Now You See It by Cáit Donnelly Read Free Book Online Page A

How the money rolled in. People ate that shit up, and PayPal was his new best friend. At the rate his customer base was growing, he’d be able to quit this frakkin’ j-o-b in just a few months.
    His second biggest fear, after being found out, was that Ned Carrow would find Jesus or something and stop writing the source material.
    Justin snapped his head up as Doug—that would be J. Douglas Wheeler IV to the proletariat, Justin sneered—came out of his office as if his handmade, tasseled loafers were on fire. Man, the dude looked like crap—face all white like he’d just yakked on his desk or something, so pale his chin and cheekbones stood out like they’d been professionally highlighted. Great look for a Goth party. How had he done that? Something must be up. Probably something way above an IT tech’s pay grade to make His Frakkin’ Excellency look so panicky. Maybe there was a way to find out.
    * * *
    Gemma stepped back into the yard and took a moment to soak in the everyday sounds and scents of Mike’s Greenlake neighborhood on a summer evening. The world went on around her—laughter and the soft sounds of conversation from the neighboring back yards, the smell of grilling meat. Mike and Mary-Kate were talking quietly near the picnic table and Brady squatted on his heels by the patio table in a solemn discussion with her four year-old nephew, his dark head bent next to Timothy’s spiky red hair. Brady looked up as Gemma came nearer, and that same electric zing ruffled the fine hairs on her arms and the nape of her neck. He’d opened his collar and draped his suit coat over the back of a patio chair, and the muscles in his back moved against his fashionably voluminous shirt. The guy was ripped. Not like a body builder, nothing extreme. But taut, strong, ready. Her mouth went dry and then way too moist as a tight, hot center kindled somewhere near her solar plexus and spread heat outward.
    Maybe it was just shock—that must be it. She didn’t respond to strange men this way. Even Ned had never pushed all her buttons the way Brady did, and she didn’t even know the guy. Oh, man, she could be in so much trouble.
    Mike lifted his eyes from the stapled clump of single-spaced papers he’d been immersed in. He looked at his son, cleared his throat, and turned to Brady. “Let’s go inside.” Then to Gemma and Mary Kate, “We won’t be long. You be okay?”
    Gemma nodded as Brady rose in one smooth motion. Okay, so he was agile, too. Still, she was glad to see them go. Even as thoroughly trashed as she felt, he was way too distracting. For now she wanted to do nothing, think of nothing but the play of the oscillating sprinkler against the green lawn and dark wood of the fence, or watch as Nikki began to zoom wide circles around the little boy who now stood splayed-legged in grubby, sagging-wet cargo shorts, daring the dog to come closer.
    “Did you reach Ned’s mom—what’s her name? Joyce?” Mary Kate asked.
    “Julia. Sort of. She was pretty drunk. It must be, what? Eight o’clock in Texas now? When I told her Ned was dead she screamed and then threw the phone down. Begonia hung it up.”
    “Who’s Begonia? Is that the maid you told us about?”
    “Maid, companion, something.” She was grateful to Mary Kate for giving her a space of time to sort out her feelings—not treating her like a victim. There would be time for that. “You know me too well, M-K.”
    “Yeah, well—”
    The pause was awkward. Gemma understood they were still working at getting their rhythm back after almost four years of enforced separation, but it fried her circuits when she remembered what an idiot she’d been to let Ned-the-lying-cheating-rat-bastard keep her away from her family. “I’ve missed you guys.”
    “We’ve missed you, too, Gemma.”
    She’d missed Mike and Mary Kate more than she had been willing to admit to herself. How could I have let Ned do that to me? she wondered for the twentieth time that