Read Online Say You Need Me by Kayla Perrin - Free Book Online Page B

had him in her husband’s bed . Surely, if she did that, her husband would kick her out in ten seconds flat, cut her off from the lifestyle to which she’d become accustomed— and cut her out of the will.
    No, Tamara was too smart to let that happen.
    But naturally, she was pissed. And while Cecil no longer worried about her snitching on him, he did missthe sex. And he got the impression that Tamara wasn’t as upset about him stealing her jewelry as she was about the fact that he obviously didn’t care about her the way she had hoped.
    Sylvia, at least, had been an easy, less complicated target. She’d liked him, but she hadn’t gotten possessive the way Tamara had. As far as he knew, she was fairly happily married to a man a few years older than her. But he’d been having affairs for the last ten years of their nearly thirty-year marriage, and Sylvia had decided it was payback time.
    Who better than a man nineteen years her junior?
    Sylvia hadn’t missed the jewelry Cecil had taken from her. So after a month, he’d taken more. He’d scored big with Sylvia; her jewelry had been worth over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The only downside to the whole scam was that Eddie took fifty percent of everything Cecil brought him. That was his cut, he’d told Cecil, take it or leave it. It didn’t quite seem fair, considering Cecil was the one putting himself at risk to get the jewelry, but Eddie was adamant.
    There wasn’t much Cecil could have done at that point besides accept Eddie’s terms. Eddie was the one with the connections to sell the jewelry and have the fakes made, so Cecil needed him. Fifty percent of a big chunk of change was better than fifty percent of nothing.
    But now he was in deep shit. A couple months after being with her, Jan, another woman he’d been involved with, had learned that her expensive jewelry had been replaced with fakes. With Jan, Cecil had tried a different approach, a plan he’d thought was foolproof. After complimenting Jan’s jewelry and casually asking her howmuch it was worth, she’d told him she didn’t know; her husband, who was currently in jail, had never told her.
    Cecil had then given her a line of bull about having a friend who was a jeweler, and offered to have her jewelry appraised. Because Jan didn’t know the value of the pieces, she’d agreed to Cecil’s suggestion. And she hadn’t questioned him when he’d returned the jewelry. Another successful hit.
    Jan hadn’t been like the others, though. She didn’t want to continue seeing him once her husband, Rex, was out of jail. She’d wanted him only to keep her warm at night until her husband could once again. Which suited Cecil fine—given the fact that he’d gotten what he truly wanted from her.
    So no one was more surprised to hear from Jan weeks after her husband had gotten out of the pen than Cecil. Jan had called him, quite worried and distraught. She asked what he’d done to her jewelry. Cecil had played dumb. Jan had gone on to explain that Rex had suspected something was wrong when he’d noticed the diamonds in her tennis bracelet were a little too shiny. So Jan had told him that she’d had a friend appraise it, but Rex had been immediately suspicious. He’d had all her jewelry checked out and learned that most of the pieces were fakes.
    Rex wasn’t buying the “friend” line, and ultimately, Jan had admitted to her husband that she’d gotten involved with another guy while he’d been in prison.
    “You did what ? Cecil had asked, horrified.
    “I had to tell him, Cece. He knew anyway.”
    Cecil panicked. “Does he know who I am?”
    “I told him everything. It was the only way he would forgive me. God, I’ve never seen him so upset. Except forthat time he went after that guy who made a pass at me with a tire iron. Which is what landed him in jail…”
    Cecil swallowed—hard. Great. This was just great.
    “Listen, Cece, I’m sure he’ll get over the affair—as long as you