make but those whose lives it would impact.

“You’ll know what to do when the time comes.” I push up from the chair and look to the door. “Now go home and get some rest.”

She gives me a grateful smile, then turns and leaves. After slipping back into my work vest I head for the front of the store but when the bell over the staff entrance chimes, I stop and turn. Expecting to see Julie, thinking she forgot something, I start back toward the office, but when I see it’s not her I freeze.

Standing no more than ten feet away is Langston Richardson, Royce’s father. I forgot how much they looked alike. His dad was taller, but they were both thin with a pale complexion, plain brown eyes and hair, and the same look of arrogance and conceit.

Ellery was being generous the day she said Royce was decent looking. I think a better word would have been creepy because that clean cut, perfect look of his should have tipped us off that a psycho lurked beneath. Eerily enough, his dad has the same look, and given what I now know about him, it’s not a stretch to think like father, like son.

“Ms. Miller,” he smiles. “Good day.”

“Mr. Richardson,” I swallow, wondering why he’s here, and at the same time, wanting him gone. “The door for customers is in the front.”

I hold my chin high and hold my breath as he approaches. Where Royce once doused himself in Obsession, his father bathed in deceit and Drakkar Noir. You could always tell when he was near. It suffocated all other smells and lingered in the air for days, clinging to everything like a leech.

“Now, Ms. Miller,” he stops a few feet short of me and grins. “You know I’m more than just a customer. I am an old friend.”

“You got one word in that sentence right and I’ll let you guess which.”

He flashes me a malicious smile, and the way it reminds me of the one Royce had on his face that night, just before I shot him, makes my stomach turn.

“Well, you got me there.” He runs a finger along the top of a picture hanging in the hall, flicking his fingers to remove the dust that I know isn’t there. “A customer is one that buys, and I am here to give.”

“Oh yeah?” I arch a brow. “And what is it you want to give, a bad time or heartburn?”

I hated the Richardson’s. Not just because of what Royce did to Ellery but because of the way his father swung his dick around like he owned us. Thanks to a bad business deal, in a way, he did.

When my father’s grandparents built this store, they owned the land and the acreage around it. But sometime before I was born, Royce’s father swindled mine out of the property. It had been a bone of contention with my father for as long as I could remember, and why he let us to talk to the Richardson’s, any way that we wanted.

“I think the office is better suited for what we need to discuss,” he says cryptically.

I straighten my shoulders and ignore the knots in my stomach. “Whatever it is you can tell me right here.”

I didn’t want to go into any room with Langston Richardson. I’d heard rumors of his preference for younger women and wouldn’t put it past the bastard to try something if given the chance.

He looks down the hall to the main part of the store, and seeing it’s empty, looks back at me. “Even if it has to do with my son?”

Feeling like a rug’s just been pulled out from under me, I pitch forward. Grabbing my elbow to steady me, he looks down and the way his eyes bore into me, sends a chill down my spine. His grip is cold and my nerves thin.

He flicks his eyes to the office door, then back to me. “It is better that we talk in private.”

I yank my elbow from his hold and step away from him. “What do you want? We’re about to close.”

“Close?” He looks around, shoving a hand in his pocket, jingling what sounds like keys and change. “Now that is not good for business, Ms. Miller.”

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