Cuff Me by Lauren Layne

body.
    But not his mind.
    Raunchy sex. Jill Henley wanted hot, raunchy sex.
    There wasn’t enough cold air on the planet to cool his mind from
that
visual.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    A s far as leads went, a retired actress who lived three hours away from the scene of the crime wasn’t much to go on.
    But Jill and Vincent were officially out of suspects.
    Every last one of Lenora Birch’s current and former lovers either had alibis or lacked motivation.
    Jealous family members? None.
    Bitter friends? None.
    Disgruntled employees? None.
    The latest lead—and it was a weak one—was Holly Adams, an actress whose career had revved to life about the same time as Lenora’s fifty years earlier.
    But whereas Lenora’s career and reputation continued to grow over the years, Holly’s fizzled almost as quickly as it had taken off. Not because she’d lacked talent.
    But the combination of a couple bad movie choices plus more than a few cheating scandals, and Holly hadbeen toppled—no,
thrown
—off the America’s Sweetheart pedestal.
    Leaving Lenora with the spotlight all to herself.
    It wasn’t exactly a unique story, but according to Lenora’s sister, Holly Adams had blamed Lenora for her fall from grace.
    In addition, the two women had run into each other at a Broadway premiere just weeks before Lenora’s death, and the run-in had been icy.
    Which was why Jill and Vincent were driving out to Connecticut to figure out if Holly’s anger had shifted from icy to white hot and murderous.
    “I can’t believe we’re driving to the middle of nowhere on the ridiculous possibility that a seventy-two-year-old washed-up starlet made a three-hour trek into the city to push another starlet over a banister, then managed to get away without leaving a single clue,” Vincent grumbled.
    Jill ignored his griping, all of her attention focused on the map on her phone. “Turn right here. Right! Here!”
    He turned quickly with a curse.
    “Oh wait,” she muttered when the phone gave her a rerouting message.
    “Henley, I swear to God…”
    “It’s not my fault,” she shot back. “I get almost no signal out here. The GPS keeps losing track of where we are.”
    “It’s Connecticut, not Wyoming, how can it—”
    “There,” she said, her arm whipping out, bumping against his chest. “There’s a sign for the Holly Haven. That’s it.”
    Vincent pulled into the driveway and then slowed as they approached an enormous metal gate.
    “I thought you said she was a washed-up actress,” hesaid as he rolled down the window to dial the call box. “She’s apparently loaded.”
    “She’s had a couple of wealthy marriages,” Jill said, leaning forward to peer onto the property while Vincent announced them.
    The gate opened and Vincent drove forward on what seemed to be a private country club. The grass was perfectly manicured. The trees lining the driveway were evenly spaced.
    “How big is this property?” he asked. “I don’t even see a house—”
    And then they saw it.
    “That’s because it’s not a house,” Jill said, her voice just a little bit awed. “It’s like a French chateau.”
    “Yeah? You’ve been to a lot of those?” he asked as they both climbed out of the car, staring up at the enormous structure.
    She felt a little pang at his casual question. She hated reminders that she’d never left the country. Never left the continent.
    Never had anyone to travel with.
    She pushed the maudlin thought aside. She had Tom now. Maybe for their honeymoon…
    Vincent glanced up at the sky. “Henley, you did check the weather report before we left?”
    “Yeah, that’s the first thing I do when we go off to interview a murder suspect,” she said sarcastically. “Check the weather.”
    Then she too looked up at the sky and understood immediately what he meant. She may have grown up in Florida, but she’d lived in New York long enough to know what snow looked like.
    They exchanged a glance. “Let’s make this fast,” Vincent