SEAL’s Redemption by Leslie North

17

Hope knocked on Ben’s door, praying he was home. She hadn’t taken the time to text him because, well, she’d been too shocked and hurt by Logan’s words. She really needed a bitch session with her best friend to hash it all out and figure out what to do next. She’d made it clear to Logan from the start that it was just sex, no strings attached, and now he had to go and get all attached, and she was feeling pretty damned attached herself and…

Ugh.

She was about to knock again when the door opened and Ben stood there, giving her an I-told-you-so look. He rolled his eyes and stepped aside to let her in.

“What the hell did the idiot do now?”

“What hasn’t he done?” she huffed as she took a seat at the dining room table where stacks of invitations were scattered. “I didn’t interrupt anything, did I?”

“Just my impending carpel tunnel from addressing all these stupid things,” Ben said, tossing her a pen. “Get writing, babe.”

“Fine.” At least it gave her something to do besides stew over what Logan had said earlier. Except as she tried to follow the list of addresses Ben had given her, she found she was screwing up most of them because she was so distracted. She crumpled up another envelope and tossed it into the trash can nearby. “I’m sorry. I’m just so stressed; it’s hard to concentrate.”

“Tell that to the stationary store when you order a replacement box of envelopes for me,” Ben said, then sighed. “Hey.” He reached over and snatched her pen away before she could mess up any more invitations. “Stop. You came here to talk, obviously, so get at it while I get these done.”

“He’s just an idiot.” She buried her face in her hands, nearly toppling a glass of water in the process. Luckily Ben caught it, then moved any potentially land mines—like liquids or breakable pens—out of her vicinity. She rubbed her eyes and looked over at her best friend. “I’m sorry. I should be helping you.”

“The best thing you can do for me right now is stay away from the rest of my precious invitations, girl.” But he took the sting out of it by laughing. “What exactly did SEAL daddy say?”

“SEAL daddy?” Hope wrinkled her nose. “Whatever. Well, he told me that he doesn’t want to have sex anymore because he thinks it will make it harder after the case when he leaves.”

Ben gave her a flat stare from across the table. “Since when are you two having sex again anyway? What happened to your no-exes rule?”

“I don’t know.” She gave him an annoyed look. “And you’re one to talk. Isn’t your fiancé an ex too?”

“Maybe.” He went back to working on his invitations. “But this is about you, not me. And you know I always thought that rule of yours was stupid anyway. Connor and I actually hooked up a few times in college before we really found our way back to each other last year, and now we’re in love, so I guess that just proves your rule isn’t valid.”

“Hmm.” She toyed with the hem of her shirt, feeling twisted in million different directions. Part of her wanted to believe an ending like that was possible for her and Logan too. But he’d been so cold and distant in the car and she’d been burned badly by him the last time, she was more than a little hesitant to chance it again. “I don’t know. Lots of people don’t go back to their exes because it rarely works out. You and Connor might be the exception.”

“True,” he agreed. “We are pretty exceptional, so…”

She tossed a balled-up envelope at his head.

He ducked then stuck his tongue out at her. “You’re just cranky because you’re confused. Or horny. Or pregnant. I can’t keep track. But seriously, if you want to write Logan off completely, you know I’m in your corner. But it should be because of something he actually did, not over some stupid rule you made up in high school before you knew any better.”

Hope sighed, then tucked a leg beneath her, leaning an elbow on the table. “He broke my heart badly the last time. What if he does it again?” She picked at the edge of the table with her nail. “I refuse to be stuck in a painful, toxic loop of a relationship like my parents were.”

“I get that,” Ben said, looking up at her. “Believe me, I do. And if Logan was still stuck in the destructive patterns he was back then, I’d totally agree. But I thought you told me before that he’d changed.”

“He has changed,” she said. “I mean, I think he has. He said he’s trying.” She covered her face again and sat back. “I don’t know anymore. I thought he was different, but then today it was like he’d reverted back to his old ways, and now I don’t know anymore.”

“Well.” Ben finished his stack of envelopes then set his pen down, giving Hope his full attention. “I don’t know about Logan, but I can speak for myself when I say I changed. I mean, when I first met Connor back in the day, I thought he was hot as hell, but way too geeky and sensible to keep my interest long. You know how much I loved a party boy back then. But now, as an adult, I’ve grown enough to realize that one,” he counted off on his fingers, “geeky is uber-hot. And two, a steady, loyal, trustworthy partner is worth way, way more to me than a random guy who’d spontaneously wander the city with me at four a.m. on a Tuesday.” Ben took a deep breath and cocked his head. “Most importantly, though, I’ve grown into the kind of man Connor can be with long term without wanting to pull his hair out. So, my question to you is, have you and Logan both changed enough since your breakup that now you’re a good fit for each other?”

Hope considered that a lot, through the rest of her visit with Ben and on the ride home with Logan. Before she came up with an answer, though, they arrived back at her house to find a packet she’d requested from a local newspaper a week or so earlier. It had copies of all of the photos of the events at the Lord Baltimore hotel that had been featured in the society pages twenty years ago during the month surrounding Diana’s disappearance. She plopped down on the sofa to flip through it, searching for some new explanation of what had happened to Diana Lauren. All her previous theories of whodunit had been based on Desmond being the bad guy in Diana’s possible murder. But if he hadn’t paid his ex-butler to drive them off the road so he could hide the blood on his hands, then who did?

It was a good distraction from the fact that Logan was still as chilly as he’d been before, not saying more than two words to her on the ride home. Now he took a seat at the other end of the sofa from her, waiting for her to pass him the paper when she was done. Things between them might be a mess at present, but they still had a case to solve.

“You think maybe someone else in the household paid off the ex-butler?” she asked, as Logan flipped through the photos while she got herself a bottled water, glad for something to talk about besides what was happening between them. She still had no clue what to do about that. She took a long drink then flopped back down in her seat. “Someone who maybe had a grudge against Diana? I mean, Desmond’s wife, Clarissa, would’ve had the cash to pay him off too, and she still seems to be using the chauffeur service, so…”

“I don’t know.” Logan scowled down at the paper. “I mean, she had no motive, right? From what Desmond said, it sounds like she didn’t even know Diana existed. What about a kidnapping gone wrong? Like Desmond said.” He tossed the paper on the coffee table then clicked on the TV, looking anywhere but at her. “Maybe Mick tried to ransom their boss’s daughter, only something went wrong and she got hurt, and now he’s covering his tracks.”

“Except Mick would have had no way of knowing Diana was Desmond’s daughter either.” Hope tapped her fingers on her bottle, thinking. “Maybe someone completely outside the household saw them meeting at the hotel and hatched a plan that went wrong?”

He shrugged. She grabbed the paper again for another look at the photos then scanned the list of events. There had to be a clue somewhere. Perhaps someone staying there had seen Desmond and Diana together, overheard their conversation in the bar even. But how could she know what someone might have seen or overheard? It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. All she knew for certain was that there had been a lot of people around. One of the events on the last day that Diana had been seen was some high society ladies’ tea fundraiser thing. Which meant the hotel would’ve been filled with rich ladies at the time. Not exactly the typical kidnapper-murderer type. She flipped another page and squinted at the caption beneath one of the photos.

Baltimore Ladies Association.

Her gut tingled. Wait a minute. That was the same organization Janet and Clarissa belonged to. She went back through the photos again, paying closer attention. If there was evidence that Clarissa was in the hotel that night, then maybe they could find a motive after all.

Yep. There it was. A photo of Clarissa with some other ladies who’d attended that night. They were in the bar too, unlike everyone else in the previous photos. And instead of smiling at the camera, Clarissa appeared to be glaring off to the side, at someone seated at the bar. Desmond and Diana perhaps?

“Hey! Look at this,” she said, scooting closer to Logan on the sofa, not caring about their fight or his crappy mood. She went over her idea as he scanned the photo. “What if she saw her husband there at the bar with a younger woman that night and didn’t know it was Desmond’s daughter?” As she said it, Hope realized that Clarissa was also a brunette back then. What if she was the person the drunk witness had seen going into Diana’s room—gone to confront what she assumed was her husband’s mistress? Her heart raced faster at the possibility that they might’ve found a suspect at last. “What if it was her, Logan?”

“Well, if it was, then we need to get this to the police ASAP,” Logan said, just as Hope’s phone dinged with an incoming email.

“Agreed. We should…” she said, pulling it out to look at the screen, her voice trailing off as what she saw stopped her in her tracks.