Secrets Of The A-List Complete Collection, Episodes 1-12. Cat Schield

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СКАЧАТЬ in free fall. Splatting against the sidewalk was inevitable. Was it a mistake to ignore that intuition?

      “We’re all on edge right now. If you ask me, this is a time to stay the course and stick to what we know is right.”

      There was something in the way Rafe spoke that made her feel that she wasn’t quite seeing the entire picture. Rafe was the brother who listened to her. The guy who didn’t judge her for not being cut from the same dependable cloth as he and Luc were. So why wasn’t he listening now?

      “I want you to be happy,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. “I just think... Thom’s a great guy.”

      Thom was a great guy. Elana knew that. He just wasn’t necessarily the guy for her. She let out a small frown and shook her head slowly from side to side. “I think this whole thing’s just got me shaken up.”

      “We’re all worried about Dad—”

      “I don’t just mean Dad,” Elana interrupted. “I mean, of course, he’s right there at the top of my list. But what about all this other stuff? How can he have had this Fixer person running things, behind our backs?”

      “I’ve been thinking about that, too,” Rafe said softly. “It doesn’t seem like him to keep secrets.”

      “But he did. And big ones.”

      “Even Mom seemed blindsided,” Rafe agreed.

      “Poor Mom.” It was such a ludicrous description of the strong, fearsome Mariella Santiago-Marshall that they both laughed. It felt great to release steam. Elana put a hand on Rafe’s arm and shook her head, her eyes meeting his. “You know what I mean.”

      He sobered. Of course he did. “She worked so closely with Dad. How could he have kept this, even from her?”

      “I worked closely with him, too.” Elana winced. “I work closely with him. I think we should stick to present tense, don’t you?”

      He nodded, a sense of urgency pushing him to confront the issue rather than grammar. “And? Did you ever notice anything?”

      She bit down on her lower lip, the deep red lipstick cushioning against her teeth. “I don’t know.” She shrugged her slim shoulders, and a sea breeze rustled past, lifting a wisp of her dark hair over her shoulder. She pushed it back distractedly. “At the time, no, but now that I think about it?”

      “Like what?” Rafe’s breath caught in his throat.

      “He’s always really secretive about his office. I used to think it was just because he liked his privacy, but now? I don’t know.”

      “You don’t think it was because you sprayed his office with Bollinger after your high school graduation?”

      She laughed, because she knew it was expected of her, but Elana couldn’t stand being reminded of her past faults. All the many, many missteps she’d taken in her short life. She’d been drunk at the time, and it had seemed funny. But it had also been a long time ago. Elana wasn’t the only one who saw marrying Thom as a new start for her. She was certain that her family thought her irresponsible behavior would end the very second she said ‘I do.’

      “That was ages ago,” she said, trying not to sound as defensive as she felt. “And he didn’t like you going in there, either.”

      “No,” Rafe murmured, his eyes narrowing. “Dad was good at keeping me at a distance.”

      Elana nodded, sympathy squeezing out her own sense of hurt. “Okay, Luc then,” she muttered. “The whole family was kept out of his office, and we never questioned that.”

      “Because we trusted him,” Rafe said simply. “As did Mom.”

      “She must be freaking out,” Elana said with a shake of her dark head.

      “I have to believe this is all a misunderstanding,” Rafe said after a moment of quiet reflection had passed. “Dad’s a good guy. He loves us, loves this family. If he’s involved in business with the Fixer, he must have thought it was the right thing to do...”

      “So why keep him or her a secret? Even from Mom?”

      “I don’t know,” Rafe said. “Let’s just hope he wakes up soon so we can ask him.”

      Elana might not have been as academic as her siblings, but when it came to people, she had an innate talent to understand them. She pushed off the car and came to face Rafe. “No, Rafe. We have to find out what’s going on. Otherwise I think... I think we could be in danger.”

      Rafe laughed, until he realized she wasn’t joking. “Oh, come on, Elana! You’re making this out to be some b-grade MISSION IMPOSSIBLE spin-off.”

      “Don’t dismiss this,” she said softly. “I’ve been thinking about it all night.” When she wasn’t thinking about ending her engagement or being screwed senseless by Jarrod Jones, anyway. “Something about this is really off.”

      “No, it’s not. Dad had a car accident and we found out there’s something a little strange going on in his business. Something he’ll probably be able to explain away when he wakes up.”

      “What if it wasn’t an accident?”

      Rafe was very still. A thread of tension ran down his spine. Was it possible Elana was on to something?

      “What do you mean?”

      “Call it a hunch,” she said quietly. “But I think there’s way more going on here than we can see. And there’s one person I can think of who’ll be able to give us some damned answers.”

      Rafe lifted a single dark brow.

      “The Fixer,” she hissed impatiently. “Whoever the Fixer is, we need to find out. And we need to demand he or she tells us what happened.”

      “You say that like it’s going to be easy,” Rafe said. “But Dad was able to keep this person hidden from his own family—probably for years.”

      “But we weren’t looking before.” Elana lifted her head as the sound of tires crunching on gravel alerted them to Luc’s arrival. He pulled the car up just behind Rafe’s and opened his door. He flicked off the ignition, and Elana’s eyes winged together as she studied her oldest brother through the tinted windshield of the car.

      Luc Marshall was different from her and Rafe. He was the most like Harrison—determined, intelligent and ruthless when he needed to be. Was it possible that the Fixer was far closer than they’d imagined? She lifted her face to Rafe’s and saw the same speculation in his expression.

      “What’s going on?” Luc asked as he stepped out of the vehicle, his glance encompassing the both of them. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

      * * *

      The Polo Club sat perched on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. From the four-level building there were views in all directions—over the polo fields and then the ocean on one side, toward the mountains and forest on the other. It was one of their earliest acquisitions and it had always been special to Mariella for that reason.

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