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

row, my eyes growing wider and wider with each pass. And then I stood up and paced my living room. Sophia Richards applauded me? She applauded me for leaving her photo shoot early?

I glanced back at the clock. Ten after eleven.

Miles would for sure be asleep. Plus, I would have to spend thirty minutes filling him in on everything that had happened that day at Sophia Richards’s house, and by the time I got to the punch line, all the happy endorphins I felt right now would be dead. At least, that’s what I told myself as I picked up my phone and fired off a text.

Molly

If you’re sleeping, then I sincerely hope your phone is set to DND and that you wake up rested. In that case: Good morning, Silas! But in the case that you might have your phone set to emergency alerts only and you happen to see my text, then know this is not one. An emergency, I mean. Unless you happen to count a certain celebrity emailing with some very interesting information as an emergency? Then yes, it is one.

The Duke of Fir Crest Manor

No. Yes. No.

I rolled my eyes, laughed.

My phone rang an instant later.

“Hey,” I said. “You really weren’t sleeping?”

“No,” he said, with an amused voice. “Reading.”

Silas would never be accused of wasting words.

“Okay . . . well, I just got a pretty insane email.”

“I gathered that.”

“From Sophia Richards. You know, the Tubee lady.”

“Is that actually her title of choice? I’d think a woman of her means would have a more creative marketing team.”

“Silas. Sophia said, and I quote . . .” I pulled up the email to read directly from her message. “‘I applaud you for sticking to your convictions and considering how the choices you make on your platform might affect the impressionable following you’ve grown.’”

“How did she know your reasons for not wearing it?”

I scrunched up my nose, knowing without a doubt that any person with half a business brain would have advised me not to email her after such a professional disaster, and yet . . . “I emailed her.”

“You emailed her.” For some reason he sounded slightly less shocked than I’d anticipated. “And I suppose Cobalt Group doesn’t know you did this?”

“If you’re asking if I was granted some sort of permission before I emailed her, no. But I did make it clear that I was reaching out to her just as Molly, not as Makeup Matters with Molly. There’s a difference.”

He groaned, and I heard the unmistakable sound of a book closing and a mattress shifting under his weight. “I’m not sure a legal team would see it the same way.”

“Good thing I only care about what my legal team—Silas Whittaker Minus Associates—thinks, then.”

He chuckled at that, the way I hoped he might. “I’m sure her high-powered entourage of lawyers might know a little more than a guy who passed his bar exam five years ago and then never practiced law.”

“Yeah, but I doubt any of those hotshot lawyers are as trustworthy as you.” The compliment slipped easily from my mouth.

“I appreciate that,” he said.

“Good, because I mean it.”

The natural pause indicated that this brief but informative exchange of ours was winding down. As it should, seeing as it was nearing midnight, especially when I knew Silas ran several miles at the break of dawn. It wouldn’t be kind to keep him on the phone any longer.

“Well,” I began, “thanks for letting me interrupt your reading time to—”

“Glo said you asked her to go on a shopping trip this weekend,” Silas said, steering the conversation in an entirely new direction. “Something about rental furniture for The Event?”

I smiled at his terminology. No longer was it called the fundraising dinner, but The Event. Silas had come a long way from the early vision I’d cast, but we still had much to sort out. I hadn’t intentionally withheld information from him, but Silas wasn’t the type who would willingly stand under a waterfall of details, either. Not unless he could check each one of them out from every angle. That’s the stage I was at with him now, the let’s look at one piece of party preparation at a time, because everything at once was way too overwhelming for a man who asked if a simple taco bar could replace the multi-course menu I’d carefully selected. To which I had politely and emphatically told him, “Not a chance, pal.” Four hundred thousand dollars wouldn’t come out of a mass taco feed, no matter how fabulous the guacamole tasted.

“Yeah, I was just hoping to get a second opinion on a few things, and it sounds like Clara and Jake already have plans this weekend. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad Glo is taking time off to spend with her niece and nephew. She deserves a break.”

“I’ll go with you.”

For half a second, I thought I’d understood him wrong. “You’ll go with me . . . to the rental place?”

“Unless you’d rather go with someone else.”

Though I couldn’t imagine Silas wanting to spend an entire day selecting table settings and figuring out which of the three themes I would choose for The Event, I suddenly couldn’t imagine going without him, either. “If an entire day of party supply shopping doesn’t scare you off, then I’d be happy to have the company.”

“I grew up with three older sisters, Molly. I’ve done many a long shopping excursion in my life.”

“Okay, then, it’s a date.” As the word escaped my mouth my eyes widened, ready to reel it back in, or at the very least, soften the blow by furthering the statement. But Silas didn’t seem bothered by it in the slightest.

“I can drive if it makes sense for us to ride together?”

“Sure, that works,” I said. “One of the stores is out in my neck of the woods. How about if you drive us around town for the day, then I’ll buy you dinner for your impeccable patience.”

He made a hmm sound as if he were considering my proposal carefully.

“What?” I asked