Chapter Sixty #2
“I like this woman, regardless of her success,” he said, shrugging. “You have a pathological compulsion toward a certain type of woman.”
That was the general belief.
That I liked wealthy women.
What no one got was that it wasn’t about the money. I made my own money. Good money, too, considering I slacked a lot on initiative when it came to my job.
It wasn’t the money.
It was the worldliness.
It was their sense of adventure.
But above all else, it was the confidence.
Thus far, I hadn’t found anyone quite as self-assured as a wealthy woman who knew that, no matter what happened in her life, she would land on her feet.
No one, least of all a man, could knock her down and keep her down.
That kind of confidence, yeah, it was sexy as fuck.
And, well, they tended to be sex-starved because those silver-spoon guys weren’t shit in bed because they never had to be, because any girl with dollar signs in her eyes would moan and writhe like she was having the best lay of her life if it meant she got to take a ride on his yacht.
Uptown girls and backstreet guys, it was a tale as old as time.
“I gotta take this,” I said, seeing the name of the security guy on the phone.
“Yep. I’ll be in touch,” he said, nodding at me.
“Appreciate it,” I said as he led his woman back toward his office.
The rest of the afternoon was spent working out some finer details with the security guys, shooting off texts to Sawyer with updates, and writing down notes for other shit to look into when I had some free time.
- Randi is leaving the office now.
The text from Cam saved me from more monotonous work, making me head back in the direction of Miranda’s apartment building, and waiting outside for her town car.
She pulled up twenty minutes later, a to-go coffee in her hand, even though her workday was over, sliding out of the car looking just as fresh as she’d looked going to work, and I wasn’t exactly sure how that was even remotely possible.
“How’d it go?” I asked as her gaze lifted to mine.
“Cam held it together really well, but it was a lot,” she admitted. “What time is the security guy getting here? Do we have time to order something for dinner?” she asked. “Thank you,” she said, giving the doorman a smile as he opened it for us to pass through.
“We have a little time,” I told her. “It would be faster to go grab something, though, than to order it,” I said.
Turning back to me, she sucked her lower lip in slightly to nibble it and I swear to all that is holy I wanted to grab her and fuck her right against the front desk of the building, right in front of anyone who was around.
“Okay,” she agreed, nodding.
“You good in those ankle-breakers to walk?” I asked.
“Honey, I could run a marathon in my heels if I needed to,” she told me, giving me a smirk as she moved ahead of me, and I got to see that thick ass of hers for a second before I snapped myself out of it and rushed forward to go outside with her.
“There’s a salad and wrap place up the block,” she told me.
“I think I need something halfway healthy after eating my body weight in Chinese food last night,” she added.
“Sounds good to me,” I agreed. I could go for anything. My stomach had been grumbling for hours, objecting to just a protein bar and coffee for lunch.
“What?” I asked a few minutes later as I quickly pulled out my card before she could get her hand in her purse to find her own.
“You don’t need to pay for me,” she said, brows still a little furrowed.
“And, yet, I am going to,” I said, giving the girl behind the register a smile as I took my card back.
“I can pay for my own food,” she insisted.
“Baby doll, you have eight-hundred-dollar shoes on,” I said, watching as her brows went up at that knowledge.
What can I say? When you hooked up with a few wealthy women, you were inevitably going to get dragged to a shoe store or two.
“Of course you can pay for your own food. But I am doing it this time.”
I didn’t know a lot about Miranda Coulter’s early life, but I was going to put a good chunk of money on her not having grown up rich.
If anything, she might have struggled. That hyper-independence, that need to take care of herself even in the most minute ways—like paying for food—spoke to her feeling like she’d spent a lot of years wanting to prove herself, to show that she belonged in the upper echelon.
That unsure look kept getting shot in my direction on the walk back to her apartment and the elevator ride up to her apartment as well.
“How many cases do you work a year?” she asked as she pulled out plates for the food.
“Honey, they’re wraps. We can eat them out of the clamshells,” I told her, shaking my head at the plates.
Hot.
Smart.
Wealthy.
Independent.
And just a little bit uptight.
I can’t express how much I wanted to show her how to loosen up in a much more mutually satisfactory way. As it was, though, I could just force her to eat out of plastic instead of a plate that probably cost fifty bucks a piece, if not more.
“Right,” she agreed. “Do you have any objections to wine glasses?” she asked, throwing me a smirk over her shoulder. “Or should we drink from plastic cups?” she added. “Do you have a preference? Red or white,” she clarified.
“Not especially. Whatever you’re in the mood for. So you don’t even slip out of those shoes at home, huh?” I asked as she clicked over toward the table.
“Not when I’m expecting company.”
Right.
She had to keep up the persona.
So no one knew she didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in her mouth.
“But back to your question, the company gets several cases a month. I get maybe one every six weeks. I’m not the biggest go-getter there, so Sawyer and Tig tend to take more cases than I do.”
I could see her doing the math.
Trying to figure out my income, so she could understand why I, someone who made significantly less than she did, would offer to pay.
“Why were you given my case if you’re not a go-getter?” she asked, doing quotes with one hand.
“Because I knew more about psych hospitals. And the lifestyles of wealthy women.”
To that, her brow raised.
“What? Are you a sugar baby or something?”
I’d been asked that countless times before.
And the answer was always the same.
No.
I might have spent time with many a wealthy woman, and, sure, I’d take a glass of her wine when it was offered. But I always paid my own way. I paid both our ways if I was taking her out somewhere.
It wasn’t about the money.
“If I was a sugar baby, Miranda, would I have paid for dinner?” I reminded her.
“Fair enough. So you’ve dated wealthy women. Any that I might know?”
“Probably. And I think… ‘dating’ might be too strong a word,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, smile going a little saucy. “Not the commitment type?”
“Not so far,” I admitted.
“You’re, what, in your late thirties?” she asked. “How many wild oats do you have to sow?”
“Hey, it’s not my fault that the right woman hasn’t shown up in my life yet,” I said, shrugging.
“So you’re not planning on being a lifelong bachelor?”
“I always figured that might be my path. But then I watched my partners find their spouses has changed my ideas on that a bit.”
I always figured that variety was the spice of life. But there was just something about the way Sawyer and Riya and Tig and Kenzi looked at each other that made me start to want that as well.
That kind of pure, undiluted love and admiration? Yeah, that was something I was pretty sure I’d like to find in life.
“You? Are you married to work? Actually, while we are on that topic, a list of men you’ve seen over the past two years is probably a good idea,” I said.
“I am, to an extent, married to my work,” she admitted with a shrug. “My success is important to me. And not every man is understanding of that.”
That was a common complaint, unless you were dating someone in your social circle, in which case, that opened up a whole other world of problems.
“And the list?” I asked, reaching for my notepad.
“Oh, Michael Richardson,” she said, sighing.
“How’d that end?” I asked.
“Amicably. Two people who were so busy with work that we didn’t realize for a while that we just didn’t like each other,” she admitted.
“Okay. Who else? Come on,” I said when she shrugged. “There’s got to be someone else. In two years, just one guy?”
“One guy that I let into my life, yeah. There were a couple of dates, but that was all they were. Dates. They never even led to anything after dinner,” she clarified.
“Okay. Well, give me those names too. You never know. Some guys can mistake a casual glance in their direction for love, then stalk the shit out of a woman for five years.”
“Ugh,” she grumbled, then reached for the pad to jot down three names.
One seemingly casual fling and three dates. That was all her personal life had to offer for two years.
She really was married to her work.
It was no wonder she was wound so tight.
“Oh, before Lennon gets here, I am supposed to ask you to consider where you want the monitoring system set up. With the screens and such,” I explained.
“Sounds unsightly,” she decided.
“It is,” I confirmed.
“I guess the guest room then,” she said, shrugging. “It rarely gets use anyway.”
“Okay. That works. I am waiting for a call back from a friend about the fact that none of your neighbors remember anything at all about cops or an ambulance.”
“Wait… what?” she asked.
“Yeah, I know. It makes no sense,” I agreed. “So he’s contacting a friend on the force to see if someone was dispatched. If not, we have a whole new scenario to try to work out. If someone showed up here, would you have left with them?” I asked.
“If I knew them, maybe. But only if there was a good reason. I would have thought it was bizarre for someone to show up here, then ask me to leave with them. Without texting or calling first anyway. You think it’s possible that it happened somewhere else?”
“If the ambulance didn’t pick you up from here, then that is the only explanation. Or if someone dropped you off at the hospital.”
“But why would they do that if they’d intended to kill me?”
“Yeah, that’s a great question. I’m leaning toward you left with them, and then they did it somewhere else. I can’t imagine why. But the why comes when we find the who. I couldn’t get into the system today. For the building’s footage,” I clarified. “But that’s my plan for tomorrow.”
“Are you staying over again tonight?” she asked, and there was just something in her tone that made me think she wanted me to, that maybe she just didn’t feel quite safe yet in her apartment, even with a new security system.
And, honestly, that was valid considering what may have happened to her inside of it.
Though, yeah, the more I thought about it, the less likely that seemed. There would have been blood. Quite a bit of it, too.
There hadn’t been a drop anywhere.
Clearly, it had to have happened somewhere else, which made the whole ambulance thing make more sense.
I had to get the footage, so I could see who may have gone up her elevator to get her.
“If you want me to stay, I can absolutely stay,” I offered.
Her gaze slid to mine for a second, looking for any signs of reservation.
Finding none, her gaze slid away again, going to the door to the hall. “I’d like you to stay. If there is a service I can add on to my bill that would include you staying here until the case is solved, actually, I would like to do that.”