Read Online A Simple Twist of Fate by Helenkay Dimon - Free Book Online Page A

Callen broke through the quiet. He twisted off the lid to his water bottle and tipped it in her direction in a silent salute. “You’re growing on me.”
    Her balled fists unclenched. “Right back atcha, big guy.”
    And like that, the tension pounding through the walls seeped out of the room. Whatever had been building and twisting and sucking the air right out of the kitchen downshifted to nothing.
    Yeah, enough drama
. “What did you find out on this search?” Beck asked.
    “Oh, right. I’m the bad one for investigating.” Sophie glared at both of them before tugging on the end of the pretzel bag and dragging it toward her. “Funny how you all come running when you want the information I collect.”
    Beck mentally grabbed for his last ties to his control. “Feel free to say ‘I told you so’ later but keep talking.”
    She grabbed a handful of pretzels and twirled one around in her palm as she talked. “On the living stuff? Tom really is Sophie’s landlord. You didn’t notice he’s, like, twenty years older than she is?”
    In his work, Beck had seen fifteen-year-old girls married to sixty-something perverts. Nothing shocked him, certainly not a few-decades age difference. “So?”
    Callen’s narrowed gaze suggested the importance didn’t ring true for him either. “I’m guessing Leah thinks that means something.”
    With a perfectly executed men-are-so-stupid eye roll, Leah munched on a pretzel. It took her forever to swallow, but when she did . . . “There’s no romance. Tom is a really good guy. I’ve known him for a long time. He moved out of Sweetwater for a few years, but now he’s back.”
    Beck swore under his breath. “Convenient.”
    “I’ve never heard a bad thing, not even from his ex-wife.”
    Something about the addition of “ex” had a ball of anxiety colliding with Beck’s lungs. “Ex?”
    Leah smiled. “I saw Tom and Sophie together a few weeks ago and watched them and—”
    “Do I even want to know why?” Callen asked.
    Leah pointed at both of them, moving her finger between Callen and Beck. “No, you don’t. But remember the time I’m describing, when I was following her, it came before I moved in here and around the time Declan and I agreed we were in a committed relationship.”
    Callen’s water bottle stopped halfway to his mouth. “Does Declan call it that?”
    “The committed thing?” She wiggled her eyebrows. “No, he prefers to use naughty words that would make Beck blush.”
    “I doubt that.” Beck thought about shooting Leah a scowl of his own. For whatever reason, despite the degrees and job traveling around the country, his family still saw him as the baby. Sheltered and naïve. Forget that he was a grown man.
    The treatment totally pissed him off.
    “My point is Tom treats Sophie like a family member.” Leah closed one eye as if weighing the possibility. “Hell, they could be related. I really didn’t find out much about Sophie and stopped before I did any real in-depth digging, because Declan asked me to, and Beck was really clear about watching her from a distance but giving her space to come to us, or whatever he argued. Besides, as Declan pointed out, I have better things to occupy my time now.”
    “Like him.” Callen threw a pretzel in the air and caught it in his mouth. After a few bites, he turned to Beck again. “Feel better now that you know all that?”
    Beck shrugged, tried to play it off like he really didn’t care. Not that he knew all that much new anyway. “None of it matters to me. I just wondered.”
    He cut off the conversation because it seemed safer. In his fantasies Sophie was available and hot and all over him. If this Tom guy meant something to her the fantasy would fizzle and after a month of refining it, Beck wasn’t ready to let it go.
    “Sure.” Callen drew the word out to ten syllables. “Stick with that because it’s so believable.”
    Leah jumped in before Beck could tell Callen what he should stick.