Kansas City Cover-Up by Julie Miller Read Free Book Online Page B

Knight again quickly died when she faced familiar cocoa-brown eyes that had once made her heart skip a beat. Marcus Brower’s perfect white smile lit up his face with a grin. “Hey, look, it’s Beauty and the Beast.”
    Her heart still skipped a beat. But it was a jolt of surprise, of not being prepared to fend off the inevitable suspicion and remembered humiliation pounding through her veins. Even if the pain wasn’t as intense as it had once been, it took Olivia a deep breath and a needless adjusting of the zippers on her teal leather jacket to paste a wry smile on her own face and answer. “Good morning, Marcus.”
    He winked. “Morning, babe.”
    What Max Krolikowski lacked in manners, he made up for in loyalty. While Olivia bristled at the endearment, her grousing coworker stood up beside her. “We were just leaving.”
    But Marcus’s hand on her arm stopped her. “Hey, Liv. We see each other every day, but we never talk. Can we? Are you free for lunch?”
    “No.”
    “Dinner?”
    She shook her head. “I’m busy.”
    “Don’t blow me off. I know you’re not seeing anyone.”
    “That doesn’t mean I don’t have a life.” She jerked her arm from his grasp. “I’ve got plans.” And by dinner tonight, she hoped that pathetic little lie would be the truth.
    “Okay, so you’re not purposely avoiding me.” A dimple appeared at the corner of his mouth as the charming smile reappeared. “Morning, noon or night—you tell me when, and I’ll be there. I don’t like the way we left things.”
    An image of a naked Marcus rolling around on
their
bed with the receptionist from his dentist’s office or the gym or wherever he’d picked up that latest conquest blipped through her mind. Olivia resolutely slammed the door on that memory and backed up a step to follow Max. “There’s nothing more to say. You made your choice.”
    He caught the tips of her fingers with his, lightly hanging on. “We were good friends—partners—before I screwed up. I miss the way we used to be. I made a mistake. I want to fix that.”
    Max leveled his icy gaze over Olivia’s shoulder. “We’ve got meetings to get to, sunshine. So do you.”
    The charm bled from Marcus’s tone. “Was I talking to you, Krolikowski? Bug off.”
    Olivia extricated her fingers from Marcus’s pseudograsp and pushed Max on up the stairs before a real argument with an unwanted audience could start. “Let’s go.”
    “I’m not giving up on this, Liv,” Marcus called after her. “I was a better person when I was with you. I owe you an explanation.”
    A spurt of her own temper rose like bile in her throat. The explanation was simple. Marcus was a player. His ability to say no to any flirtatious come-on when they’d been together wasn’t any stronger than his ability to grasp the meaning of the word right now. Yes, she’d been good for him—but the reverse wasn’t true. She didn’t need a private heart-to-heart to understand that.
    She spun around to let Marcus know exactly when she’d be willing to listen to any excuse he had to say. Never. “You don’t owe me any...”
    But the snarky rebuttal died on her lips. Her new partner, Jim Parker, had come up behind Marcus. “Is there a problem here?”
    “No.” Great. Just what she needed—her new partner discovering what a naive idiot she’d been with her old one. Olivia quickly excused herself, pushing past Max to shove open the front door. “I’m going to work, even if no one else is.”
    A look from Max and Jim wisely kept Marcus from joining them on the elevator up to the third floor. Olivia pushed the button and pretended the number three lighting up was the most interesting thing in the world. Max snorted and drifted to the back of the elevator to lean against the railing. “Does anything ever come out of that guy’s mouth that isn’t loaded with lies?”
    When she didn’t respond, Jim turned to Max. “Is there an issue with Detective Brower I should know