After Glow by Jayne Castle

disaster.”
    “Forget that. Let’s get to the interesting stuff. Any of it true? Was the lovely Mrs. Tamara Wyatt London’s fiancee at one time?”
    Lydia cleared her throat. “Well, yes.”
    Melanie’s eyes rounded. “Oh, my.”
    “But the engagement didn’t end because Tamara got swept off her feet by Mercer Wyatt.” Lydia thumped the cover of the tabloid in disgust. “Good grief, he’s forty years older than she is.”
    “Still in great shape though, I hear,” Melanie said cheerfully. “At least he was until yesterday. Why did the engagement end?”
    “Emmett informed her just before the engagement party that he had accomplished his objectives for the reorganization of the Resonance Guild and planned to step down. He wanted to go into private consulting. That did not suit Tamara. She had other goals.”
    “Wanted to be Mrs. Guild Boss, huh?”
    “She sure did. As it happened good old Mercer Wyatt had recently been widowed and was apparently in the market for a new bride.” Lydia turned one hand, palm up. “Tamara ended the engagement.”
    Melanie drew up one bare knee and clasped her hands around it. The motion hiked her lacy skirt dangerously high on her thighs. “How did Emmett feel about being dumped?”
    “He had a very narrow escape and he knows it.”
    “It says in the paper that they were planning a Covenant Marriage. It would have been a legal and financial nightmare to get out of it once the vows had been spoken.” Melanie shook her head. “Wonder why they didn’t go for a standard Marriage of Convenience, first?”
    Lydia cranked back in the squeaky desk chair and swiveled slightly from side to side. “Emmett is a long-term planner, one of those types who sets goals and then does whatever it takes to accomplish them. He probably applied that management approach when he set out to marry Tamara.”
    “Well, you’ve got to admit, she does seem to be the perfect Guild boss wife. She’s not only beautiful, she’s stylish and smart. Heck, she’s an executive in her own right. Look how active she’s been on the boards of all those charities and social clubs this past year. She’s done more to promote a more modern, mainstream image for the Cadence Guild in the past year than anyone else has done since Jerrett Knox defeated Vincent Lee Vance.”
    “I know.” Lydia drummed her fingers on the top of her desk. She did not need to be reminded of the long list of Tamara Wyatt’s personal assets and accomplishments. “I’ve met her. She’s impressive but she would have been the wrong woman for Emmett. I’m pretty sure he knows that now.”
    “Of course he does,” Melanie said loyally. “It’s obvious that you are the right woman for him.”
    They both thought about that for a while.
    Melanie cleared her throat. “So, where was Emmett London in the early morning hours when Mercer Wyatt was getting shot in the back?”
    “The leader of Zane Hoyt’s Hunter-Scout troop asked him to help supervise the boys on a camping trip. They got back around two in the morning. By the time Emmett dropped the kids off at their various homes and got to his place it was three. Wyatt had just arrived in the emergency room.”
    “The paper says that Wyatt was shot sometime between two and three,” Melanie pointed out.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Sounds like Emmett might have a little trouble accounting for the time between dropping off the last Hunter-Scout and answering the phone call from the hospital.”
    Lydia leveled a finger at her. “Don’t even think of going there, Mel. At the most, we’re talking twenty minutes.”
    Melanie pursed her lips but refrained from pointing out that twenty minutes was long enough to murder someone.
    Lydia sighed. “Luckily, Detective Martinez seemed satisfied that Emmett was not a suspect. After all, it was Wyatt himself who appointed Emmett to take over on an interim basis. He wouldn’t have done that if he thought that Emmett had tried to murder him.”
    Melanie