Just today, she’d brought in a new case: a twenty-four-year-old fashion model had inherited a fortune from her now-dead eighty-year-old billionaire boyfriend. And the dead man’s family wanted Private to investigate the woman.
This was a plum job, a nine-to-five kind of case. There would be no shooting. No mobsters. No one would get shoved off a cliff. She was going to enjoy this case and until she had the time to rest, work would fill her days in a fine and satisfying way.
When the doorbell rang, Justine angrily jerked her head toward the front door. Rocky ran to the living room, threw his front legs up against the door, and whined.
He knew who was ringing the bell and she did too.
It was after ten. It was a weeknight. The man at her door couldn’t open up and he couldn’t settle down. He was a good boss, but in every other way, he was a waste of her time.
Damn it.
Her phone rang.
She said, “What is it, Jack?”
“Let me in, Justine. Please.”
She clicked the phone off, went to the living room, and shouted through the door, “Jack. Go home. I mean it. I don’t want to see you.”
Her phone rang again.
She pressed the button and held the phone to her ear, slid down the wall, and sat on the floor. And she listened to him telling her what she already knew.
“Two weeks ago we were on track, Justine. I made a bad mistake, a backslide, that I deeply regret. But we were making our way back to each other after a long time apart. We were building on all of it, everything we know about each other. There is nothing we can’t work out. You can’t turn your back on love, Justine, not ours. Please, sweetheart. It’s just me. Let me in.”
“Oh, Jack,” she said into the phone.
He loved her. Jack still loved her.
And damn it, damn it, damn it. She still loved him.
