Free OVER HER DEAD BODY: The Bliss Legacy - Book 2 by EC Sheedy Page B

out a hand and closed it over hers. “Oh, God, I’m sorry, Cassie. Sit down. Finish your breakfast.” She forced a smile, tamping down her edgy impatience, a feeling that dogged her more and more of late. “The Urine can wait.”
    “It’s Urien, Dinah.”
    “What a difference an E makes!” she quipped, receiving only a faint smile in response.
    Rodina came in and filled both their coffee cups.
    “Oh… I remember now,” Dinah said, relieved. “Miles and Bunny Urien. Construction. He’s building the Balustrada Towers at the other end of South Beach. She’s director of the Canterby Foundation. Something to do with illiteracy.” Both of them worth knowing. She sighed. Which didn’t change the fact that she hated opera, or that she hated her life— since Gus had walked out of it.
    I wonder who he’s fucking….
    Her stomach curled, and the hand she used to reach for her coffee shook. No. She wouldn’t think about that, couldn’t bear the images evoked. She’d been a fool to let him go. There must have been a way to hold him. Keep him.
    He’d called only once, and typical Gus, the message left with Rodina was terse: he’d seen the nun “with no results.” And he’d see her again when he could. The “when he could” part pissed her off. But then he didn’t know that every day that nun spent in Mayday House brought Dinah closer to disaster, and she didn’t intend to tell him.
    She cursed herself for the stupid whim that had caused her to involve him in this nasty bit of business in the first place, but looking back, why she did it was pathetically clear. It was rich-bitch Dinah Marsden’s twist on the old I-forgot-my-sweater trick, concocting a reason to contact him again, because she’d been terrified that when he left Miami, she’d lose him forever—a man who to this day she knew absolutely nothing about, other than how marvelous he was in bed. From day one her questions about his past met with rigid, unyielding silence and, truth be told, she hadn’t much cared. Pasts, as she well knew, often deserved to be forgotten—certainly hers did.
    Then a couple of months after he’d come to live with her, he’d told her he needed new names and birth certificates for him and Josh, his little brother. It was the first of only two times he’d asked her for anything, and she’d complied, no questions asked. Not that asking would have done any good. Gus kept to Gus. Had in the beginning and had in the end.
    Which made her even more of a fool for trusting him with Mayday House, something so critical it could destroy her life.
    She hadn’t started out being a fool for him, had simply thought she’d procured a young, energetic lover, a plaything, someone she could control. Then one day everything changed; Gus changed—like all self-protective chameleons do. It amused her now to think she’d ever thought she controlled Gus Hammond.
    She remembered the exact day when he took control. It was the day that stupid bitch, Idona, had asked to borrow him—for the fifth time. Dinah had said yes, afraid even then to admit her growing feelings for him—but, God, he was so beautiful, so maddeningly detached, so deliciously fuckable, yet always filled with that strange dark pride, that incredible inner assurance. Like a tall young king he was—even when she began sharing him with her friends. At first it was a lark, a way of proving she didn’t care, and a means of attacking that frustrating, untouchable pride of his that drove her crazy.
    When she’d make a date for him, he’d given her one of his cool dark totally inscrutable looks, and said, “Where and when?” Never who, because the who didn’t matter.
    Until Idona. Twice as wealthy as Dinah and ten years younger, she’d wanted to keep Gus, had asked him to move in with her, promised him the moon, and a few million stars to match. Dinah pulled in a breath; even now that moment of truth paralyzed her. When she’d confronted Gus, accused him of disloyalty,