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Mark was a friend. Was, because after this shitshow, I hated his guts. We’d met two years ago when he was a consultant on NYC ER, helping make the law enforcement and legal scenes more realistic. For my role, there was a medical consultant, too, but the writers still stretched reality. There was no such thing as a triple craniectomy, and it was impossible to accomplish a regular one with a pen.
We’d had a few beers here and there, but he somehow found out I was spending my break in Hunter Valley. I didn’t even want to know how he knew. He showed up out of the blue to hang with me. Not hang, but with a specific purpose. To approach a woman who lived there. She was tied to a case he was running and hoped to use his famous friend–me–as an in to chat her up. He asked for my help. Dumbest ‘yes’ I ever said. It was only supposed to be beer and baseball while he talked to a woman in a bar.
“You told me she was a senator’s daughter who might be caught up in shit,” I reminded.
“She is.”
“Aspen!” I called, my voice echoing through the house. No answer. “You said she was a princess. That like her parents she was shallow, vapid, and fake. Those were your exact words when you showed up in Hunter Valley asking for my help.”
“Yeah.” Why did he sound so mad at me? I was so fucking pissed at him.
“You didn’t tell me she was Senator Bergstrom’s daughter!”
I hadn’t liked the politician the one time I met her, more concerned about appearances than the woman across from us at dinner dying from anaphylaxis. I assumed her daughter had to have been just as obnoxious. That I’d eat some wings and watch baseball while Mark got the info he wanted out of the woman, then get back to my regularly scheduled vacation. Right?
Wrong.
So fucking wrong. One look at Aspen in the bar and I’d been instantly drawn in. Hooked. Possessive. No way was I letting Mark anywhere near her. So I told him to fuck off and I claimed her as mine. Over trivia and a night of amazing sex, I knew there was no way she was involved in any shady shit. My girl wasn’t a princess or egotistical. Vain. Pretentious. She was nothing like her mother.
The next morning when I’d been hiking with Aspen and the kids, he’d texted wanting an update. I responded back that she wasn’t involved. Then I forgot about the whole fucking thing, completely and totally invested in making Aspen mine.
Until we ran into her parents earlier.
“Yeah, well, Aspen Lane is Senator Bergstrom’s daughter.”
“I know that now,” I snapped. I ran my hand through my hair. “You told me her name. Aspen Lane. That you were investigating her connections to possible political bribes and kickbacks.”
“Right.”
“You didn’t tell me any important shit.” I was walking around my house, hoping Aspen was here, even though I knew she wasn’t. Then where was she?
“That’s because you’re not in the FBI. I couldn’t give you all the details. You’re not part of the case.”
“I had no idea she was related to Senator Bergstrom,” I admitted. “They don’t even have the same name.”
“So you two did meet her parents?”
“Yeah, we met them.” That had been a fucking hot mess.
Aspen’s clothes were still here. She’d taken a little purse with her to the party, so she probably had her wallet and phone. I already texted her at least ten times. Called and left messages. Nothing.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he asked. “You said she wasn’t involved. This means she–”
“She’s not involved,” I said through gritted teeth. “I told you she wasn’t up to anything shady.”
“Did you outright ask her?”
“What? If she was doing illegal political shit? No! We were a little busy.” He could read between the lines on that answer.
“So how did you know she was innocent?”
“Because I know her!”
“Dude, you had sex after meeting her in a bar. How could you know her?”
I squeezed my phone, wanting to throw it across the room. “What the FUCK is going on?”
“Why are you so fucking angry?”
