We’d talk, or watch something in the home theatre downstairs, or we’d fool around like virgin teenagers—which was way more fun than I ever remembered it being. Plus, I loved watching her practice with the safe. Whenever she heard a certain sound in her headphones, her eyebrows would tug together, creating a cute little crease between them.
Fuck, she was sexy.
Gorgeous and funny and dangerously smart. I liked how confident she was when it came to her field of work. She wasn’t just competent, she was an expert. If she had an ego, it was earned, and that was fucking hot.
I began my final morning of my vow like I always did—I jerked off while thinking about her and my plans once the leash was off. I went to the office, sat in my meetings, and researched the statutes for compliance with the rest of my team to prepare for an upcoming policy change. All the while, time ticked away in my head, building anticipation for when I’d get to see her again.
I had plans for tonight and was anxious to get to them.
A helpful distraction rolled into my inbox at three-thirty. It was an email from the investigator I’d contracted with out of Miami. The dress Emery had received had come from Aruba, so I’d had the guy start there. Attached was a summary and a few pictures for confirmation.
Jillian was alive.
I gazed at the pictures of her and Lucas together. There was one were they shopped together at a grocery store, and I imagined them deciding what they were going to cook for dinner that night. A picture of her walking down a sidewalk while she carried a plastic bag of produce, the buildings behind her bright and colorful.
Something stirred inside me when I double-clicked the last picture, making it fill my laptop screen. The image had captured Lucas barefoot on the deck of his boat with an enormous smile on his face. He had the bag of produce in one hand, probably the same one Jillian had been carrying in the last picture, and used his other hand to help her step aboard. She held her flip-flops by the straps, and like him, wore a huge grin.
Had the image been snapped the moment they were both laughing, or was this now their permanent state of being once they got away from Cape Hill? They looked so goddamn happy. They’d kept their relationship a secret, fooling everyone—including Sophia—but I wasn’t mad at them.
It was impossible to be anything but happy for my friends.
The investigator’s report said they were living on Lucas’s boat in Oranjestad and had the dock fees paid through the end of the month. The investigator confirmed he would check back with me then and see if I wanted to keep track of their movements.
I forwarded the email on to Emery, knowing she’d want to see and would probably feel the same way I did. Jillian spent so much of her life living for someone else. Hadn’t she earned the right to be free?
I was weirdly nervous when I picked Emery up for dinner that night. Perhaps nervous was too strong of a word, but there was a tightness in my chest and an uneven feeling in my stomach. I’d spent the last two months talking myself up to her.
What if I couldn’t live up to the hype?
The nerves dissolved when she opened her apartment door and gave me an easy smile. Her black dress was short, and her eye makeup was smoky, and she looked so good, for a split second I wondered if I could convince her to operate on Greenwich Mean Time. It was already tomorrow in that time zone.
Instead, I took the overnight bag from her hands and gestured to the waiting Range Rover that would drive us to the restaurant.
We hadn’t really been out on a date since we’d returned from Monaco. She’d gone with me to events, and we’d had dinner together at the house several times, but this was different. I wasn’t usually a show-off, and I didn’t like to flaunt my wealth, but that died when we walked into the place and nearly every male head turned her direction.
Mine, I wanted to fire back at them.
Their stares of envy bubbled in my bloodstream. They thought she was beautiful, and they were right, but they didn’t know the half of it. She was the whole fucking package, and I was proud she’d chosen to be with me.
When this thing with Lambert was over, I was going to make more of an effort to romance her, and if I got to show her off while doing it—well, that was the icing on the cake.
We ate dinner and drank wine, and talked about politics, of all things. When the conversation strayed toward the photos I’d forwarded to her, we both avoided saying Jillian’s name. It was extremely unlikely anyone was listening to us, but some of my father’s paranoia had rubbed off on me, and I didn’t want to accidentally undo any of Jillian’s hard work to escape.