Page 22 of One Mistake

He shoved me against the wall next to the door, face to brick, and pulled my hand behind my back. I tried twisting away, but he shoved his forearm into the back of my neck and jerked my wrist toward my shoulder blades. Pain radiated up and down my spine, across my back. “Always has to be one of you little assholes who wants to do it the hard way.” He muttered the words at the side of my face, his coffee breath as insulting as the insinuation I was an asshole.

“Fuck you. I haven’t done anything wrong.” And right then, I believed it.

And my belief lasted all of an hour because that was how long I sat in the room alone before the detective walked in. Detective Vanessa Palmer. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Slow southern accent. “Ryder Kennedy?” It came out sounding like Ride-a Kenne-day.

I nodded and smiled. Nothing smarmy. Friendly. I needed to read the room before I decided how to play her.

She flipped open a file folder. Sorted through screenshots. A lot of screenshots. Keaton. Finn. Even Jameson. And me? Was that…no. It couldn’t be. Sure as hell looked like me with Susie Chastain. But I hadn’t… oh, shit. “You have been a very busy boy.” Her smug look said my right to remain silent wasn’t going to be enough.

“I want a lawyer.” But she knew that already.

“Oh.” She closed the folder and nodded. “Okay. Law student. I should’ve known.” Instead of standing and walking out, she shuffled the photos, straightened them, folded her hands on top of the folder, and stared at me. “I hope he’s a good lawyer because a boy as pretty as you is going to be very popular in jail.”

“Am I under arrest?” I wasn’t sure who she thought she was dealing with, but even if I wasn’t prelaw, which I was, I was the son of an attorney. I knew my rights. I also knew she could hold me and the guys for twenty-four hours before she leveled a single charge against us or had to let us go.

“Why, no. We just want to have a little chat.” She smiled. “Same chat my colleagues are having with your fraternity brothers.” The warmth she was trying for was anything but warm and a cold shiver slipped up my spine. “I hear you boys are the cream of this year’s university crop. Football stars. Academic wonder boys. And so popular with the ladies.”

If she didn’t stop, she was going to blow whatever it was she was trying to do. “I asked for a lawyer.”

“I know. We’ll get to that. But I’m not questioning you, Mr. Kennedy. Just talking while we wait.” Sinister talking, maybe. The kind wrapped in evil intentions. The kind I was way too smart to get tangled up in. “So, let me tell you what I think happened.” I cocked an eyebrow, and she smiled. My guts were in knots. But I waited for her to continue. “I think you and your friends have had quite the schoolyear so far. A lot of dates. And no denying, you all are nice looking. Very handsome. But getting to know you, it makes me wonder about women.” She shook her head. “Anyway. Did you get the dates for them or was this as spontaneous as it looks on video?” She covered her mouth. “Oops. That was a question, wasn’t it?” A fake, forced giggle erupted. “I think you tricked those girls, or you lied to them, or you just plain old didn’t tell them. Either way, unless you can produce some evidence that you had permission to make videos of these ladies being intimate with your friends, I’m going to assume, they didn’t know, and I’m going to put you and your friends in jail for invading their privacy, for exploitation, for solicitation. So many crimes. So many girls.” Her smile was like maple syrup, sticky, too sweet.

I stared at her, trying to keep my face blank, but she was right. I was way too pretty for jail. “Lawyer.”

She stood and nodded. “All right, Mr. Kennedy. I’ll get someone to help you with that. In the meantime, I’m going to go have a little powwow with your friends. See if any of them want to make a deal.”

What the fuck? She hadn’t offered me a deal. “A deal?”

She nodded. “Yes. I think whichever one of them turns on you first is going to become my favorite fraternity boy. But if they all want to testify you were the mastermind, I can probably work something out for each one.” She winked and walked to the door. “I’m gonna get you that phone call now.”

Surely, my friends wouldn’t…they didn’t know anything. Only Jameson. But one of them had to have uploaded the videos. So one of the boys knew something. I only had to figure out which one screwed all of us. And when I figured it out, I was going to do everything in my power to destroy him.

9

Reese

T-minus four days, and here I was, a cop, a woman who’d promised to serve and protect, to uphold the law at any and all cost to myself, dropping an envelope of staged photos into a mailbox while I wore a pair of blue vinyl gloves and a hoodie, while the photo subject sat waiting for me in the car.

We’d bought a burner cell for the ransom call. And I’d spent the afternoon toughening up by watching a Sons of Anarchy marathon. Kidnapping and bad biker boys weren’t exactly the same, but it put me in the criminal frame of mind. Which wasn’t near as much fun as the love slave frame of mind Ryder and I had been assuming in alternate turns.

When I climbed back into the car, Ryder smiled and leaned across the console to kiss me. Soft and sweet. Sensual and sexy. If there was one thing this man could do well—and there were several, actually—kissing would’ve ranked high on that list. And he had a thousand kinds of kisses. The slow, sultry promise was one of my favorites. Right next to the desperate, frenzied come-get-me mash of mouth against mouth. And the not to be forgotten until-the-morning-comes-goodnight kiss that made all my dreams about him. Those were my favorites, but to be honest, I liked them all.

He pulled the car onto the road away from his mother’s brick encased mailbox then glanced over. “I had a thought.”

“Yeah?”

I didn’t mean to sound like I was surprised, but he wrinkled his brow and snorted. “What does that mean?”

“It means ‘Yeah. What was your thought?’ What’s your problem?”

He didn’t look at me all the way to the house. Didn’t speak either and when we got back he stayed in the garage when I went inside. I didn’t have much experience with male moods since I’d grown up without a man in the house, and I hadn’t dated much before or after Ryder. I figured he would work his issue out and then come apologize for being a tool.

Instead, he stormed into the house and stood between me and the television with his hands on his hips. And I wouldn’t have minded so much, but Bachelor in Paradise was on in reruns, and I wanted to watch.

“Hey, it’s a rose ceremony. And you’re blocking the screen.”

“So watching reality TV is more important than talking to me.” Holy crap. He was in a mood.

“They go on commercial every seven minutes. Can you hang on that long or…” I lifted my hands and gave a sarcastic head shake. Something about his moping/pouting irritated me. This was not the way I pictured a real relationship. Or maybe it was and that was why I never had one before.