Remi stiffened. “We don’t know that for certain. She might have—”
“Damn.”
She frowned. Not because he’d interrupted her protest, but because he’d put the car in gear and whipped it out of the parking lot. A minute later, they were humming down the interstate at a speed that made her blood race. “What’s going on, Ash?”
“Someone had to perform the surgery,” he told her. “I want to know if Jax has managed to track down a doctor. And I need to let him know what we discovered in Bailey.”
“It’s Saturday,” she reminded him. “Is Jax working today?”
He nodded. “Yep.”
Remi swallowed a sudden curse, lifting her arm to glance at the watch strapped around her wrist. Until she’d mentioned the day of the week, she’d completely forgotten her weekly lunch date.
“If you want to drop me off at home, you can go see him,” she said.
He sent her a surprised glance. “You don’t want to go?”
She wrinkled her nose. Of course she wanted to go. Jax had no doubt discovered all sorts of valuable information. Plus, she wanted to hear his response to what they’d learned about Angel. But she had a duty she couldn’t avoid. “I always meet my mother for lunch on Saturday,” she said, her flat tone revealing that her decision wasn’t up for debate.
Ash slowed the car as they reached the sprawling suburbs. “I suppose I should visit my mother as well,” he said, keeping his tone light. “She’ll hunt me down and whack me with a wooden spoon if she finds out I’m in town and I haven’t come by.”
Remi smiled. She loved her mother, but Liza Harding-Walsh was a complicated woman who was difficult to please. June Marcel, on the other hand, was exactly what a mother should be: warm, loving, and fiercely loyal. The older woman did, however, expect her boys to obey a few simple rules.
“Yes. She will,” Remi readily agreed.
A few minutes later, Ash had pulled into her driveway, and before she could protest, he was out of the car and doing a quick circle around her house, clearly searching for any intruders. Inside, Buddy was barking with excitement. It didn’t matter if she’d been gone for a day or an hour, he always welcomed her home.
Ash smiled at the sound, meeting her at the front door. “I’ll be back before dinner,” he assured her, his fingers tracing the length of her jaw as his gaze lingered on her lips. “What do you want me to pick up?”
Remi flushed as she tried to squash the wicked urge to tell him that all she wanted for dinner was a bottle of wine. And him. It didn’t help that the image of a naked Ash spread across her bed formed with perfect clarity.
He narrowed his gaze almost as if he was able to read her mind and Remi quickly tried to distract him.
“I’m not that bad of a cook.”
A mysterious smile curved his lips. “I’ll swing by our favorite Chinese restaurant on the way back.”
His smile remained as he stepped off the porch and walked toward the car.
“Jerk,” she called out, but the word didn’t have any sting. Not when they both knew that his lack of confidence in her culinary skills wasn’t the reason for her blush.
Chapter Seven
With a shake of her head, Remi unlocked the front door and braced herself as Buddy launched himself toward her. With a laugh, she forgot her list of worries, which was growing longer by the hour, and bent down to give her dog a full-body rub. It was only when Buddy rolled onto his back for her to scratch his belly that she noticed the torn piece of paper that was lying on the linoleum floor of the entryway.
Fear curled through the pit of her stomach even as Remi told herself that Ash had probably dropped it earlier. They’d been shuffling through the boxes of files. There were dozens of notes that had been written on cocktail napkins, tissues, and other scraps of paper. It would have been easy enough for one to have gone astray.
Reaching out with a shaking hand, she grabbed the paper and turned it over.
I need to see you
That was it. It wasn’t signed. No indication of who might have written it. Just a few words scribbled on a piece of lined notebook paper.
Remi straightened. Had it come from the files or had someone shoved it under the door? Impossible to know for certain. With a grimace, she tossed the paper on a table next to the front door. She’d show it to Ash when he returned. For now, she had to get Buddy some exercise before jumping in her car and heading across town.
Unnerved enough to keep her pepper spray in one hand, she braved the cold to walk Buddy to the nearby dog park. He was well-behaved, but if he didn’t have an opportunity to run and play, he would find some other way to release his energy. Usually by eating something she didn’t want eaten. A shoe. A pillow. The corner of her couch.
Once his tongue was hanging out and he flopped at her feet, Remi took him back to the house and climbed into her car. The drive to the north side of town took nearly half an hour, and Remi’s nerves were stretched tight by the time she drove through the wrought-iron gates and up the long, tree-lined driveway.
She parked in front of the white, colonial home that had tall windows framed by black shutters and a portico. It was large enough to easily house a dozen people and was surrounded by manicured grounds that included a pool and a pool house, a tennis court, and a six-car garage.
The estate had been built by her mother’s grandfather, or maybe it was her great-grandfather, and she’d inherited it after their deaths when Remi was just a child. Her father had hated the place, but he’d been willing to live there to please his wife.
Remi swallowed a sigh. They all did things to please Liza.
Crawling out of her car, she hurried up the stairs to the porch and pressed the bell. The minutes ticked past as she shivered in the frigid air. At last the door was pulled open to reveal her mother.
Liza Harding-Walsh was a short, curvaceous woman dressed in an expensive, ivory pantsuit and shoes that had four-inch heels. Her black hair was as sleek as satin and pulled from her round face. She had pretty features, but her eyes were her most stunning asset. They were a deep emerald green and thickly lashed. Remi’s father claimed he’d been a goner the first time he’d seen those eyes.
Liza allowed that stunning gaze to run over her daughter’s disheveled appearance, her lips curving into a meaningless smile. As if she was looking at Remi, but not really seeing her.
Just once, Remi wished her mother would be mad, or disappointed, or . . . anything.
“Hello, Mother,” Remi said, swallowing a resigned sigh.
“Hello, Remi,” the older woman politely murmured, stepping back so Remi could enter the house. “I thought you might have forgotten the time.”
Remi entered the foyer. It was almost as large as her house, with a marble floor and a vaulted ceiling. On one side, a curved staircase led to the upper floor with a bannister that had once graced an English manor house. Straight ahead was an arched opening that led to the living room. Remi hadn’t been in there since the night her father had been murdered. She didn’t know if it would be worse to see it and realize that everything had been changed or to have it be exactly the same.
Maybe if Remi could remember what happened that dreadful night it would give her and her mother a sense of closure. Instead, they both tried to pretend they were moving on with their lives.