Free Under His Spell by Kelly Favor Page A

places
impenetrable to the naked eye, and that he could be hurt if someone ever
exploited those places.
    She never wanted Easton to be hurt like
that.   She never wanted someone
close to him to betray him, not if she could stop it.
    But
is it your place?   Will he
appreciate this kind of help, when he never asked you for it?   What if he considers what you’re doing a
betrayal as well?
    Kennedy didn’t know how to resolve the
dilemma.   All she knew was that
something had told her to find out about Sheri, and that had led to Easton’s
brother Dean, and the knowledge that Dean was in trouble.   What if Dean was somehow going to pull
Easton into the same rabbit hole he’d fallen into?
    But what or where exactly hole that was,
didn’t seem completely clear.   The
picture was very hazy, and Kennedy needed a lot more information before she
could make any judgments about what was truly going on.
    So she sat in her car in the parking lot
of the sports bar, watching, waiting, not quite knowing what she hoped to
uncover.
    As minutes turned into hours, Kennedy
watched people filter in and out of the bar with no discernable pattern.   It seemed that Dean had a decent
business, and there were customers, so they were making some money.   She wondered whether the rent was high
in that area, whether they were simply not making enough money or if it was
another problem that had created all of the debt and credit trouble?
    Maybe he had a drug problem, maybe his
wife liked spending a little too much for what they could afford…
    And then her mind drifted back to Easton,
and the little outfit she’d bought at Cosabella with Nicole.   Would Easton see her in that outfit in
just a few hours?   Would he be
helping her to slip out of those bright colored panties, unclasping her bra?
    She started to fantasize, losing all
sense of place and time.
    Kennedy saw herself in the hotel room
with Easton, his shirt unbuttoned, his chest revealed, and both of them were a
little sweaty from excitement and heat.   It was like a snapshot of the future, and she could imagine what it
would feel like to be close to him once again, to smell his scent, to kiss his
firm lips, to feel the caress of his fingertips over her bare skin…
    She startled out of her reverie to find
that a large delivery truck was pulling up to the back entrance of the
building.   A couple of guys got out
of the truck and waited, one of them lit a cigarette, while the other texted on
his phone.
    Something about the truck and the men had
gotten Kennedy’s antennae up.
    The truck itself was unmarked, which
didn’t necessarily mean anything.   But the two men didn’t look like normal delivery guys.   First of all, they were dressed a little
too nice, slacks and collared shirts, and they both had the kind of expensive
haircuts that she associated with a high-end salon.
    After a minute or two, they opened the
garage to what appeared to be a loading dock, and were joined by a large,
rather heavyset man with a shaven head and shoulders like a linebacker.   He was dressed in a dark suit, and he
wore sunglasses.
    The three men began conversing and
Kennedy wished she could somehow read lips or get close enough to hear exactly
what they were talking about.   After
a minute or two of conversation, the big bald guy gestured to inside the
loading dock.   The two men seemed to
be taking direction from him.
    They came out with hand trucks and then
went inside the building with them, disappearing momentarily, while the big
bald guy folded his arms and waited.
    Kennedy wondered what was going
on—the whole scene had a look that didn’t quite fit with a typical
delivery to a neighborhood bar.   Who
were these guys, she wondered, and what were they up to?
    Her question was partially answered not
long afterwards, when the two men reappeared with their hand-trucks bearing
boxes stacked upon boxes.   What was
inside the boxes, she didn’t know.
    But over the next ten or fifteen