“No,” Sylvie said. “But you need help on this one.”
Drea wanted to argue the truth of her best friend’s statement, but she couldn’t. She knew how it looked, and she couldn’t even blame the cops for zeroing in on her. “Fine. What do you need from me?”
“Nothing.” Sylvie’s relief came through the phone loud and clear. “Cam will take care of everything.”
All thought came to a screeching halt only to slam back in action with a thousand questions at once, all starting with the same word. “Cam?”
He cranked up the wattage on his smile and nailed her with a look that could make ice melt in the arctic tundra. Tempting. Off limits. Totally lickable. He was trouble in human form. And he was supposed to be her knight in shining armor? That’s what she got for thinking her day couldn’t get more craptastic.
“Believe it or not,” Sylvie said. “There’s more to him than a hot bod.”
Unsure whether to run or melt into him, Drea opted for the truth disguised as sarcasm. “That’s what I’m worried about.”
“So you agree?” Sylvie asked.
God help her, she wanted to say yes. “I’ll think about it.”
A girl could only inventory her makeup supplies so many times before she lost her mind, and Drea had passed that point about twenty minutes ago. The police had kept her makeup kit, which was filled with almost everything a client could need, and she had no idea when or if she’d ever get it back. She picked up her own half empty bottle of Nars sheer matte foundation in Khartoum with its dark espresso underto
ne from the makeup scattered on her dining room table and eyeballed it skeptically. There was no way in hell she could make it magically match Mrs. Roper’s pale complexion before the annual Paws for Pals Charity Ball tomorrow night. She’d already had five cancelations. She couldn’t afford rent if she had any more.
She slipped on her shoes and stood. “I have to make a run.”
“Okay, where are we going?” Cam lounged on her loveseat, his large frame taking up most of the space. An open laptop that he’d brought in with him sat perched on his muscular thighs, and the TV remote was within his reach on the dark oak end table. He’d spent the past two hours monitoring the news and doing background checks on everyone tied to the Orton family.
She wished she could say he looked out of place, but he didn’t. He’d settled in and made himself right at home. Would he look just as comfortable in her bedroom? Every time they’d hooked up, it had been at his place, which had made it easy for her to blaze out of there at the first crack of dawn. There’d be no easy out in her own place, not without shoving him out the door. The thought should have killed the temptation then and there, but a mental image of his suntanned skin and dirty blond hair, tousled from activity, against her plum sheets spiked her already high heart rate.
Space. She needed to get away from him. But that was easier said than done in her one-bedroom apartment. “I need to replace my supplies.”
He stood and stretched, and the movement lifted up the hem of his black T-shirt, revealing a few inches of hard abs and a pale blond happy trail that disappeared behind his waistband.
She shouldn’t look, but she did, and then she couldn’t look away.
If it had been anyone else but him, she wouldn’t still be standing on her side of the dining room table. She’d have taken one look and had the sexy stud halfway to the bedroom and mostly naked. But he wasn’t just some guy. He was Cam, and he’d broken her my-private-life-stays-private rule. She’d already had enough public humiliation in life. She sure as hell didn’t need to have more by having a public affair with a man who went through women the way she went through eyeliner. She hesitated.
“Changed your mind?” The gravel in his voice and the thick outline pressing against several inches of his inseam said he hoped she had.
“No.” Just getting the one word out of her dry mouth was a struggle. “All right then, let’s go.”
He winked, acknowledging but not challenging her bullshit, and reached for the remote. A breaking news graphic flashed across the screen, and he paused. A second later a blonde reporter in a tan trench coat dress appeared on the screen. When the camera zoomed out, Drea saw her own apartment building.
“That’s right, Phillip, we do have a Channel Four exclusive,” the reporter said. “I’m here outside of Drea Sanford’s downtown Harbor City apartment. My sources have confirmed that the makeup artist was with Natasha Orton at the time of her death and is considered a person of interest in the investigation.”
An image of Drea as a teenager flashed on the screen. Oh, God. She knew that picture. It was from her father’s trial. Her mother stood on one side of her, a blank expression on her face. On the other side stood the defense attorney who’d persuaded her father to take the plea bargain. Nausea swept through her, so swift and strong that it nearly sent her to her knees.
“You may remember her father, Jefferson Sanford,” the reporter went on. “He pleaded guilty to fleecing dozens of senior citizens living in his chain of high-end long term care facilities, withdrawing millions from their bank accounts before the suspicious death of a resident at Serenity Meadows caught law enforcement’s attention. While he was suspected in the death of Maria Luedtke, he was never charged. He served two months of his fifteen year sentence before being killed in an altercation with another inmate. Two weeks later, his wife, Mariette Sanford, committed suicide by jumping off the Harbor City Bridge in the middle of the morning rush hour.”
Drea’s legs turned to mush, and her ass hit the wooden dining room chair hard enough to make her teeth rattle. Shock pushed out every other emotion until she sat like a husk of herself. It was going to happen all over again. Every detail on the front pages. Gossip blogs looking for any nugget of information. Photographers tracking her every move. She’d be humiliated, exposed, and alone. Three things she promised herself she’d never experience again.
“Police sources are telling me that Drea Sanford was not cooperative when police interviewed her, which as you can imagine, raises many questions,” the reporter said. “We’ll be watching this story closely, so stay tuned for the latest updates. For Channel Four, this is Elizabeth Hanson reporting.”
Cam clicked the TV off.
She couldn’t blink, couldn’t look up from the blank screen, couldn’t stop the way her throat tightened. She’d thought she’d moved past it, gotten beyond the hurt, the betrayal, and the abandonment, but it all came rushing back like she was eighteen again and watching her entire life crumbling around her. No control. No support. No one.
“No,” Cam growled before striding over to her chair, gripping her shoulders and yanking her into a standing position.
The word didn’t make sense. “No?”