Robert B. Parker's Debt to Pay Read Online Free Page B

things out for himself. Still, Diana was a trained investigator and, in her own way, as competent as Jesse. She couldn’t help but notice that Jesse had been different since he’d gotten the invitation to Jenn’s wedding.
    She’d never been married, so she could only imagine what Jesse was going through. It wasn’t like Diana hadn’t gotten offers. She’dbeen tempted by some of them. She’d been in love before, just not like this. At the Bureau she had struggled so hard to get ahead, to be noticed for something other than her looks. In the end she had thrown it all away, but not unhappily.
    â€œCome on, Evans,” Jesse said. “You want to say something. Say it.”
    â€œJenn.”
    â€œUh-huh.”
    â€œUh-huh! What’s that even mean?”
    â€œOkay,” he said. “What about Jenn?”
    â€œDon’t play dumb with me, Chief Stone. Ever since you got the invitation, you’ve been different.”
    He didn’t answer right away because he didn’t want to sound defensive and because she was right. He’d spoken to Diana about Jenn, but superficially. He never enjoyed being around people who went on about their exes. He certainly tried not to do it. And in spite of all the hard work he’d done with Dix on his relationship with Jenn, he was also unsure of how to explain the tangled, dysfunctional two-step they had done for so many years. He still wasn’t completely sure he understood it himself.
    â€œIt’s complicated.”
    She laughed. “No kidding. But you’re going to have to do better than that.”
    â€œNot tonight,” he said, cupping his hand behind her head and pulling her mouth to his.
    But she pushed back. “The scotch,” she said. “Don’t.”
    He knew she was right. She guzzled her drink.
    â€œListen, Jesse, I’m going to use the facilities and brush my teeth. We don’t have to talk about Jenn tonight, but you do have to talk to her and answer the invitation for my sake, if not for yours.”
    â€œHow’s that?”
    â€œThere’s only room for two in my bed, Jesse: me and you. No room for memories and ghosts.”
    She put the empty glass on the nightstand and stepped out of bed.

SEVEN
    S uit used the key Elena had given him. Elena, he thought, laughing to himself that he still sometimes caught himself thinking of her as Miss Wheatley. Miss Wheatley was pretty much all the eighteen-year-old senior and football star Luther Simpson could think about. She was certainly who he dreamed about. As an adult, he’d always had a weakness for older women—sometimes married, sometimes not. Stepping into the vestibule, he couldn’t help but wonder if his high school crush on Elena had started him along that path. Not that there had been a huge age difference between them. She was a twenty-one-year-old student teacher in Suit’s English class when they met.
    Suit remembered the first day he saw her. She was pretty in a way he had never experienced before, her hair so black it almost shone purple in the sunlight spilling into the classroom through the high arched wood-framed windows at the old high school. She was what his mom used to call petite. He never knew exactly what that word meant until he’d laid eyes on her. Before that day, he’d thought it just meant small, but she wasn’t just small. She was so delicate and her features were so fine that for the first time in his life he feltembarrassed by his hulking size. He didn’t understand his embarrassment then, and he wasn’t sure he did now. What he did understand was that he had fallen deeply, stupidly in love with her and that he was never going to be able to express the way he felt or have his feelings returned.
    â€œLuther?” Elena asked, calling down again from the second floor of the house she’d inherited from her mom. “Did you guys win?”
    â€œI scored the