Read Online Liar's Moon by Heather Graham - Free Book Online Page A

down at her so intently then, searching out her eyes, and she felt again that he was desperately trying to read her mind. Why?
    But then he pulled away with dry skepticism, twisting his jaw, shaking his head. “You play it my way, first, Tracy. We’ll see where we go from there.”
    “That’s not f—”
    “Fair. Maybe not. But that’s the way it’s going to be. My way or not at all, for the moment. So what’s it going to be, Tracy?”
    She stepped back, frustrated, growing angry again. She crossed her arms over her chest and stubbornly narrowed her eyes at him.
    “Why was it so important for you to know where I went after—when-—after—”
    He arched a brow with slow, bitter amusement. “After you seduced me to get to your father?”
    “Why was it important to know where I went?” she persisted.
    “What happened between you and your family, Tracy? Why don’t they know where you are? Why was it so easy for your mother to believe that you had been living with me?”
    “That’s none of your business.”
    “I think that it is.”
    “Why?”
    He smiled and turned around.
    “Leif!”
    At his door he turned back to her. “Maybe none of it is important at all, Tracy. I don’t know yet. But you’ll never find out if you don’t play things my way.”
    She locked her jaw tightly and stared at him.
    “What’s it going to be, Tracy? Are you going to move in with me for our game of charades?”
    She wasn’t sure that she could do it. She would probably reach his house and break down screaming on the lawn, unable to go inside.
    “Tracy?”
    “All right,” she said coolly.
    “Good.”
    His door started to close; he came back around the corner, smiling sardonically.
    “Just remember, Tracy—you’ve got to make it look good. Don’t throw food at me in front of the others, huh? But then, like Jamie said, it should be easy. After all, you’ve already slept with me.”
    The door closed then. Her fingers closed around the coffeepot—and it was all she could do to keep herself from throwing it against the door.
    She concentrated and loosened her fingers. She had to learn to control herself! She had just agreed to go back to the scene of both her sweetest and most bitter memories.
    To find a murderer, she warned herself. The murderer who had taken her father’s life.
    She shivered suddenly, acutely aware that there was danger involved. In many, many ways.

 
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
    F rom the wings of the concert hall, the sound of the music was so loud that it was almost deafening, yet Tracy was glad that she had come. It was wonderful to watch Jamie, yet it was painful, too. Certain inflections, certain words were so like his father’s. Their father’s.
    But Jamie was his own man; he was singing his own tunes and those that Leif had bought from her. And he was doing them well. He not only had musical ability—a nice husky tenor—but a definite showmanship that would take him far.
    “The kid is great!”
    Sam Nagel shouted the words in her ear, and she turned to grin out her agreement, then paused, studying Sam. Her first instinct was one of warmth—Sam, the oldest Limelight at forty-four, was as bald as a buzzard, husky as a teddy bear, and adorned as he had been forever with a huge gold hoop earring in one ear. She’d always liked Sam—he had bright blue eyes and was quite handsome in his unique way, easily prone to good-natured affability and prone to giving lots and lots of hugs. Right before her father had died, she had seen Sam when he was with Jesse and they had all worked together on Jesse’s last album. She really liked Sam.
    Except now she wasn’t able to look at anyone without silently demanding, Did you kill my father?
    “Fabulous,” Tiger stated then, giving Tracy a quick hu g. “ Tiger ” was really Jim Smith. Maybe the simplicity of Jim Smith had caused him to adopt the nickname years ago—or maybe it was because he had a natural platinum streak in his dusty-blond