Free Arresting Developments by Lena Diaz Page A

out. But even after she’d grudgingly agreed to let him help her, later in the limo she’d been far more interested in trying to convince him to hire a bodyguard and worried about his safety more than hers. The only thing that had made her drop that line of conversation was when he’d promised that he would indeed get his lawyer to interview and hire a bodyguard service in the next few days.
    Which brought him back to her story about the peanut oil. A woman as intelligent and caring about others as Amber obviously was wouldn’t risk even having something in the house that might harm her grandfather. In fact, Dex was willing to bet his entire fortune that she’d never brought a jar of peanut butter or so much as a Snickers bar into this house. She just wouldn’t risk her grandfather’s life that way.
    Then why was she so intent on letting people think that she was the one who’d killed her grandfather, even if it was just a mistake? There was only one reason that Dex could think of that made sense, given what he knew about Amber.
    She was protecting someone else.
    * * *
    A MBER STOOD IN front of the bathroom mirror, eyeing her baggy clothes with distaste. She’d obviously lost ten or fifteen pounds since she’d begun her nomad-style life, because none of her old clothes fit. Well, at least they were clean. She’d have much rather gone back to her little hut and grabbed some of her clothes that she’d bartered in exchange for a few odd jobs here and there at the Miccosukee Indian reservation. But she wasn’t going anywhere without Dex, not if it could cost him a hundred thousand dollars.
    She grimaced at the amount. Even if she worked two full-time jobs at the reservation, she’d never earn enough to pay him back that kind of cash. Assuming she didn’t end up in prison in the first place.
    She sighed and tightened her belt another notch to make sure the jeans didn’t fall to her knees, then headed into the bedroom and out into the hall. The rain had stopped and the sun was going down. She hadn’t eaten all day and her growling stomach was reminding her every few minutes. It was time to see what Buddy had stocked, and fix something for Dex, too. He had to be just as hungry as she was, unless he’d gone downstairs and grabbed himself something to eat while she’d been hiding out in her room for the past few hours.
    His door was closed, so she knocked. “Dex?” No answer. She knocked again, then decided he must have taken a nap, so she went down the stairs, automatically avoiding the right side of the third stair from the top out of habit. It had always squeaked, and she didn’t want to wake Dex with the noise. He’d been through a lot in the past few days and probably still needed extra sleep for his body to fully recover.
    Most of the house was filling with shadows as the sun’s last rays disappeared from the windows. But she didn’t need lights to find her way through the warren of rooms. Granddaddy’s eccentricities had guided all the home’s rather unique additions, which often meant a wall was right where you’d least expect it, and a door might end up leading nowhere. She’d loved learning all the newest quirks of the maze of rooms and false walls with hidden staircases and hallways every summer when her parents had dropped her off to spend the time between school classes with her grandpa. Sometimes she’d wondered whether he’d designed the house the way he had just to make her laugh.
    The thought of her parents squelched any urge to laugh, as it always did. She pushed thoughts of them away and finally—after going through the front entryway and a maze of smaller rooms—she arrived in the kitchen. It was about a third of the way down the west wing and was the only truly modern part of the whole house. She loved to cook, and the summer after her grandpa found that out, she’d arrived to find an ultramodern kitchen that would have made even a decent-sized restaurant groan with envy. Of