Read Online Devilish - A Demon Stepbrother Romance by Michaela Adams - Free Book Online

of the house. I could run it with my eyes closed.
     
    I looked at the large overhanging trees. It was beautiful in the fall.
     
    So what did last night mean?
     
    Harrison Dell had certainly looked shocked. He had actually been the only one that had looked shocked. That seemed normal and natural. Seeing a supposedly dead girl walk into a dinner—an agog expression would not only be appropriate, it would be expected.
     
    But then why hadn’t he approached me? Why hadn’t he said something? He had been dad’s closest business competitor. Of all people, I would’ve expected him to say something first.
     
    And yet he hadn’t.
     
    T.J. Mackson had literally slept through the whole dinner while his wife perfected her various looks of utter boredom throughout the evening. Although I wouldn’t rule him out of suspicion, it was looking less and less likely he would be the culprit. Mackson was done.
     
    He had given up a long time ago on his sons and since then, all he had wanted to do was keep the status quo of his company. The only reason he had joined the mining alliance was because he realized to not join it would hurt his profits. And that was something he could not abide.
     
    That left Ron Lawson, the oddest and most curious one of them all. I breathed in deeply as I headed into my fourth mile. I quickly spared a thought for what Liam was up to. When I had told him I was going on a run, he seemed perplexed by the idea.
     
    “Is this some kind of breakdown you are having?” he asked, leaning a hip on dad’s office desk.
     
    “Because I want to run?” I asked, a little amused.
     
    “If you’re losing your nerve again—”
     
    “I’m not losing my nerve!” I said, irritated and losing all initial humor. “It’s exercise!”
     
    Liam furrowed his brow as he looked me up and down in my running clothes, tight and outlining every line of my body. “But you’re not fat,” he said flatly.
     
    I gave a sigh. “Exercise is for everyone, fat or skinny, short or tall.”
     
    And with that, I had turned around and left, leaving the stupid demon to figure out the importance of good cardio.
     
    I shook my head and returned to the matter at hand as I ducked under a low hanging branch.
     
    Lawson had seemed nearly furious at seeing her at the dinner. He hadn’t even been able to meet her gaze. He had instead glared down at his place settings, furiously turning red as he grumbled to himself in some kind of angry diatribe.
     
    Was he angry that his plan to murder me had failed? I would think Lawson would be smart enough to know that if that was the case, he would have disguised his disappointment a little better than he did. Even his wife, with whom he had a frosty relationship with for decades now, had noticed his peculiar behavior.
     
    Or maybe he was just upset that with my return, control over Madewell Ltd had slipped through his grubby fingers? But his anger then seemed disproportionate to the reason. At this level of business, everyone had lost a contract or a client at some point. Everyone had seen their competitor have a downward slip that maybe even came close to wiping them out. We had all had our moments of hopes and disappointments. Raging like Lawson had last night was an unusual reaction to what was essentially just a business upset.
     
    And of course none of it explained why he hadn’t come to speak to her last night.
     
    I breathed evenly as I felt my feet hit the trail in solid rhythmic steps. Clearly, Lawson was the most suspicious character out of the three men. But even with the financial gains that could be had by offing the Madewell family, I just couldn’t imagine Ron Lawson plotting murder. It just seemed too beyond the pale for the man. Sure, he was a ruthless businessman. But a murderer as well?
     
    But then again, it’s not as if I knew the man on a personal level. Who knows? Perhaps he really did have it in him to kill.
     
    As I rounded the corner of the east side of the