Secret Sisters Read Online Free Page A

needed to make an informed decision. He recalled Madeline’s fierce expression when she had emerged from the encounter with Fleming. She had been every inch the warrior queen. Her coffee-brown hair had been knotted in a severe twist at the back of her head. The style emphasized her amber eyes and her striking, sharply etched features. In that moment she had been radiating so much energy he was surprised that there were no lightning bolts in the atmosphere around her.
    She had been coldly furious—not with Fleming; with herself. He understood. He’d been there.
    He swallowed some of the whiskey. It wasn’t her fault that she had been deceived for a time by the bastard. She was a very smart woman, but guys like Fleming were very, very good with camouflage. It was their greatest talent and they honed it because it was pretty much the only thing that kept them alive. If the true nature of a narcissistic manipulator ever surfaced, the logical response from decent people would be to slay the beast.
    There was nothing in Fleming’s background to suggest that he fell into the category of violent sociopath, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t done a lot of damage in his time. He had taken advantage of Madeline’s grief to move in on her while her natural defenses were down. But in the end her personal firewall had held. She had summoned the messenger and asked for a background check. The messenger had delivered the bad news.
    The warrior queen had been singed but not badly burned.
    She was right about one thing—background checks on her dates were routine for her. He’d found records of investigations going all the way back to her high school prom.
    He drank a little more whiskey and turned his attention to the Cooper Island property. It was reasonable that in the wake of Edith Chase’s death, the eccentric caretaker would want to discuss the future of the old hotel and his own job. It was even possible that he might have insisted that the conversation take place in person.
    But there seemed to be a lot of fog around the Aurora Point property. Edith Chase had never wanted to answer any questions about it. Now her granddaughter was proving to be just as secretive.
    There was very little information about the old hotel online. It had been a struggling property when Edith had purchased it, and it had continued to struggle even as Edith tried to transform it into a Northwest vacation retreat. At some point Madeline’s parents had been killed in a car accident, and Edith had taken her five-year-old granddaughter into her home.
    According to the records, the Aurora Point Hotel had eventually begun to turn a profit. But eighteen years ago, for no obvious reason, Edith had closed the hotel and left a caretaker to look after the grounds. Then she and Madeline had moved to Sanctuary Creek and apparently never looked back.
    But now, after all these years, Madeline felt compelled to make the long trip to the San Juan Islands to discuss the future of the property—not with a real estate agent or a developer but with the caretaker.
    He let the questions simmer while he finished the whiskey. When the glass was empty he went into the kitchen and turned on the oven.
    He opened the refrigerator and considered his options. He liked cooking. It relaxed him. But cooking for one was not particularly inspiring. Sharing a meal with another human being on a nightly basis was one of the things he missed most whenever he was between relationships. Okay, he missed the sex, too.
    Unfortunately, ever since the disaster in California, he tended tospend a lot of time between relationships—and the few he did manage to fire up never lasted long.
    He took out the block of feta cheese, a few green onions, and some green olives and closed the refrigerator door. There was a can of diced tomatoes in the cupboard. He sautéed the onions in a pot and added the tomatoes and some white wine. A little salt and cumin