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After what had happened to his wife, I didn’t blame him for avoiding relationships.
I’d done a little bit—okay, a lot— of snooping into his past. It didn’t take me long to find what I looked for. After all, Gracie’s death had been big news in Detroit when it happened. Gracie was a former small-town prom queen to Mark’s prom king, a drop-dead gorgeous blonde with a smile that seemed to light up a room. She married her high school sweetheart, and together they ran one of the best police dog training programs in Michigan. Her tragic, terrible, ‘accidental’ death of being burned alive was covered by the news for weeks.
Except some people didn’t think it was an accident.
Some people thought she’d been murdered as revenge for their kennel’s role in the arrest, and eventual conviction and jailing of the very corrupt Governor of Michigan and most of her staff.
Mark and his wife Gracie had been doing a demonstration with their dogs for a group of kids at the state fair. It was something they did every year, both to help the dogs they were training learn to deal with the distraction of a crowd and to foster good will with the community. Unfortunately for them, the Governor and her entourage had decided to walk by while they were in the middle of a demonstration. More than one of their dogs alerted on the Governor, and after a brief tussle in which a police dog almost got shot, it was discovered that the good Governor was carrying a large amount of cocaine in her purse, hidden in an elaborate jeweled makeup compact.
The whole thing went down in front of a news crew that just happened to be livestreaming the dog demonstration at the time.
The Governor was arrested and the FBI swooped in. Ten days later, Gracie was somehow trapped in the kennels as a mysterious electrical fire burned it to nothing but ashes. Gracie, along with all their dogs, perished. That same day, almost everyone that had been involved in the Governor’s arrest was either killed or someone they loved was murdered. It was rumored that the Governor’s husband had big-time mafia ties to the Toscano mafia, and the mafia was making it known that they didn’t like people fucking with their operation. According to a couple conspiracy theory websites, losing a Governor that the mafia owned was a big blow to their organization. It made them look weak, like they couldn’t protect their people. If they wanted to keep their place in the criminal world, they had to do a show of force.
So, the Toscano mafia sent a deadly message about what happens when you fuck with them.
In all, seven police officers, two sheriffs, and twenty-eight civilians all died on that bloody day. The only reason Mark escaped was because he was at a last-minute ballgame with his dad, who’d won the tickets on the radio.
I could not imagine the agony Mark went through that day. Tears burned my eyes as my heart ached for the pain Mark endured. I’d found a picture of him in an old online article, and the sight of him bent over at the waist, clearly sobbing on his wife’s closed coffin, had destroyed me.
So yeah, I understood his reluctance to love someone new.
And I was empathetic to his feelings, up to a point.
Three years is a long, long time to wait for a man to see you as something more than a friend.
Part of me wanted to cut him out of my life. He kept sending me mixed signals, and it drove me bonkers. One minute he’d be looking at me—well, at my video image—like he couldn’t get enough of me. The next, he’d be closed off and distant, then a day later, he’d be back to his usual, charming self. Plus, he told me all the time how beautiful I was, would sincerely compliment me on my clothing and hair. He flirted with me in a sensual way that left me with uncomfortably wet panties more than once.
At least, I think he flirted with me.
I could be just deluding myself, wanting to see something that obviously wasn’t there.
Spinning my chair around with my foot, I watched the fairy lights on my ceiling blur into golden trails of light.
Without a doubt, he was my best friend, and I liked to think that I was his. The days that he was home from work, he talked to me every chance he got, and he always seemed to be genuinely interested in what I had to say. Next to my parents, he was my biggest cheerleader, encouraging me when I needed it and always believing in me. It was Mark who introduced me to a famous Hollywood star who commissioned a dragon from me—a dragon that ended up being used in a bunch of photos of him when he won the sexiest man alive award from that popular magazine.
