“Does this kind of thing occur often with you?”

“Last night was the first.”

Silence. Then he said, “But you enjoyed it?”

“Every moment.” That memory should’ve lasted her through a lot of lonely nights, but here she was, already craving more.

“Somehow it wasn’t as good for me as it was for you,” he complained.

She swallowed to ease a sudden dry throat. “What was wrong with it?”

“It wasn’t real.”

Jasmine’s breathless excitement told her it was a very good thing they were so far away from each other. Any closer, and he’d be at her door or she’d be at his.

“Real is overrated.”

“How so?”

“It gets people into trouble.” With a capital T. Throwing the covers off her head, she took a deep breath of the room’s cold air and tried to work her way back to logical, to sensible, to responsible.

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“What kind of trouble are you afraid of?” he asked.

The kind of trouble that came with a man like Fornier: the addiction, the craving, the risk, the heartbreak. “Losing control.”

When she was young, she’d given in to the need to escape, to feel anything but what she felt when she thought of her sister. It’d been a long, hard road since then, pulling herself out of the mire of drug addiction. She was determined to make better decisions, to hang on to her self-respect and protect her future.

“You’d be safe with me.”

Yeah, right. That was what they all said, wasn’t it? “I had some interesting experiences when I was younger, enough to know what I want and what I don’t,” she explained.

“How does one night with me threaten that?”

“It’s out of character.”

He chuckled softly. “I was afraid you were going to say it’s out of the question.”

“It is out of the question.”

“I’m not convinced.” He hesitated as if contemplating the problem. “You’re running scared, but you’re not unreachable. Somehow you participated in that fantasy, too.”

“Maybe you’re the one who’s psychic.”

“You already let me know how much you liked it. But you didn’t have to. I can tell when a woman’s interested—and when she’s ready to bolt. What’s made you so skittish?”

“A determination to avoid past mistakes, I guess.”

“You’ve been hurt?”

“Not by a man. Not directly, at any rate.”

“Then it relates to your sister.”

She was letting this conversation go on too long, but she liked the sound of his voice, the quiet intimacy she felt despite the small, lonely room. “Maybe.”

“What happened to you after she went missing?”

“Everything.” He was treading too close to matters she never discussed with anyone—even Sheridan and Skye—if she could help it. Kicking off the rest of the covers, she redirected the conversation. “Why’d you call?”

She could tell he wanted to press the issue, but he allowed her to change the subject. “I was wondering if you managed to find Black.”

“When you walked out of the restaurant, I got the impression I’d never hear from you again.”

“I figured the same thing.”

“And then…”

“And then I had a few drinks.” She heard him sigh. “Probably a few too many.”

Lightning flashed, brightening the room. Jasmine watched the rain roll down the outside of the window, listened to it plink against the fire escape. “I found him.”

“What’d he say?”

Other than getting him to answer any questions that might come up about Moreau, Huff and Black, Jasmine was fairly sure she didn’t want to draw Romain any further into her investigation. Handsome though he was, he had some deep scars, which made him unpredictable, maybe even a liability. “Nothing, really.”

He laughed disbelievingly. “You’re not going to tell me? You want me to trust you, but you’re not willing to trust me?”

Basically. But when he put it that way, she saw the unfairness of it. She also saw that it might be worth telling him if he could refute Black’s claims. “I don’t want to upset you.”

“You’re about six years too late for that.”

“Fine. Black insists it wasn’t Moreau who killed your daughter.”

“Of course he’d say that. He’s the one who destroyed the prosecution’s case.”

“He says he wasn’t the one who talked about the botched search. He says it could’ve been Kozlowski or another cop who was there that night.” She thought of Romain’s lawyer brother-in-law, but decided that was too big a stretch. Why mention it? She shouldn’t, not until she had more to go on.

“Can he prove it?”

“No. Or he would’ve done so.” She remembered the painful grip of his hand on her arm. “I think he’s been accused one time too many for a man of his temperament.”

“What does that mean?”

“He doesn’t take kindly to it.”

“He didn’t hurt you…”

“No.”

“What about the evidence? No matter how it was gathered, or whether it was admissible, it was still there, in Moreau’s house.”

“Black claims it was planted.”

“By whom?”

“He doesn’t know.”

There was some rustling on the other end of the line, and Romain’s voice turned sarcastic. “Of course not.”

“I’m not saying he has a lot of credibility. I’m just repeating what he told me.”

“But you’re tempted to believe him.”

She tried to choose her words carefully. “He told me a few details that had the ring of truth. I need to check them out. That’s all.”

“I didn’t kill the wrong man, Jasmine.”

It was a terrible possibility—but the note she’d received made it seem more likely than not. “You might have.”

“Go to hell,” he snapped and hung up.

Jasmine couldn’t blame Romain for his sudden flare of temper. No doubt he’d called, hoping that what she’d found would reassure him, put his mind at rest.

Instead, she’d done just the opposite.

The rapid shift of emotion, his and hers, left her more depressed and exhausted than before she’d spoken to him. She needed to keep her distance from Fornier. That was all there was to it.




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