All That Really Matters, Nicole Deese [best detective novels of all time .TXT] 📗

Val

Are you there? I really need you to call me.

Molly? It’s important. It’s about Cobalt.

Okay, I’m not sure what else to do. I didn’t want to tell you over text, but I just quit my job. Call me as soon as you can.

“Molly?”

I jumped, nearly dropping my phone to the floor. It was Glo, her expression failing to put my nerves at ease.

“There’s someone waiting downstairs for you. A real sharp-looking guy. I told him I’d need your approval before I buzzed him inside, though.”

As if in slow motion, my mouth spoke a question I prayed I didn’t know the answer to. Because it couldn’t be him. He’d have no reason to be at The Bridge. “Who is it?”

“Says his name is Ethan Carrington.”

A dizzying sensation washed over me as I stared at Glo and forced myself to nod, to breathe, to hear her next question over the swishing heartbeat in my ears.

“You know him?” she asked, her brows furrowing at whatever she saw in my face. “He made it sound like you two were old friends.”

“I do know him, yes.” And I was sure that was exactly how he’d made it sound to Glo. The man could sell any story to anyone. It’s what made him a shark in the marketing industry. A quality I’d once admired. “He’s my talent manager.”

Strange how those words had lost their magic and pizzazz months ago.

“Oh, really? Wow. Well, that makes sense. He definitely looked New Yorkie to me in that tailored gray suit. Definitely don’t see men around here wearing clothing like that.”

I knew the exact suit she spoke of. His gray herringbone Solaro by Kiton. I’d been with him when he bought it. And I had no doubt he’d worn it today for a purpose. But what purpose? I hadn’t a clue.

Drawing from a reserve of practiced smiles, I commanded myself to stay calm, to stay in control, even as I slipped my phone with Val’s unanswered texts into my back pocket. “Did he happen to say what he was here for?”

“Hmm, no. He really didn’t. Just that he was hoping to speak to you while he was in town.”

While he was in town? Classic.

“Thanks, Glo,” I said, trying not to tip her off in any way that opening the door to this part of my past was literally the last thing in the world I wanted to do. “I’ll head down.”

Robotically, I strode down the hall, down the stairs, through the lobby, and straight for the front door, where his shadow lurked on the other side of the fogged glass. The sight of his outline curdled whatever courage I’d felt in the safety of my upstairs office.

I’d dreaded this moment. Dreaded how it would feel to see him again after our last face-to-face confrontation in a Malibu driveway. After so much life had been lived apart from each other. I breathed a silent prayer, placed my hand on the doorknob, and yanked it open before I had time to pull the fire alarm and end this exchange before it could begin.

The slight swish in my ears morphed into crashing ocean waves at the sight of him. Neither of us spoke for several seconds, taking each other in. There was so much familiar about him—the same classically handsome face, the same classically athletic build, the same classically confident style. Yet the charm factor I’d once found so appealing about Ethan Carrington had faded to non-existent.

In only a few months’ time, he’d become nothing more to me than a familiar-looking stranger wearing seven-hundred-dollar loafers.

“Ethan,” I said, as if I needed to further ground myself in the reality that he was, in fact, here. At Fir Crest Manor. I stepped onto the porch with him and pulled the door closed behind me, unwilling to let him inside this sacred part of my life. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Molly,” he said, staring at me as if my name were explanation enough. “You look . . .”

But I didn’t wait for him to finish that statement. It didn’t matter how he thought I looked anymore. “Unfortunately,” I said, both softer and kinder than I’d planned on, “this is a private establishment, and we can’t have unregistered visitors on campus without permission—”

“I just flew twelve hundred miles to see you. Won’t you give me just ten minutes?” When he looked up again, he made no effort to hide the way his gaze tracked my minimally made-up face and the outline of my freshly cropped hair. And for a moment, I wondered if Ethan hadn’t come here in the name of business at all, but in the name of something far more personal in nature—closure? I fought the urge to fiddle with the ends of my hair or pin it back behind my ears. But I refused to show even the tiniest shred of remorse at my decision to start over. To move on. To be my own person apart from his expectations and control.

“This isn’t what I wanted for us,” he continued. “I never would have imagined you’d be avoiding communication with me at all costs. That’s certainly not the Molly I signed or the Molly I believed in.”

“You’re right,” I said, unwilling to be sucked back into his emotional tide. “I’m not the same Molly you signed. And I have no plans to be her ever again. That girl wasn’t real.”

Concern crimped his brow. “She was certainly real to me.”

“Of course she was; you’re the one who invented her.” As irritation bloomed in my gut, I looked beyond him to the path that curved around the house, grateful that two dozen of my most cherished relationships were safe from his sight and schemes. There was no reason for him to be here. None. “Why did you come here, Ethan?”

He reached out his hand to me. I didn’t take it. “You made it to the final round, babe.”

My mind scrambled to make sense of his words, but I couldn’t quite make the connection. “The final round of what?”

He flashed his