Married by Contract by Noelle Adams Read Free Book Online Page A

Tuesday, Jenn was in a very good
mood.
    Yes, her optimism hit a minor bump when Nick wasn’t awake
before she left in the morning. He often wasn’t. As he’d told her many times,
she got up ridiculously early. But lately he’d often been up before she left,
and Jenn liked to see him all rumpled and groggy in the mornings.
    He must not have been scheduled for that early job he’d been
doing, however, since his bedroom door remained closed until Jenn left the
apartment at ten minutes to six. She didn’t let that small disappointment get
in the way of her mood, though.
    She had a good day planned—one where she could work in her
office all day, without any meetings or annoying projects to complete. And then
she got to have sex with Nick this evening.
    Assuming he was in the mood.
    If he wasn’t, her mood would take a definite nosedive.
    He’d seemed quite enthusiastic before, though, so she was
hopeful for this evening.
    The morning all went fine. She was able to clear out her
email—which was a victory she seldom achieved—and she got through three weeks’
worth of memos to review and documents to sign, which had been collecting in the
inbox on her desk. Her assistant, Mary, went down the block to get her favorite
salad for lunch, and Jenn happily ate it at her desk, wishing all days could be
so productive and stress-free.
    She was feeling so good that she found herself reaching for
her phone and dialing Nick.
    He answered before she could think of any good excuse for
calling him. “Hey,” he said, sounding warm and relaxed. Very Nick-like. “What’s
up?”
    “Nothing,” she replied, searching her mind for a sufficient justification
for calling him. She called him sometimes during the days, but only when there
was something to say. She never called just to say hi, and she wasn’t sure why
she had now. “Am I interrupting anything?”
    “No. Not at all. I’m just sitting in the car.”
    “You seem to do that a lot.”
    “I’d say it’s about seventy percent of my job. Excitement
isn’t really in my job description. What are you doing?”
    “I was just having lunch.”
    “By yourself?”
    “Yeah. At my desk. Mary got me that salad with the balsamic
strawberries on it.”
    “Ah. Good lunch, then.”
    “Mm-hmm.”
    “Your morning was okay?”
    “Yeah. I got a ton of work done because I didn’t have any
meetings. I’ve got a phone call scheduled for one-thirty, but that’s the only
thing on my schedule for the whole day.”
    “I didn’t think you had days like that.”
    “I don’t usually, but I was supposed to fly out to Seattle
today, remember? And then it was canceled at the last minute, so the day never
got filled up.”
    “Nice. So did you need me for something?”
    She paused. She’d been hoping he’d forget to wonder why
she’d call him. “No, not really. I’m sorry to interrupt your work.”
    “I already told you that you weren’t interrupting. I’m glad
for the distraction. This job feels like it’s never going to end.”
    There was a faint edge of something in his tone that made
her worry. He didn’t talk about the specifics of his job very much, and Jenn
had always tried to respect his privacy and not ask him. But she was worried by
his tone, so she said, “You don’t usually get stressed about your work.”
    “Yeah. But I normally just catch cheaters.”
    “You do more than that. What’s this job you’re doing now?”
    “I’m looking for a teenage runaway.”
    “What?”
    “My clients have a daughter who ran away a couple of months
ago. She’s fifteen, and she’s just disappeared. I’m trying to find her.”
    “How do you even start doing something like that?”
    “I’ve talked to her friends and traced her movements for the
first few weeks. Then she just dropped off the map.”
    “Do you think she’s still alive?”
    “I don’t know. I can’t find any death that seems to fit her,
though. She ended up doing things a fifteen year old should never