AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Hartley was relieved to see Eli step off the Topkapi elevator just as Monty pulled the cart into the space beside it. She pressed her lips together in a non-smile as she passed him, heading for the elevator alone.
The ride over with Montgomery had been icy, and not because of the cold tunnel. But the worst was over. Now they could focus on the job at hand.
After a moment, the doors slid open at the upstairs suite at Topkapi.
“Claire?” she called, walking into the foyer. She shrugged her purse off her shoulder, wondering which of the rooms they’d use as the communications center. “Montgomery and Eli are down in the tunnels, talking about how to secure them.”
“I’m right here, and I was just thinking—holy crap, Hartley, what are you wearing?” Claire demanded, walking into the hallway and stopping Hartley in her tracks.
It wasn’t Claire’s shock at seeing her in sweats; it was the shimmering glow of the sweeping, floor-length gown Claire was wearing.
“Holy shit, Claire. What areyouwearing?” she blurted.
Claire grinned from ear to ear. She held out the sides of the gleaming pleated dress, the green and copper flower pattern swirling around her.
“Isn’t it magical? Eli bought it for me. Well, his sister told him to buy it.”
“Where did he buy it?” Hartley asked, waving her hand to get Claire to turn around.
The halter dress hugged her body, gently curving around her baby belly and skimming the floor in a perfect length.
“He ordered it online last week,” Claire said with a shrug. “Thank God I get to work in the suite where I can keep the temperature a little higher than normal. There was no way I wasn’t going to wear this the minute I got it out of the package. I’ll probably sleep in it.”
Next to the gleaming dress, Hartley felt seriously underdressed, Lauren label or not.
“You look like you’re dressed for…” Claire looked her fleece-covered body up and down. “Honestly, I don’t know what you’re dressed to do. Drive to yoga class, maybe?”
Hartley smiled as she followed Claire into a bedroom. “This is the latest fashion for finding a killer, don’t you know?”
“That’s perfect then, because you’re now in the command center of Operation Find-a-Killer,” Claire noted, gesturing to an ornate desk that had been pulled to the center of the room. It was covered with monitors and a laptop, a phone and a tablet, and had bundles of cable hanging off the end.
“That’s perfect, all right,” Hartley murmured, watching Claire swirl her dress as she walked in front of the monitors.
Happy Claire with her amazing husband and baby on the way. Becca and Georgia, with their perfect men. And her. Here, at Cavendish, stalked by someone who wanted to do her harm and stuck with a husband who couldn’t wait to get away from her.
“I’ve got my laptop and three extra monitors, but I think we’ll want to pull—Hartley, what’s wrong?”
Hartley walked over to a chair against the wall, dropping into it. “This whole thing seems…surreal,” she admitted. But that wasn’t the absolute truth. She knew Claire would think it was the Lucas situation that had her out of sorts, not the fact that she’d just signed her divorce papers. Papers she’d kind of served herself. Right before having some sort of deep sex experience instead of the no-strings romp she’d intended.
She felt even dizzier.
“I know it’s more than that,” Claire said quietly, walking over to sit beside her. “What’s going on?”
Hartley pulled in a shuddering breath.What the fuck? Why hold it all in?
She’d intended to give Claire the short version, but then blurted out everything. She started with facing Monty in a rage, then running to hide in her room. Followed that with smashing his phone and almost having sex. Then going to Monty’s room to come to some kind of truce and kicking off her own divorce. Then actually having sex. She ended with handing him the signed divorce papers.
“Wha-a-a-t the fuck?” Claire moaned, falling back against the cushion. “Now I’m dizzy.”
Claire didn’t swear all that much, so that was saying something. “Told you,” Hartley muttered.
“That’s a lot. But do you regret it? The divorce part, I mean,” Claire asked.
“Why would you think that?”
“Because your face went all mushy when you talked about the sex part, and when you were finished, there was a big, long gap where you stared off into space and said nothing,” Claire replied.
Hartley huddled against the cushion on the back of her chair. Even now, her mind drifted to Monty, his lean, hard body, the feel of his skin against hers, the way he’d looked at her in the dim light. Those fucking eyes. They didn’t normally look at each other when they had sex, but she’d been compelled to stare, and he’d stared back.
