“Hi.”
“This is my girlfriend, Ryleigh.”
Kayla nodded like she’d already heard of her. “Nice to finally meet you, Ryleigh. My man told me a lot about you.”
“Your man?”
She searched Keenan’s face for him to help her out here, but he simply smiled at her.
Kayla also smiled and said, “Yes. I believe you started working for him recently at the dojo?”
“Oh, Duncan. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. It’s great to meet you.”
Like always, she felt super awkward meeting new people. Luckily, Kayla had no problem to break the ice for her. She added, “I’m so psyched we finally have a woman teaching classes at the dojo. I would like to join a class or two in the future.”
“That would be great, Kayla. Thanks.”
Kayla slung her white blonde hair over her shoulder and waved her hand in the air, “No, thank you. I can’t wait to surprise Dunc with some moves.”
“Kayla, what’s going on—oh, hey Keen. Hi, you must be Ryleigh.”
A tall, handsome man in a tailored suit walked out of a corner office. He had the same Mills DNA flowing through his veins by the look of his broad shoulders, wavy raven hair and soulful eyes.
Where Keenan’s eyes were emerald, Donovan’s eyes reminded her of a thundercloud.
She remembered standing in this building for a reason and said, “Hi, Donovan. Nice to meet you.”
“Okay, let’s take this into my office, shall we?”
She followed the Mills cousins and sat down in the other chair in front of Donovan’s oak desk.
Ryleigh felt like she’d been summoned into the principal’s office. Not that she ever came close to detention. She flew under the radar, always trying not to get noticed while walking down the hallway in case the worst group of bullies would target her again.
Donovan handed Keenan a manila file and stood from his chair. He walked over to the painting on the other side of his office. The most beautiful woman Ryleigh had ever seen was staring back at her from that painting. With her chocolate hair cascading over her pillow, and only a silk sheet covering her modesty, Ryleigh almost wanted to look away.
But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from this intimate portrait. By the way Donovan stared at the portrait, she believed the woman must have been important to him.
Ruffling beside her drew her attention back to Keenan, who’d opened the folder. The first few pages were typed paragraphs but she couldn’t read the words while looking over his shoulder.
He mumbled snippets, so she had a few words to hang on to.
“New York…”
“Incarcerated…”
“Derek…”
This was bad. Was Evangeline in jail? Her mind was all scrambled.
She couldn’t focus as Keenan took pictures out of the folder. It seemed like they made the pictures from a distance with a zoom lens.
Although blurry, and on some pictures hedges or other obstacles obscured a full few, it revealed someone who resembled the woman from Tommy’s picture on his nightstand.
But the woman in this picture seemed sickly. Dirty hair, smeared and heavy make-up, and overall wearing too revealing, too tight and dirty clothes. If she didn’t know better, she’d say that Evangeline worked the streets at night.
That couldn’t be possible? Could it?
In another picture of Evangeline, a tall man accompanied her. The man seemed not so bulky as Keenan, but certainly not gangly. His blonde hair had been gelled back and his suit had to be tailored to fit him.