Secrets and Lies Read Online Free Page B

lean legs of hers. She kept in shape—delicious shape—and he figured she did that with the work she did everyday. He doubted running the contracting company along with keeping her architectural dreams alive, combined with flipping houses and giving Twist of Fate a steady supply of houses to rent out, would leave time for a vigorous workout routine.
    She had told him, in no uncertain terms, that she just wanted answers about her mother. That was her way of telling him to drop the questions about the near hit and run from the previous night. As if he had any plans of ever doing that.
    Any other private detective would probably be content with just digging for information on her mother’s case, but he wasn’t any other detective. Protecting people was in his blood. She needed his help for more than just closure and he aimed to see that she got it—whether she wanted the full service package or not. He was also planning a way to cut her bill in half, if not more. He reckoned it was a good thing women like her didn’t walk into his office everyday otherwise he might go bankrupt trying to save them money.
    It wasn’t just because of her beauty. He had seen many beautiful women walk through his door, professionally and personally. It was her innocence, that blatant sense of goodness in her that he hadn’t seen in a long time. She was vulnerable, yet strong, innocent yet not naive, and she intrigued him.
    He needed to put those thoughts out of his mind. He couldn’t pursue her. It wasn’t her status as his client that kept him from going for more. At some point she wouldn’t be his client and with any other woman he might think of pursuing at will, but not her. She deserved more than what he could offer her—not financially, he was fine financially, maybe not rich, but not poor either. He was a solid middle class single man, with strong investments and a good economic ethic. He could be a good provider, a good husband—if he weren’t determined to get closure for his own case. Until he did that he wouldn’t be any good to anybody like her. She deserved a husband who would come home to her without eight years of baggage dragging behind him. She deserved more, more than what he could give her right now.
    “Focus,” he mumbled. “Focus on the case at hand.” He would drop off his findings to Natalie Kaufman, an eccentric older woman who was determined to protect her family and her family’s money by making sure her son didn’t marry a “gold digging floozy.” He had laughed, inwardly of course, at her verbiage. He wasn’t the type to usually think the worst of people, but in his line of work the worst is what he usually saw. Natalie had been right; her future daughter-in-law was indeed a “gold digging floozy.”  She had taken three previous men to the bank, and the cleaners, within a year of marriage. She divorced and then quickly moved on to the next not-so-poor, unsuspecting sucker. Of course he was sure Jeremiah Kaufman didn’t know that because Jeremiah thought his new fiancé had never been touched, let alone married.
    He had to laugh at himself. He had taken that case as a favor to a friend. He didn’t do domestic cases. He hated cheating husbands, cheating wives, unscrupulous children and the likes. He stayed as far away from those cases as he could. He had learned, fairly early in his PI career, to keep those cases ten miles away from his office. First off, they never ended well. He always found himself telling some poor slob that his wife really was banging his business partner. Or he ended up sitting on the other side of the desk watching some woman fall apart in her chair after finding out her husband really was having that affair. After the first few times, and after he had nearly been the reason a husband didn’t live to see tomorrow, he decided he would stick to the cases with more than domestic issues to worry about. He had been told he would be limited, but he found out differently.