Free Curveball by Jen Estes Page A

into Joe’s private room.
    She gave Paige the okay nod.
    Paige leaned in secretively. “Promise not to tell my dad?”
    Joe sat the donut down and licked the remaining glaze off his stubby fingers. “How
     can I answer that if I don’t know what you’re about to tell me?”
    “Come on.” Paige huffed before her annoyed voice turned whiny. “Please, Joe?”
    “All right. Whatever you’ve got will stay between us.”
    She scanned his face and nodded in confirmation at Cat. “Okay, so yesterday I went
     to check out the beach, right?”
    “After you were done working, of course.”
    Cat smiled to herself; perhaps Joe wasn’t the clueless dolt she had feared. Not that
     anyone in the entire Soldiers organization would dare challenge the general manager’s
     daughter, but it was nice to know that they saw through Paige’s act, too.
    “Of course.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, I met this guy there. Really cute. Picture,
     like, Robert Pattinson’s smile and Chris Hemsworth’s hair except his did this little
     thing in the front and he didn’t have an accent—”
    “Paige.”
    “Sorry.” She wiped the dreamy look off her face. “Anyway, he said he was a sports
     agent in town so I thought, hey, this guy would be a solid business contact.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “So me and Cat both ended up going to dinner and after that we all went for a walk
     on the beach.”
    He held his hand up to stop her. “I just want to make sure I understand the timeline;
     this all took place within your first twenty-four hours here?”
    “Yeah.” She studied his face with innocent wide eyes. “Why do you ask?”
    “No reason.” He looked over at Cat. She was leaning on the door, hiding an amused
     smile.
    “I’m a very social person, you know.” Paige’s wide eyes had narrowed into slits.
    “Obviously.” He brought his hand up to his mouth, hiding his own smile behind his
     fist. “I’m sorry, please continue.”
    “Anyway.” She folded her arms over her chest. “We were walking toward the jetty and
     that’s when I saw the body and we called the police.”
    Joe sat up in his chair. His expression registered no signs of his prior amusement.
     He tapped pointedly on the newspaper. “You mean, you’re the vagabunda ?”
    “The what ?” Paige reached for the newspaper. “They called me a vagabond?” She looked at Cat.
     “They probably meant you. You know, because of the skirt you were wearing.”
    “Hey!” That skirt had come from one of the hottest boutiques on the Las Vegas strip
     and was still costing her nine percent interest at this very moment. “What was wrong
     with my—”
    Joe shook his head. “ Vagabunda . Literally, it means wanderer but uh, yeah, it used to refer to a homeless woman.” He shrugged his shoulders at
     Cat. “Sorry.”
    Cat scoffed and put her hands on her hips. “Why are you both assuming it was me?”
    “Maybe it’s because you didn’t have any shoes on.” Paige scrunched up her nose and
     took the opportunity to scrutinize Cat’s current choice of footwear, frowning at the
     worn set of heels.
    Cat cleared her throat. “Let’s move on to the dead guy on the beach.”
    Joe ran his fingers through the front of his thick dark hair. “I was warned that trouble
     always seems to find you two.”
    “Technically, we found trouble,” Cat said.
    His forehead creased, his eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared outward.
    Cat bit her lip and scrunched back into the door. “Semantics, I guess.”
    “I assume it’s all taken care of now?”
    Paige nodded. “I gave the police my statement last night, so I guess so.”
    He sighed; the tension slowly began to melt off of his face. “Well that’s good.”
    “But that’s not the weird part.”
    The lines came back tenfold. He closed his eyes and pressed the bridge of his nose
     between his index finger and his thumb. “I’m afraid to ask.”
    “Well that guy with us, the agent? Chance? After we gave our statements