Forever With You by Laurelin Paige

drop the card.
    With a hand on my chest, I talked myself down from my panic attack. Hudson had ordered the books from Celia and her design company—it was only natural that she’d stick her business card between the pages.
    Except the books were new. And the page that the card had marked had a quote highlighted in yellow: “She was always waiting, it seemed to be her forte.”
    Had Celia marked that quote? And had she meant it for me or for Hudson? And whoever the intended target was, what did she mean by it?
    “Good book?”
    I jumped at Hudson’s voice behind me. I’d been too absorbed in the book and Celia’s mark on it to hear him come in.
    He leaned down to kiss my neck. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
    “It’s not that. Look.” I showed him the card and held the book up for him. “I found this business card in this book—it’s one of the ones you got me. And this quote is highlighted.”
    I felt Hudson’s body heating with rage. He crumpled the card in his hand and threw it across the room. “Goddammit!”
    “What does it mean?”
    “Who knows?” He took a deep breath and reined in his fury. “You know what? Don’t even think about it. That’s what she wants. She wants it to mess with you.” He grabbed the book from me and took it with him to the kitchen. “Have you eaten?”
    “I waited for you. It’s in the warmer.” I sat quietly until he returned with our dinner plates. “You took her key away, right?”
    Hudson set our plates down. “She didn’t just leave that in your book now. This has to be from before. When she had the boxes delivered.” He disappeared again into the kitchen.
    That hadn’t been an answer to my question and his avoidance made me nervous. I waited until he came back, this time with a bottle of wine.
    “Hudson—her key?”
    “Yes. I took away her key.” He poured me a glass and then one for himself. He had his half finished before I’d even taken one sip. “The day after she made the delivery.”
    He hadn’t told me about seeing her then. But I’d seen Celia many times without telling him so I supposed it was fair.
    Instead of dwelling on why he’d never mentioned it, I thought about what else he’d said—that she must have put the note in the books before they’d been delivered. There were hundreds of books. How had I happened to find the one with the note? Unless there were more. “So there could be secret notes and messages in all of the books.”
    Hudson took another swallow of his wine—a swallow that finished off the glass. “I’ll replace them all.”
    “You don’t need to do that.” Truthfully, I was already planning to search them. Curiosity was pretty much my middle name, after all.
    Hudson refilled his drink. “I’ll do it anyway.”
    He had made up his mind and when he made up his mind, there was no arguing with him.
    I glanced at the clock on my phone. It was after eight. “You got home late. Does that mean you came up with ideas on how to deal with her?”
    Hudson didn’t look at me as he took a bite of his fish. “I have something in the works,” he said when he’d swallowed. “But I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.”
    “Um, yes, I do mind. This affects me and I want to know what’s going on.” If he thought he was doing this on his own, he had another think coming.
    “You know what you need to know. I’ve hired security, the new cameras are being installed at the club tomorrow, and I have some preliminary ideas to try to make Celia lose interest in her game.” His entire demeanor was dismissive.
    And my demeanor was getting pissed off. “Ideas that you aren’t going to share?”
    “No. I’m not.”
    I set my fork down, a little more forcefully than I’d intended. Or maybe exactly as forcefully as I’d intended. “Hudson—transparency, honesty—remember? Are you hiding something from me? Is it illegal?”
    “No. And no. And you said you trusted me.” He raised a brow.