Negotiation: Daddy P.I. 0.5 by E Frost (self help books to read .TXT) 📕

I shake myself out of my thoughts. I have a baby girl I can do any filthy thing I want to now. She’ll be with me in less than ten hours. I can wrap her in my arms and cuddle her and take all the pain that I can’t take from the woman sitting across from me. With Reggie Black, I have to be cool and professional.

I flip open my Moleskine notebook to a fresh page, uncap my pen, and set them on the coffee table between us. “Mrs. Black, I’m very sorry for your loss.”

She puts the bottle down on the table, crosses her legs and clasps her hands around her knees. I can always tell a woman’s age by her hands, and Mrs. Black’s hands are slender and smooth, the blue veins that will be prominent in another decade still buried under a layer of tanned, taut skin. Early thirties. Twenty years younger than her husband.

“My lawyer advised me not to come today,” she says. “Are you recording this?”

“No. I’d have to tell you if I was. But I’d like to make notes, if I may?” I pat the open notebook.

Her bloodshot eyes flick to it; she nods. “You said in your email that you didn’t believe it was food-poisoning. You said you want to find out what really happened to my husband. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It’s what I do,” I say. “I’d like you to help me, but if you’d prefer not to talk about recent events, I understand. If all you can give me is background, that would help, too.”

She lifts her chin so the cords in her throat stand out against her gilded skin. “My husband went on what I thought was a routine business trip to Mexico. He came back Sunday afternoon two weeks ago. We were supposed to meet friends for cocktails and dinner at eight, but by seven he asked me to cancel because he said he felt terrible. He went upstairs. I heard him being sick. By the time I went upstairs with the antacids, he was lying on the bathroom floor without a pulse.” She takes a deep breath and releases it. “That’s what happened.”

Most of that’s in the reports the cruise line provided me. She omitted that she tried to resuscitate him for fifteen minutes before she called an ambulance. Thinking of her terror as she pushed on her husband’s chest and tried to force air into his unmoving lungs for fifteen minutes hurts so badly that my stomach cramps around the breakfast I just ate. But her pain’s not material to my investigation, so I just nod, keeping my eyes on her face, my gaze gentle.

“Other than vomiting, did he complain of anything else?” I ask.

“A headache. He didn’t say he had chest pains or I’d have taken him straight to the ER. Bill had a minor heart attack six years ago. I wouldn’t have taken any chest pain lightly. He knew that.”

Which is probably why he didn’t say anything about it. All of the other victims reported chest pains, profuse sweating, and a racing pulse along with the headache and nausea. “Had he had food poisoning before? Was he allergic to anything?”

She shakes her head. “Not that I knew of.”

“What about his lifestyle? Did he exercise? Drink? Smoke?”

She arches a well-groomed brow many shades darker than her hair. “I think you know more about his lifestyle than I do.”

I nod and clasp my hands between my knees, hoping to look non-threatening. “I’m sorry you found out this way. It must have been a shock.”

“You could say that.” She stops staring me down, picks up the water, and takes another sip to steady herself. “I mean, I’ve read Fifty Shades like everyone else, but I had no idea my own husband was into . . . what do you call it?”

“Kink.”

“Kink? Like a bent cord?”

“Yes.”

She shakes her head. “And that’s what this cruise was all about, right? Kink . . . kinky sex?”

“Yes.”

“God, I had no idea.” Her soft, red mouth twists bitterly. “I feel like I’ve lost Bill twice over. How could I have been married to the man for nine years and not known about this?”

I spread my hands. “Many people feel they need to hide it. Fifty Shades aside, kink’s not widely accepted. Maybe he worried it would have hurt his marriage to you, or his career, or his friendships. There are lots of reasons.”

“Are you?” She presses her lips together before continuing. “Are you part of this lifestyle, Mr. Logan?”

“Yes,” I say simply.

A hint of color rises to her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I had no business asking that. I’m just so angry. At everyone, and everything, associated with Bill’s death. At this lifestyle of his. But I know you didn’t have anything to do with it. I’m sorry . . . I’m taking it out on you.”

“No problem.” I accept her apology the way I’d accept a bottom’s who’d misbehaved. Only I’m not going to be able to spank Reggie Black into forgiveness, no matter how badly she needs it. “Going back to your husband’s habits, did he exercise? Drink? Smoke?”

She shrugs. “He golfed occasionally. He wasn’t really much for exercise, and I nagged him about his weight, I’ll admit. I tried to get him into low calorie beer.” She gives me a fragile, broken smile. “He called it horse piss. He liked his craft beers, and his gin. But he wasn’t really a big drinker. A couple of beers a week and a few gin and tonics on the weekend. He never smoked cigarettes . . . well, he never smoked that I knew of. I guess he could have been doing two packs a day, for all I know.”

My chest clenches, hearing her doubting everything about the man she was married to.

“Mrs. Black, can I offer you a word of advice?”

Which she’ll probably ignore, but her glaring, grating pain makes me ask anyway.

She frowns at me, but she nods.

“Finding out a secret about a loved one can be painful,” I say.