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Without taking his eyes off her, he shot his drink and set the empty glass on the counter. “You’re trying too hard.”
“Trying too hard?”
“To be her best friend. Even going so far as to chummy up to me, and I know that’s bogus. You’re hiding something.”
Her eyes narrowed on him as she set down her wineglass and placed her hands on her hips. “Who do you think you are? You don’t know me. You barely know Elle. And given the circumstances under which you met her, having sex with her is, frankly, weird. Unless you think your cock is so magical it would make up for the bullet thatyoucouldn’t stop.”
He lowered his chin almost to his chest and mumbled, “Transference of wrongdoing.” Classic narcissism. He hadn’t come off his relationship with Shauna without taking some knowledge from it. He was immune to the insult as well as to Glenda’s haughty and accusatory glare.
Airily she asked, “Excuse me, what did you say?”
“That you remind me of someone.”
“Obviously someone you dislike. Who?” Then she lowered her hands from her hips and gave a wave of dismissal. “You know what? Never mind. Why am I even honoring this with further discussion? You don’t know what you’re talking about, and I certainly don’t. Whatever, you’re way off base.”
With absolute confidence, he said, “No, I’m spot-on.”
“You’ve known me for how long? Yet you have the nerve—”
“Not nerve. Experience.”
“At what?”
“At spotting a suck-up.” Lowering his voice, he said, “You’re trying too hard to convince Elle that you’re her bestie. What don’t you want her to know, or even suspect?”
She clung to her arrogance for several moments before beginning to lose her grip on it. Sensing that, he zoomed in for the kill. “Maybe her husband wasn’t the only one who was unfaithful.”
She took a deep breath, looked toward the ceiling, then back at him. She rolled her lips inward and held them like that, then eventually relented. “Elle left town for a week to visit her parents. I’d just gotten my second divorce. Jeff came over to console me, and…” She gave a small shrug.
Calder had suspected something like that. For Elle’s sake, he wanted to slap the shit out of this woman. For Elle’s sake, he said, “Don’t ever tell her.”
From the open doorway, Elle asked, “Tell me what?”
Chapter 27
Elle walked into the kitchen, sensing that the atmosphere between Calder and Glenda was practically crackling. It was a wonder their hair wasn’t standing on end.
But Calder smiled and said, “I was begging her not to tell you how scared I was tonight.”
“You put up a brave front,” Elle said. “You were also a bully.”
“I had to get us through those woods.”
“A challenge for sure,” Glenda said. “And it had to have been exhausting, so I’m going to head out and let you two get some sleep. The car in the garage? Use it.”
Calder asked who it belonged to.
“Basically, to Daddy, but it’s registered to an LLC, which owns a small percentage of another LLC, on and on through God knows how many layers, so nobody will be looking for it. The key is in it.”
Calder said, “There’s a laptop in my bedroom, but I need the password.”
“This chart covers everything.” She opened a kitchen drawer and took out a laminated sheet of paper. “There’s one of these in each of your nightstands, too. It’s got the security alarm code, passwords to the various computers, smart TVs, Wi-Fi, the whole shebang. The guy I told you about? He’s the general overseer of the house. His number is on here if you have a question about something. He’s on call 24/7.”
“Is he discreet?”
She snuffled. “We’ve put up the raunchiest of the raunchy in this house. He’s a vault. His job depends on it. Anything else?”
Elle said, “I need to call my parents. How safe is the landline?”
