Free Whatever Remains by Lauren Gilley Page B

deliberately over him. They were hard to read. “Hey.”
                  His voice snatched Clara from her imaginings and she came to her feet light as a fairy, face exploding with delight. She was too young to hate him for his absences. “Hi, Daddy!”
                  “Hi, love.” He picked her up, because she wasn’t too cool for that yet, and because he’d spent his day talking about a dead girl. “What are you up to?”
                  “Watchin’ Uncle Remy teach.” She slipped one small arm around his neck and twisted so she could see the arena and her “uncle.” “He’s a good teacher.”
                  “Yeah. And it’s nice that he gets to be the one doing the riding sometimes.”
                  Jade cleared her throat; over Clara’s shoulder, her slender dark brows were lifted in silent censure, expression that strange blend of neutral and peeved that still eluded him. “Clara-baby, how ‘bout you run down and ask Remy when he’ll be finished up so I know if I have time to go pop the chicken in the oven.”
                  Ben put her down, reluctantly, and she went scampering off, a wood sprite flitting through her magical kingdom. He supposed if a kid had to grow up somewhere, he couldn’t hand pick anyplace better than a horse farm.
                  “Are you here about the case?” Jade asked. She straightened from the wall, the curve of her spine pulling her shirt tight across her breasts, highlighting the slim dip of her waist, the flare of her hips.
                  He gave her a flat look, trying to keep his eyes on her face. “You told me to make some time for Clara.”
                  She frowned, and glanced away to cover it. “You could have called.”
                  “I could have. But in case you didn’t notice, I’m smack in the middle of a murder.”
                  “God,” she sighed. “Can you not do that?”
                  “What?”
                  “Pretend to be this injured guy whose kid I’m keeping from you.” He didn’t respond. “The only thing that ever came between you and your daughter was your own black heart and your string of bimbos.”
                  “I don’t date bimbos,” he countered, leaning back onto the wall and propping a boot against it.
                  “No.” She snorted. “You don’t ‘date’ anyone. That would be too chivalrous.”
                  Down at the arena, Clara scrambled onto the rail and Jeremy said something to his student; walked over to meet her, smiling. In a minute, she’d come flitting back to them and Ben would have to either invite himself to dinner or abandon his mission for the day.
                  “I need to ask you something,” he said, “relevant to the case.”
                  From the corner of his eye, he watched Jade stretch – the shift of lean muscle and bone beneath her clothes, the spill of shadow between her rounded breasts as they squeezed together – and relax again. One corner of her mouth curled downward in what might have been a frown; he got the impression she was disappointed. “Okay.”
                  She made him wish he smoked, so he had something to do with his hands in moments like these. “How close are you to Alicia Latham?”
                  She put her hands on the bench and shrugged. “We’ve been neighbors for about a year now. She and her girls moved in right after old Mr. Mitchum’s kids had him put in a home. Alicia came over the first day; she brought a pan of overdone brownies and asked if she could bring the girls and have dinner with us.”
                  Ben felt his eyebrows twitch. “She just invited herself over right away?”
                  “She couldn’t find her pots and