LITMIR.BIZ

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polished in dark designer slacks and shirt, his blond hair slicked back, his watch, signet ring and seriously expensive shoes befitting a successful investment broker. “Peter,” she breathed.

      “Hi, Carly.” He eyed Jack Terry warily. “Hello, Detective.”

      Jack nodded curtly. “Ashford. When did you get out of jail?”

      Peter blanched slightly, but stood his ground. “Last night. The charges won’t be officially dropped until later this week, but my attorney and the D.A. arranged for an early release.”

      D.A. Kelvin Lucas, the man who had ordered her father’s case be reopened and asked Jack Terry to make it a priority. For such a big city, it was a small world.

      “I guess I owe you my thanks for nailing the person responsible for Angela’s death,” Peter said to Jack.

      “Just doing my job,” Jack said. “Carlotta was the one who kept insisting you were innocent, even after you confessed. You should be thanking her.”

      “I intend to,” Peter said, gazing at her with affection so palpable, she could feel it settle around her shoulders.

      Jack cleared his throat, spearing Carlotta with his sardonic gaze. “See you around.”

      She nodded absently as he walked away, thinking that the two men were a study in extremes—Jack Terry, rough and aggressive; Peter, cultured and subtle.

      Carlotta glanced back at Peter, hoping that he hadn’t come to press her about renewing their relationship. She wasn’t ready, and neither was he, so soon after his wife’s death. “Peter, what are you doing here?”

      “I need to talk to you.” He looked around as if to ensure they were alone.

      She realized that in the wake of Jack’s departure, his expression had grown grave and his hands were shaking. “What’s wrong?”

      He stepped closer and seemed to grapple with what he had to say. “Carlotta, your father—Randolph—”

      Her pulse skyrocketed. “What about him?”

      “He—he called me.”

      3

      Wesley Wren sat staring at the perspiration beading on the forehead of the real-estate broker sitting opposite him. Admittedly, it was hot as hell in the back of the west-end car repair shop where a game of Texas Hold ‘Em had erupted on this stewing Sunday afternoon. But they’d been playing for over two hours and the guy’s sweat glands hadn’t kicked in until just now, when the last of five cards had been turned up in the community pot.

      Wesley hoped that meant the three of clubs worsened the guy’s hand rather than giving him a fluky straight that would beat his own full house of three queens and two eights. Because they’d been dealt only two face-down pocket cards and since there were no pairs in the face-up community cards, the only other hand that could beat his full house, four of a kind, was out of the question.

      The winner of this hand would walk away with the fifteen grand that was piled on the sticky table between them. Wesley tamped down a spike of excitement. He was in a sweet spot, but he’d been close to the payoff before only to have it snatched away. In fact, he was still smarting from a bad beat in a weekend-long tournament that had left him too broke to make payments to his loan sharks and even deeper in debt to his rich buddy Chance Hollander.

      This game had started after he’d dropped off his sister’s car for some scratch-and-dent repair. Chance had tagged along and suggested a little gambling to the oily owner. A few phone calls later and a few bored professionals had shown up, ready to part with their easily-earned cash.

      He was convinced he needed this money more than Real Estate Man, but two layers of deodorant and a puff of his sister Carlotta’s talc on his forehead kept his sweat glands under control at moments like these.

      While he waited for his opponent to see the bet, raise or fold, Wesley nursed a pang of regret for once again reneging on his promise to his sister to stay away from gambling. He told himself that the fact that he’d sold the motorcycle that she hated would temper her anger if he wound up losing the five grand he’d gotten for it.

      Poor Carlotta. They’d both taken it hard when their parents had been forced to leave town to keep his father out of prison for a crime he didn’t commit, but Carlotta had borne the brunt of the fallout, having to raise his smart ass and generally try to keep him out of trouble.

      It had worked for the most part. Oh, sure, he’d racked up some debt and had been caught hacking into the county courthouse records, but no one—not even his buddy Chance or his hot attorney Liz Fischer—knew that his crime wasn’t as sloppy as it seemed. The incident had left him with a back door into a database that would hopefully divulge details about his father’s case, and an impending community-service job with the city’s computer security department that would give him all the access he needed.

      The fact that his probation officer had turned out to be a stacked redhead who kept him awake at night was an unexpected bonus.

      Carlotta was less convinced that their father was innocent of the charges levied against him, but Wesley chalked it up to her anger. She certainly had a right to her resentment—suddenly saddled with a kid, dumped by her boyfriend and left to scrape by on a retail job. His sister’s life hadn’t been easy.

      Which was why he’d love nothing better than to take home this money and prove that he could contribute more to her life than migraines. And why he was determined to prove his father’s innocence so their parents could come out of hiding and they could be a family again.

      “Hey,” Chance said from a chair where he slouched, watching. “Ain’t there some kind of time limit for placing a bet?” Chance had bought into the game too but, as usual, had been eliminated with record speed.

      “Yeah, get on with it,” the owner of the place said to Wesley’s opponent between puffs on a cigarette. The guy stood to get his cut no matter who took home the pot—totally illegal, but no one here was going to call 911.

      This money could be the first step toward the kind of life he knew that Carlotta dreamed of: a normal one. If they got their debts paid off, maybe she would even relax enough to start dating. His boss Cooper was nuts for her and he’d seen the way that cop Jack Terry looked at her. Plus her old boyfriend Peter Ashford seemed eager to make amends.

      Raise, he urged the guy silently. Try to bluff me. Put another couple of grand on the table. Wesley chewed on his fingernail to fake worry over a bad hand. In truth, he had a damned gorgeous hand that he had slow-bid to this point.

      Real Estate Man zoned in on Wesley’s nail-gnawing, then shifted forward in his chair. “All in,” he said, pushing his remaining chips and cash to the center of the table.

      Wesley almost wet himself: it was more than he could have hoped for. He wanted to play it cool, but couldn’t help grinning as he responded, “Ditto.”

      Chance lurched to his feet to see the reveal. Real Estate Man groaned and turned over a lousy pair of tens. Wesley threw down his full house with a whoop and the celebrating began. With a rebel yell, Chance picked him up and shook him like a rag doll. Wesley couldn’t remember being so happy in all the years since his parents had left. He had finally won a big pot and he couldn’t wait to tell Carlotta.

      He’d bet it would be the biggest surprise of her week.

      4

      Carlotta stared at Peter as his words sank in. Her mouth opened, then closed. “My father called you?”

      He nodded. “Can we go somewhere? You should sit down.”

      “I … let me clock out.”

      She went through the motions automatically, refusing to think about what her father’s phone calls meant. Was he ready to come home? Turn himself in? Had he heard about Wesley’s run-in with the law and wanted to check on them? Then a paralyzing

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