“Did the two of you not talk about it? Did you not tell him how you felt?”
Margo scowled. Did Striker have a side gig as a relationship counselor or something? “Of course I told him how I felt, but he figured since I had a man making a six-figure salary that I should be smiling all over the place.”
“The two of you were together for almost a year. Yet you never told him about your wealth. Why?”
Margo released a long, dramatic sigh. “Our relationship was not based on money but on mutual respect for each other.” Or so she’d thought. “The issue never came up. He knew I had an uncle living in Virginia and that my parents were deceased. That was all he needed to know.”
Striker disagreed. There was no way he would ever be seriously involved with a woman for almost a year without knowing everything there was about her. Both mentally and physically. Especially a woman like Margo Connelly. And she was not a woman a man could neglect. What was wrong with Dylan? What had he been smoking? “So he refused to change his ways and spend more time with you?”
She frowned at him. “Look, Striker, I wasn’t this needy person who required a man’s attention 24/7. However, I felt that if you’re claiming to be my boyfriend, the least you can do is spend time with me on occasion. After a while he didn’t even do that. He was too busy, going out of town or going to important dinners.”
“Why didn’t you go with him out of town or to these dinners?”
He could tell from the tilt of her chin that his question had hit a nerve. “I was never asked.”
He stared at her. A part of him knew it took a lot to make that type of admission. What woman would want to admit that the man in her life had neglected her? He felt the hand that was holding his cup of tea tighten. Scott Dylan was an asshole, just as he’d thought reading the tone of Dylan’s message on the card accompanying those flowers. What man in his right mind wouldn’t want a woman like Margo by his side, every chance he got? The answer to that question came easily. A man who had a chick on the side.
Striker wondered if Margo had even thought of that possibility. He couldn’t see her not doing so. She certainly didn’t come across as being the kind of woman a man could easily fool. Although she wasn’t saying, he had a strong feeling she suspected such a thing, which was probably the real reason she’d dumped the bastard. Emotions swelled within him that he wasn’t used to feeling. The thought of any man treating her so shabbily pissed him off. “So why keep those flowers he sent?” he asked.
“Why not? He paid for them out of that six-figure salary he liked boasting about. They were pretty and I saw no reason to take out my irritation about Scott on a beautiful arrangement of flowers.”
“He’s trying to get you back,” Striker said, wanting to reach out and touch her hair, push a wayward strand away from her face, but knowing he couldn’t do so.
“Yes. He got offended that I called it quits in the first place. He thought I should have been grateful for any amount of time I got to spend with him.”
She paused a moment and then added, “Scott knows my position. Before I left New York, he made a nuisance of himself. I guess no woman had broken things off with him before. He didn’t take that well and his ego got bruised. I had to threaten to go to the authorities if he kept it up.”
“Kept what up?”
“Making an ass of himself.”
“In what way?”
She shook her head. “Not important.”
He wondered why she wouldn’t say. Was it really not important as she claimed? What had the man done to make her threaten to go to the authorities? Had she ever confided in her uncle about it? For some reason, he doubted it.
“I have another question,” he said, finishing off the last of his tea and squashing the cup to toss in the trash bag.
“No more questions about Scott, Striker. As far as I’m concerned, he’s a closed subject.”
For her sake, he hoped so. Not caring at the moment that his thoughts were too territorial, he knew Scott Dylan was the last man he would want to see her with again. “Okay, no more Scott Dylan questions. This one is about you. How did you develop an interest in designing wedding gowns?”
Striker could tell from the smile that touched her lips that she had no qualms about answering that particular question.
“After my parents’ deaths, Uncle Frazier sent me to a school in London. A man named Apollo Colter was my bodyguard, and I got to know his wife, Joan, and his son and daughter, Paul and Arian. Joan was a seamstress and I would sit and watch her work. I knew before leaving London to return to the States that I wanted to be a fashion designer. Deciding to concentrate exclusively on wedding gowns came later when I helped out a college roommate.”
She smiled as if remembering the time. “Sharon was getting married the month after we graduated, and the woman she’d hired to design her gown became ill. So I stepped in. I had fun designing Sharon’s wedding gown, and it got rave reviews. Sharon’s father was a top executive on Wall Street and he bragged about my work. I got a job offer from a top clothing design firm in New York. I worked there for a couple years before deciding to go solo.”
“Why not open a shop somewhere instead of working out of your home? It’s not like you can’t afford it.”
She shrugged. “Uncle Frazier asked me the same thing,” she said quietly. “I often work odd hours when designing a wedding dress. Late nights and early mornings. I feel more comfortable working at my house than staying late anywhere else. When I’m through for the night, instead of getting in my car and driving home, all I have to do is go upstairs, shower and go to bed. I guess the ideal place would be a shop that also had living quarters attached.”
Striker was about to ask Margo another question, one specifically about her uncle’s girlfriend, when his phone rang. From the ringtone he knew it was Stonewall. “What’s up?”
Intense anger boiled up inside him. “Got it.” He didn’t even take the time to put his phone back in his pocket. Instead he tossed it on the console. Without looking over at her, he slid his car seat back up, started the ignition and said in a tense tone, “Buckle up, Margo.”
“What’s wrong, Striker?” she asked, quickly snapping on her seat belt.
He pulled out of the parking lot. “Just what I suspected. The real assassin is still out there and he’s struck again. Twice.”
The color drained from her face. “Twice?”
“Yes. He made a hit on another juror, as well as one of the prosecuting attorneys.”
Striker pulled into traffic, and when he came to a light, he glanced over at her. “You know what that means?”
He saw the tragic look in her eyes before she shook her head.
“That you’re going to be stuck with me until that bastard is caught.”
*
DR. RANDI FULLER watched the monitor. Her plane to South Carolina would take off in thirty minutes. She had returned home to Richmond from Charlottesville, staying just long enough to have a quick visit with her family, water her plants, gather up her mail and repack. Now she was on her way to Glendale Shores.
This would be one vacation she needed. She should have known better than to get involved with the Erickson case, given that Special Agent Tommy Felton was in charge of the investigation. She had hoped his attitude toward her had changed, but it hadn’t.
She was about to grab a candy bar when her cell phone rang. She pulled it out of her purse. “Dr. Fuller.”
“This is Chief Harkins, Dr. Fuller. You were right. We were holding the wrong man. The assassin struck again, less than an hour ago, killing two people. Both had been in the courtroom that day.”