Free Secret Agent Boyfriend by Addison Fox Page A

her.
    Although she’d struggled with his questions earlier, it did matter to her what he thought. Of her family. And more important, of her. With the investigation into her family and their morass of secrets, Landry was fast coming to assume he thought very little.
    The knock came again and she resigned herself to the inevitable questions. And promptly burst into tears at the sight of Rachel Blackstone on the other side of the door.
    “Hey now.” Rachel entered, her arms wide before they wrapped around her in a tight squeeze. “What’s wrong?”
    Landry hung on for another moment before she pulled back. “How’d you know I needed a friend?”
    “I came for the gossip.” Rachel closed the door behind them, then pulled Landry in for another tight, side-armed hug. “But clearly I was needed for other reasons.”
    Landry looked down into vivid green eyes that normally danced with amusement but were now filled to the brim with concern. “What gossip?”
    Rachel couched her obvious concern underneath a bright smile and animated voice as she beelined for the wine and poured them both glasses of the rich red. “Hell yes, gossip. Do you really think it would take me very long to find out you spent the day in Los Angeles with a hot hunk of a man who Marcie Willoughby swears—and I quote—‘is so movie-star sexy he should be on billboards in his underwear’?”
    “I’m... Well... We—”
    “Yes?” Rachel smiled, clearly enjoying herself.
    “He’s not a movie star.” Landry managed to get that out, her only coherent thought as her imagination stubbornly stuck a picture of Derek in his underwear in the forefront of her thoughts.
    And it was a really good picture. Amazing, really.
    “So who is he?” At what had to be a blank stare, Rachel pressed on. “The non-movie-star underwear model.”
    “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
    Those green eyes softened once more, the humor fading in the reflection of true and lasting friendship. “Try me.”
    Long minutes later, after Landry had outlined all the reasons Derek had arrived at Adair Acres, she was left with one last, lingering piece of the story.
    Rachel refilled both their glasses. “So he’s here to investigate your mother?”
    “Among other things.”
    Rachel’s eyebrows rose over her glass of wine. “There are other things? Besides your mother freaking out and fleeing the country?”
    Landry took a deep breath and leaped.
    “There’s suspicion that Noah is really my older brother, kidnapped as a baby.”
    “Noah?” Color drained from Rachel’s normally bright, vivid features. “Kidnapped?”
    “I don’t want to believe it. And I’ve told Derek there’s no way it could even be possible. Who steals a baby from one woman to give it to another? Which is what it amounts to if he’s really my father’s son raised by my father’s sister as her own.”
    “But kidnapped?” Rachel set her glass on the coffee table, and Landry didn’t miss the subtle shake of her best friend’s hands. “News like that will devastate him.”
    “Rach? You okay?”
    Landry watched as her friend visibly pulled herself together. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Rachel’s initial shock faded as if it never was, morphing into a stoic mask of concern and friendly support.
    “Have you told Noah what you suspect?”
    “We can’t.” Again, that heavy weight of suspicion pulled at her with thick, clanking chains of guilt.
    “Why ever not? You can’t really think Noah’s a part of what happened to your father?”
    “Of course not. But if it’s remotely possible Noah is Jackson Adair, then his mother becomes chief suspect number one.”
    “Your aunt Emmaline? A kidnapper?”
    Landry swirled her wine, the reality of Rachel’s question not lost on her. Her aunt had never seemed like a very strong person. She wore her wealth and privilege like a shawl, rarely taking it off. It hardly seemed possible the woman would have had the means or the wherewithal