Page 75 of Fierce-Zander

“Or I can go with you and stay at your place and bring a change of clothing?”

He snorted. “I need more notice than that.”

“Are you a slob?” she asked.

He held his finger and thumb up. “Maybe by your standards. Not horrible.”

“Then I’ll let you clean up and maybe I can see your place this weekend. Unless you need more time than that?”

“I might,” he said.

She leaned into him and kissed him. “Then let’s go get a snack and we can watch TV in bed.”

“Do you mind if I do a bit of work while you watch TV? I’ve got to get my laptop anyway. I just want to write up what happened tonight so it’s fresh in my mind.”

“As long as you keep out of it what happened here.”

“Very cute,” he said.

Regan watched him walk out of her room, her eyes on his ass. The minute she heard the door shut she let out a little squeal and kicked her feet in the air.

She was in love!

Talk about never acting like herself!

22

TOTALLY WORTH IT

“Thanks for meeting with me so late,” Sloane Redding said. He took a seat on her couch.

Zander had gotten the call a week ago from Royce’s wife, Chloe. Her brother’s girlfriend, Sloane, needed him to look into her mother’s history. Zander wasn’t sure of everything going on, but since Chloe married his best friend, she was all but family to him.

“Not a problem,” Zander said. “I don’t know everything. Only a little of what Chloe said. She was in the building the other day with Royce to look at something and said you’d be calling.”

“I’m not sure I can tell you much,” Sloane said. “I’ll give you all the documents I’ve got, which isn’t a lot. I don’t want Shiloh to know about this and I don’t think she could answer any questions. I’ve asked and she doesn’t recall any guy in her life. Ever.”

Sloane hadn’t talked to her mother in years. Then out of the blue got a call that her mother passed away and now Sloane had custody of a five-year-old half sister, Shiloh.

Sloane needed him to find out what he could about who Shiloh’s father might be.

He didn’t have a lot to go on, but he’d had less in the past too.

“That makes it hard but not impossible,” Zander said.

Sloane handed over copies of everything she’d been given from Knox County in Tennessee. “This was released to me last week. It’s my mother’s work history, where she has lived, and her visits with the case managers. She’d been getting assistance for years. I’ve read it all, but nothing is standing out.”

“That’s for me to find out,” Zander said. “Is there anything you can tell me that isn’t in these files?”

He knew what to look for. He had resources to dive into Sloane’s mother’s past that most didn’t.

“My mother left home when she was fifteen. She joined a cult and became pregnant with me and then my sister, Sabrina, two years later. I don’t know where Sabrina is right now.”

This sounded like a crazy outrageous story that you normally only saw on TV, but all he did was take notes and listen.

Maybe there was more to his job like Regan’s than he thought.

“You’ve had no contact with anyone from that cult since you and your mother and sister left?” Zander asked. He jotted down a few more things and ideas of where to look as they popped into his head. He’d have his father and Betsy get started on this right away so that he could dive deeper.

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