Scandal in Copper Lake (26 page)

Authors: Marilyn Pappano

BOOK: Scandal in Copper Lake

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ISBN: 978-1-4268-2798-3

SCANDAL IN COPPER LAKE

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Table of Contents

Books by Marilyn Pappano

Chapter 1Anamaria Duquesne slowed to a stop at the intersection and gazed up at the street sign. When Mama Odette had told her she would be living on Easy Street in Copper Lake, Georgia, she’d taken the words for symbolism. Mama Odette liked symbolism.But her grandmother hadn’t been striving for some deeper meaning. The street really was named Easy, though it was clearly a place where some hard living went on. For every streetlamp that glowed in the night, another two were burned out. The street was narrow and lacked shoulders but dipped into ditches that filled with water when it rained. Trees and bushes grew thick, and grass was sparse. The ten houses she passed before reaching the end of the street hadn’t seen a new coat of paint in her lifetime. The cars were old, and a couple of scroungy-looking dogs stretched to the end of their chains to watch as she pulled into the last driveway.She sat for a moment, studying the scene in the headlights’ beams. There was only one tree in the fr

Chapter 1

Chapter 2Much of Copper Lake’s downtown area showed its two-hundred-year-old roots: red bricks softened to a rosy hue, dimpled glass, wood glowing with a well-deserved patina. At the heart was the square, manicured grass bordered with flowers, war monuments and walkways leading to and from the bandstand that anchored the park.Everywhere Anamaria looked, she saw beauty, prosperity…and the Calloway name—law offices, a construction company, doctors’ and dentists’ offices, investment and accounting firms, retail shops. Robbie Calloway’s office was on River Road, the building only a few years old but built to blend in with its vintage neighbors.Nice space for a man who thought ten hours a week in the office just fine. She worked sixty hours a week or more and would never own a place like that or a car like his. But she knew all too well that money didn’t buy happiness and neither did things. People were the only thing that mattered, and all the money in the world couldn’t buy the good ones.

Chapter 2

Chapter 3Anamaria couldn’t stop the laughter that bubbled free. “Not yet. But there’s still time.” Mimicking Robbie, she waved one hand lazily at the empty chair. “Please join us, Detective.”This time he did so, swinging the chair around to straddle it. “You can call me Tommy.”He was about Robbie’s age, an inch or two shorter and probably twenty pounds heavier, all muscle. Black hair, dark eyes, olive-skinned, with a stubble of beard on his jaw that gave him a slightly disreputable look. He didn’t need the badge or the pistol on his belt for his air of authority; he came by it naturally.The sorrow hovering around him, though, wasn’t natural. A new hurt having to do with Ellie Chase, an old one connected to his mother. Anamaria couldn’t tell if Mrs. Maricci was dead; she wasn’t sure Tommy knew himself. But wherever she was, in this life or the next, she wasn’t here and hadn’t been for a very long time.“So you’re in the psychic business,” Tommy said.“And let me guess—you’re in the skepti

Chapter 3

Chapter 4In his job, Robbie made a lot of decisions based on whatever sketchy information he had: whether a client was being truthful, whether he could create reasonable doubt in a jury’s minds, whether he could trust the story a witness was telling him. Instinct said Anamaria wasn’t being entirely truthful.But he didn’t know whether it was real instinct or if, as she’d said, he’d come expecting the worst of her. He was a lawyer. He’d seen the worst of a lot of people. He’d come by his distrust honestly.Truthfully, though, it didn’t matter whether he believed her. Distrust alone wasn’t going to keep him away from her. It wasn’t going to keep him out of her bed.She was leaning against the kitchen counter, hands resting on the chipped laminated top. She could go to church or appear in court in that outfit, but it still struck him as damn sexy. The skirt was neither tight nor short, but it made him focus all too much on the curves underneath it—the flat belly, the rounded hips, the long m