Page 68 of Tempt Me

“I looked at some of their photos on Instagram to see if anything jogged in my own memory but no dice.”

“Okay, what else?” I ask.

“She said Jake disappeared for an hour.” We both glance up at Jake, who is pouring a pint for a customer. He grimaces.

“I was looking for your Dad’s wine cellar,” he admits.

“Seriously?” Caden says.

“I can only imagine the bottles he has down there.”

“You should have asked,” Caden says. “I would have taken you down.”

Jake looks embarrassed. “You were busy. Didn’t seem appropriate. What else did Old Greerson tell you?”

Caden keeps reading. “She says she ran into Noah quote “wandering the halls” though she couldn’t say which hall exactly.”

“There are certainly a lot of them,” I agree.

“She saw Mike Cochran loudly wondering how much the Picasso in the front room cost. And Linda May was trying to sneak some of the shrimp home in her bag.”

“Ew,” I say.

“She was pretty drunk that night,” Jake says.

“Mrs. Greerson did add that she wrapped them in a napkin first,” Caden says.

“I’m not sure that makes it any better,” I say.

“And finally,” Caden finishes, “she said she saw Reggie offering advice to one of Dad’s clients about how to properly maintain his BMW.”

“Very suspicious,” I say.

“Indeed.”

I like this. I like feeling included in Caden’s investigation—I want to know what happened to Marion too. And I like that Caden and I are talking like friends again. I’ve missed that.

“So basically, Mrs. Greerson was a bust,” Caden says, putting his phone away. “I really wish Fred would call me back.”

We sip our drinks in silence for a moment. I watch the ink-drawn patterns ripple over Caden’s arm as he puts his beer down on the bar.

“Can I ask you something?” I say.

“You can ask me anything,” he says.

I reach out and run my fingertip over one of the vines. His skin is warm, and I can feel the hard muscle beneath. Something crackles where I touch him, and I quickly pull my hand away.

“Why did you get this?” I ask.

Caden’s lips are parted. He blinks and looks down at the spot where my hand was.

“It’s for Everton,” he says. “For my family. To memorialize the people I care about most. These grapes are cab franc. That was Mom’s favorite.” He looks up at me. “Yours too.”

My breath catches. “You remember that?”

“I remember everything about you.”

Heat floods my cheeks. I look down at his arm and try to calm my stuttering heart.

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