Page 40 of The Truth in My Lies (Secrets of Suburbi 1)

I did the first thing I could think of and kicked the mutilated bobby pin under the gap underneath the basement door. No! Why? I reached my fingers underneath the door but couldn’t find it.

“Addy?”

His voice was closer. There were scratch marks all over the front of the doorknob.

A perfectionist would notice. I would have noticed. But Ben was a guy. He wouldn’t notice. Please don’t notice. I stood up and stuffed the tongs into the back of my jeans. “I’m here.” I sounded out of breath. I’d be suspicious of me. I ran into the kitchen and started shutting the drawers and cabinets I had opened.

“What are you doing?”

My hand froze on a drawer handle. “Oh. Um…” I closed the drawer and looked up at him. Half of the cabinets were still hanging open. Jesus. “I…” My voice trailed off. “Looking through all of your things of course.” He had caught me. There was no use lying. Besides, I couldn’t come up with a lie even if I had wanted to. The sight of him was too distracting. His shirt was damp with sweat below his neck and he had a smear of mud across his cheek. And all I wanted to do was jump him.

He laughed and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the island. “I was able to avoid temptation.” He set my purse down on the granite countertop. “You must have left this in my car last night.”

I had been so suspicious of him, yet he hadn’t done anything wrong. We were the personification of good versus evil. I grabbed my purse off the counter and put it over my shoulder. “Okay, well…I guess I’ll just go.”

He laughed again. “I don’t want you to leave.”

“I was going through your things. I’d want me out. I get it. Really, I’m just going to go before I make things even worse.” I tried to brush past him but he caught my arm.

“You’re adorable.”

Adorable? Ha. Not even a little bit.

He ran the pad of his thumb over my bottom lip. I hadn’t even realized I was pouting. “Stay. I need to go shower. You can finish snooping around before I get back down.”

I sighed. “Honestly, I’m already done.”

He raised both his eyebrows. “You’ve looked everywhere?”

“Pretty much.”

His smile never faded. “Find anything good?”

I was very aware of the pair of tongs shoved down my pants. The metal was digging into my back. “No. You’re officially perfect.”

He leaned forward, until his lips almost brushed against my ear. “I’m far from perfect. You’re just not looking hard enough.”

I gulped.

“I’ll be back down in a minute. Have fun looking around.” He walked away without another word.

Maybe he wanted me to get into the basement. My fingers itched to try to break into it again, but I didn’t want another disaster. Looking through drawers was one thing. Picking a locked door was another.

I couldn’t even believe he wanted me to stay. Although, he had been in my house while I showered. He had probably looked around. He had at least looked around enough to know that my trash needed to be taken out. He wasn’t as good at avoiding temptation as he claimed.

As soon as the water started upstairs I pulled the tongs out of my pants. I was just about to wash them when I heard my phone buzz.

I lifted it out of my purse. Ten missed calls. What the hell? Twenty text messages. A knot had formed in my stomach before I even clicked on the most recent text. It could only be from one of two people. And both would be bad. It was from my husband.

“Don’t make me come find you.”

The blood in my veins turned to ice. I scrolled back to the first text.

“I have a layover. I’m stopping by for a few hours so we can get lunch.”

Shit! I shoved my phone back into my purse. He was home and I wasn’t there. He was going to kill me. But I couldn’t let him find me here. I wouldn’t let him hurt Ben too.

But I couldn’t just leave. Ben would come down from his shower and wonder what was wrong. He’d come to my house. I grabbed a slip of paper and a pen from my purse and jotted him a quick note.

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