Free Made: A Bad Boy Romance (Bad Boy Games) by Danielle Slater, Allegra Ryan

deep, long breath to steady myself. Why do I think about him? Teasing nuance from every word he uttered? I’ll never see him again, and maybe that’s a good thing. Whatever else he is, whoever else this man I only know as Nathan is, he’s a predator. I’d stake my life on that truth. I don’t have to know anything else about Harley & Sweet to figure he works for people who probably have their hands in a lot of nasty, possibly illegal, crap they hide behind fancy clubs and sexy red shoes.
    So you’re going to go home and hope things work out for the best for Caylee?
    Yeah. What else can I do? It’s not like I’m a cop or even an investigator. I’m a secretary who processes the reports my boss writes about people who try to rip off insurance companies. Big whoop.
    My head turns toward the right, and I stare again at the standing desk next to the polished black door. Maybe there’s a printout or a list showing the red shoe women who’ve passed through this evening. It might give me more information about Caylee.
    Since I won’t get this chance again, I run down the hall quietly and slip behind the desk and search the lower shelves with my hand. My fingers touch on something smooth and silky. I pull it out, my eyes widening as I realize what I’ve retrieved.
    It’s an evening clutch made of black satin, ruched along the top. I rub my thumb over a worn place on the bottom left seam. A large letter B decorates the snap closure. It’s encrusted with Swarovski crystal: B for Barbara , my mother.
    Stunned, all I can do is stare and try not to cry.
    I spent about thirty minutes this afternoon digging through my closet and every drawer in my tiny bedroom hunting for this bag. There’s no way I would have ever thrown it in a box destined for Goodwill, not even by accident. It’s one of the few things I have left from my mother. I remember her holding it against her body when she came in late at night to kiss me on the cheek. She always smelled of Chanel No. 9 and her lips were cool from the night air. Dad waited for her in the doorway, a tall silhouette I spied through slitted eyes. I pretended to be asleep but watched them kiss until Mom pulled my door closed.
    This bag, her kiss, the scent of Chanel, made me feel safe and loved.
    So what the hell is it doing here?
    I open the clasp and look inside, finding a twenty-dollar bill, a tube of Sex on the Beach pink lip-gloss, and a cell phone. Slowly (because I know what I’m going to see and I really, really don’t want to see it), I pull the phone out and push the home button. The screen lights and then it resolves into a portrait: Samantha.
    I can’t run from the truth. She’s the reason my mother’s old evening bag disappeared from my closet.
    The world explodes and crumbles into tiny pieces and reforms into a picture I don’t recognize, don’t want to see. I pull out pieces from that picture—memories of the last few days—that put events into perspective.
    Samantha watching me sit at my desk trying to figure out which bill to pay this week and which one to put off so we could still buy groceries. Samantha offering to delay college in the fall to get a job. Samantha picking up the Harley & Sweet business card and asking about it. I’d blown her off with a half-assed answer she must have understood immediately wasn’t the truth. At eighteen, her BS detector is turned on high all the time. Except, of course, when it comes to personal safety because, at eighteen, she thinks she is bulletproof and immortal.
    I was seventeen when I learned the hard truth that no one and nothing lasts forever, not even the people and things you think you can’t live without. Since Samantha was eleven when our parents died, I shielded her from the hard truths of our situation the best I could. If that protection led to her putting on a pair of red shoes in a last ditch effort to save our failing finances, the fault is mine. Samantha was trying to save us when that was my job.