Captive Curves by Christa Wick Read Free Book Online

but hearing his voice felt good. Too good -- more than it had any right to. Focusing on keeping my breathing even, I tried to ignore all the warm spikes of energy his voice had set off inside me. “So, why are you here?”  
    My voice came out twenty times calmer than I felt. Seeing my hand on the verge of shaking, I shoved the book I was holding in the wrong spot and picked up another, pretending to read the numbers at the bottom of its spine.  
    Reaching across my shoulder, Dean lifted the book I’d just improperly shelved and moved it one row down. Without saying anything more, he reached back into his pocket, pulled out a small padded envelope and handed it to me.  
    It was sealed and I turned it over in my hands, examining it. More than sealed, the envelope was metered with my apartment address and new name of April Philips written in a bold hand. My stomach tightened at the realization that this meeting almost hadn’t happened, that he’d been on the verge of dropping whatever was inside into a mailbox and staying out of my life until the trial.  
    I broke the seal on the envelope and shook the contents out. My grandmother’s aquamarine pendant necklace in the antique silver setting fell into my open palm. The last time I’d seen it, Feo had been casually shoving it into his pants pocket.  
    “I didn’t think I’d see it again.” My hands started to tremble and I felt the fast pooling of tears. “It was my grandmother’s.”  
    Dean lifted the strands of the necklace gingerly, raising the gemstone, as he had done in the van, until it was even with my head. “Did her eyes match the stone, too?”  
    I nodded, unable to form a single word as he leaned forward, his hands reaching behind me to fasten the necklace. He ran his fingers under the chain, all the way down to the pendant to smooth the kinks from the metal. His hand paused between the valley of my breasts, the rise and fall of his chest slowing before he made a final adjustment to the pendant and quickly stuffed his hands back in his jacket pockets.  
    He caught my gaze again, seemed content just to hold it while he studied my reaction. I had a million questions to ask him, but only one that mattered.  
    Did you mean it? Did you really desire me or was it all an act?  
    Even if I could get the question past my lips, I couldn’t ask it here. A library patron was starting down the row, her toddler trailing behind her.  
    “I need to talk to you.” I glanced at the woman and back to Dean. “But not here.”  
    He dropped his gaze, the sigh leaving him so reluctant that I was sure he would deny me. Feeling my cheeks color, I told myself I was a hundred shades of foolish. He was here to return the necklace, nothing more. Taking a ragged breath and holding it, I turned back to my cart.  
    The woman passed us, her little boy looking back to notice the first tear sliding down my cheek. His face grew sad, his little hand creeping up to wave at me.  
    “Tonight…after sunset.” Dean pressed something cold and metallic against my palm and then he brushed a strand of hair from my cheek. “Your place.”  
    I turned just in time to see him exit the row and make a hard right toward the front door. I looked down at the object in my hand -- a silver rooster’s head, its interior hollowed out to slide over the end of a walking stick. Realizing I’d seen it before, I tightened my grip. My other hand darted up to cover the pendant of my grandmother’s necklace.  
    Feo and his boss were dead.  
    *****  
    I went straight home from the library, my mind racing ahead of my feet. Inside the apartment, I flitted around, my attention drifting time and again to the patio’s sliding glass door and the patch of sky I could see through it as I waited for the sun to sink below the horizon.  
    With no social life, everything in the apartment was already clean. I made a light dinner but found myself picking at it. With my nerves in ruin, I gave up trying