Page 23 of You Found Me

He suppressed the urge to tell her he’d had some of them in the car and she was right.

He opened his computer and pulled up the secondary list of potentials, then turned it so that she could see the screen.

Ms. Bellamy unfurled from her perch to peer at it. “That’s the list? That’s what you’ve all been working on for weeks and weeks?”

“Two, Ms. Bellamy. Just two weeks. The bare minimum required to be a plural.” He’d already discussed the names on this curated list with Annie and Spencer. For the most part, the suspects fell into two categories: those who’d most likely slept with her and those who desperately hoped they would.

Mixed in were superfans who followed her on tour but never spent any time with her, as far as they could tell.

“I’m shocked you’re letting me into your den of secrets.” She moved the love seat closer to the desk. “This is exciting. Like peeking into your underwear drawer.”

Ward’s hands froze on the keyboard. It was a short mental leap from her exploring his underwear drawer to her exploring the underwear he was currently wearing. His thoughts dissolved into white static.

No. Hell no.

She hadn’t meant it that way, he reminded the parts of his body that had bolted awake at the idea.It was a casual statement, not a suggestion.

He cleared his throat and put his mind firmly on the task at hand. “Start at the top. Tell me your first impression of each name. Details we can’t find on social media. Things only you would know.”

“Okay.” She pulled the laptop closer. “Wow, if this is your idea of who-done-it, you’re way off. No wonder it’s taking so long.”

Ward gritted his teeth. “Meaning?”

She tapped the screen. “No way Marshall Weston writes a creepy note. No way he sneaks into my dressing room, either. He wouldn’t have to.” She snorted a laugh. “That man goes wherever he wants, and he usually brings a parade with him.”

Ward nodded. That had been his assessment too, but as her last semiserious relationship, Weston had to top the list until they could prove beyond a doubt he wasn’t the one they were looking for. “It’s routine to consider all previous partners as possible suspects.”

“He wasn’t my partner. What we did doesn’t even count as a relationship. It was more of a temporary romp. He’s a lot of fun and super sweet. He’s also a fantastic party planner, and always up for late-night gossip sessions. But he’s not a long-term keeper.” She bit her lower lip thoughtfully. “Neither am I, really.”

Ward leaned back. “Have you ever had a long-term relationship? One that’s not obvious on social media?”

She gave him a flat stare, practically daring him to make judgments on her love life. “Define long.”

“Six months. A year.” He kept his tone just-the-facts-ma’am neutral and his gaze steady.

After a long second, she looked away as if sifting through a mental file cabinet. “A year. That’s…hmm. I can think of one. Edward Rhodes. We played around for maybe eight or nine months, years ago, but it was never that serious. At least, not to me.”

The name struck a familiar chord. “TheEdward Rhodes? As in Johnathan Rhodes’s grandson?”

“Yeah.” She studied the burger bag as if it held distasteful memories instead of cold fries. “It was a mistake. I thought he was looking for fun. Turned out he was looking for a trophy. He hated when I called him Eddie.”

“He’s not on the list.” He picked up a pen to make a note of the very famous, very politically charged name. “How’d you keep that so low-key?”

She lifted her shoulder in an it-doesn’t-matter motion, but the look on her face said it had. “His family has this compound.It’s acres and acres with fences and gates and security that makes this house look like an open park, and they all live there, from Great-Grandma to the latest grandkid, Sarah. They say it’s so they can control media access. They’rereallyinto their image. Everything was a production that had to be managed. In a…how many camera angles are possible and how will this affect elections long-term way. I didn’t really fit. My chaos factor was way too high.”

She gave a rueful laugh. “They used to sneak me in through a service gate in the back with whatever delivery was coming in just so the paparazzi wouldn’t catch wind of ourassociation. That’s what they called it. We weren’t dating. We wereassociated.”

He wrote a few quick notes as she spoke, careful not to let his real thoughts show. The whole situation seemed ripe for the kind of behavior they were looking for. Predatory. Patient. Paranoid. “Any fights? Disagreements? Threats?”

“No. That’s not their style. They’re too proper and fancy for anything that overt. But I tell you nobody’s ever made me feel quite so much like a worthless piece of fluff before or since.” She gave him a little smile. “Present company excluded.”

It was an obvious attempt at emotional manipulation. He was familiar with the tactic. His high school so-called sweetheart had been a master at sixteen. The only way to deal with that kind of thing was to ignore it.

He addedsociopathic breeding groundto his list of notes on Edward. “Who ended it? You or him?”

When she didn’t answer, he glanced up.

A shadow clouded her face. “Me. I ended it right before I…went solo.”

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