Free Once Upon a Dream by Kate Perry Page A

great would a pool table be in here?”
    Shaking his head, he closed the door and strode toward the elevator. With each step, his posture changed, so by the time he was on the street, he was a little hunched and seemingly a smaller man.
    He went to Orson & Tomlin and took up post across the street.
    It was a couple hours before Summer walked out, presumably to go to lunch. She was with the shorter woman she’d been with the first day he’d seen her. Their body language intimated that they were close friends. Summer wore all black, which was in complete contrast to the colorful bird she was the night before.
    Except for that scarf. That scarf confounded him.
    He followed them to lunch and back. He waited for her to leave work, tailing her to her home in Mayfair.
    Most people never realized that they were being followed. It had partly to do with being unaware but mostly to do with the person following them: Unless you projected your image, no one sensed you.
    Jon was a master at being invisible.
    He watched her enter the enormous red-bricked house. It must have been a grand place at one time, but now it was a little ashen and worn at the edges. The family crest above the entrance was chipped, the words Family and Honour grayed with dirt. The file told him it’d been her father’s house, and he’d left half to his wife and half to his mistress. Summer received the inheritance at her mother’s death last year.
    And she lived there, which didn’t make sense because Trudy’s information claimed Jacqueline Summerhill, the countess of Amberlin, still resided there as well.
    He saw an older woman enter the house at approximately 19:30. Opening the file on his mobile, he pulled up her picture. Jacqueline Summerhill, Countess of Amberlin.
    Jon frowned. What kind of woman was this, to take in the bastard daughter of her husband? Nobody was that good.
    Strolling around the block, he spied the Mount Street Gardens behind the South Street house. The gates were closed, but that was remedied by a few seconds with his lock pick.
    The gardens were still, without even a rustle of wind. He sat on a bench in the middle closer to Summer’s house and surveyed the other homes. Few lights were on here and there, a panorama of domesticity.
    A light went on in Summer’s house. It was pure luck that it was her silhouette framed in it.
    He hunched on the bench even though he knew she wouldn’t see him. He was too good, and it was already dark. He watched her, his gut tightened at the sight of her in the window. He tried not to remember the way she’d clutched him and told him she always knew he’d be hers.
    He’d never been anybody’s.
    He wasn’t hers, either, he told himself, shutting down that dangerous path of thought.
    Facing the window, oblivious, she took off her sweater.
    Jon stilled. Then he stopped breathing as she unbuttoned her blouse. He reminded himself that this was work, that finding out more about Summer Welles was an assignment.
    Sometimes he loved his job.
    She wore black lace under her blouse. Normally he loved black underwear. Hell, he loved any underwear, especially if it was discarded on the floor. But he wondered what she’d look like in something vivid, like the green of the dress she’d worn last night.
    He waited, intent, for her to take the bra off, too. At the same time, he wanted to yell at her to close the drapes.
    He wasn’t sure whether he was relieved or frustrated when she slipped a sweatshirt over her head and worked her arms through the sleeves. He expected it, but he was still disappointed when she turned away and turned off the lights.
     

Chapter Nine
    The doorbell sounded.
    The noise yanked Jacqueline out of her writing, her chair making a shrill shriek on the kitchen floor as she startled. She looked up from her journal at Fran, who stopped in the process of rolling out dough. “Are we expecting a delivery?”
    “Not that I know of.” Fran shook her hands, reaching for a towel.
    “No, you