Page 84 of Masquerade

You don’t look like it’s hard.You’ve got your take-no-prisoners game face on.

Of course, he had his bloody game face on. What else would he do when he’d simultaneously been kicked in the balls and the heart. She’d looked stricken, embedding the guilt knife deeper in his belly.

He’d trusted her. He stood at the expanse of windows seeing nothing.

By the time he’d scooped her security key into his desk, she’d looked shell-shocked. He’d loomed over her, treating her like a hostile witness in the dock. He’d barely listened to a word she’d said. Every single word hammered at him now.

I did not go to see Futureproof Mining. I did not breach the confidentiality clauses in my contract with Clelland’s. I did not betray you on this case. I don’t know how to put it plainer than that.

He’d been slow to trust her, double-checking her bona fides before agreeing to work with her. Still learning to trust her when Rory vouched for her. Giving her his trust as he sank into her body. She’d proved her loyalty to Clelland’s in the hours and weeks since. Her integrity was indisputable, in the evidence she uncovered, in her written reports and in her silences as well as her questions.

He dropped into his desk chair, his head in his hands and tried to reclaim his day.

Kate had been excited this morning, a slow simmer bubbling below boiling. He hadn’t questioned it. He’d been pretty happy himself. Waking when she’d walked her fingers up his chest. He’d rolled over her and entered her in a single, breathless movement—both of them stunned by the intense intimacy of their joining.

“She asked about my day.” Liam tried to recall her exact words. “And I asked her to meet me after work at the office. For dinner.”

She’d agreed. Stupid, gullible fool that he was, he’d wanted to beg her to spend the day with him. Because he missed seeing her during the day, working alongside her as he’d done at Greentree Passage. Her fake bloody glasses had been perched on her nose, unlike the blonde who’d entered the Futureproof building. He’d let that trick slide for weeks, but tonight she’d taken them off, as if she’d known they were a symbol of all her lies.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Ididn’t take timeto think. And that’s a pathetic excuse, boyo.” Liam had seen her, kept his appointment with George and the Minister, then Kate had appeared at his office.

She was living a lie. He was sure of it.

Selina hadn’t given him straight answers when he’d confronted her about her lies. She’d been unrepentant, boasting of what an easy mark he was.

There’d been no guilt in Kate’s body posture or expression. Defeat, maybe, when she left. He slumped back in his chair, struggling to bring order to his furious thoughts.

Tears had shimmered in Kate’s eyes, but she’d blinked them away. Selina’s were always a tool to entrap him.

Selina and the woman who’d swindled his father had taught him to mistrust. They’d also taught him shame. Liam had been young, cocky and arrogant. He could live with that.

His father hadn’t been arrogant or gullible. Liam still wrestled with his grief for his father. He refused to let his father’s memory be tainted by mistakes his father had made in the last few months of his life. He banged a fist on his desk. He hadn’t forgiven his dad for dying in the midst of that mess and hadn’t properly dealt with the grief.

Unable to bear being alone with his thoughts, Liam pushed back from his desk, and his gaze settled on the book Kate had left. He shoved it into his overcoat pocket. The book might contain a clue to her words. Kate Higgins, not an author he knew, nor was it one of the authors Kate had recommended for his mother.

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