Read Online Silent Partner by Stephen Frey - Free Book Online Page B

nine years ago. Lawrence had brought it all screaming back to her. “What?”
    “Did he lay the Jake Lawrence charm on you?” Tucker wanted to know.
    She could still feel Lawrence’s hot breath as he’d leaned forward to kiss her. Still remember that look in his dark, dead eyes. The touch of his fingers running up her inner thigh. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Try to get you to have a little drink with him, then move in?”
    She smelled whiskey on Tucker’s breath as he turned in the saddle. Hopefully, the flask was still relatively full. He seemed steady enough, and it wasn’t as if she had any other way of getting down the mountain. “I told you, John,” she said, “it was a business meeting.”
    “Excuse me for living. I just know how Lawrence is.” Tucker pushed the brim of his hat back as they neared the point where the trail turned tricky. “He’s seduced other pretty young things in less time than it took him to get you into and out of that cabin.”
    “I thought you told me last night you respected Mr. Lawrence’s desire to protect his privacy.”
    “So?”
    “So here you are talking about his sexual exploits with an outsider.”
    “Ah, the hell with him,” Tucker grumbled after a long pause. “Maybe this is the whiskey talking, and maybe I’ll be sorry I said anything tomorrow, but Jake Lawrence can be a real prick.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “He makes a lot of promises, but he’ll never be mistaken for a postman.”
    “I don’t—”
    “He doesn’t deliver,” Tucker said, clarifying.
    “Oh.” Angela glanced down into the canyon to her left. “What kind of promises does he make?”
    “Money, jobs, relationships. He does his research, finds the opportunity or the weakness, then makes the appropriate pledge.” Tucker laughed harshly. “I’ve heard it all on this trail. Young women can be amazingly naive.”
    “How do you know he doesn’t deliver?”
    “I have my ways.”
    Angela hesitated. “Mr. Lawrence asked me to work on a project with him. I believe you can tell a great deal about how a person will conduct themselves in business by the way they lead their personal lives.”
    “You aren’t going to like what you hear.”
    “Explain what you—Oh, God!” She wrapped her arms around Tucker’s waist as the stallion slid unexpectedly on a patch of ice, then reared up on its hind legs. She pressed her face into Tucker’s jacket and shut her eyes tightly. “John!”
    “Whoa!” Tucker called, making a soothing, clicking sound with his tongue and cheek. “Steady, boy!” The horse dropped its hooves back to the snow, then snorted loudly and sidled quickly to the left, within a few feet of the cliff. Immediately Tucker kicked hard with his left heel, pulled the right rein toward the rock face and the horse bolted away from danger. When they had stopped short beside the rock face, Tucker reached into his jacket, leaned forward in the stirrups, and fed the animal a carrot. “That’s a good boy,” he said calmly, patting the stallion’s neck as it chomped loudly on the snack. “What a ride, huh, Angela? Like a roller coaster, but better.”
    Tucker wasn’t even fazed, Angela realized. They’d come a few inches from certain death, and for him it was as if nothing had happened.
    “You okay?”
    “Yeah, sure,” she gasped.
    Tucker gently urged the horse ahead when it had finished the carrot. “What were you asking me about?”
    She took a deep breath to calm herself. Her heart was still pounding. “How do you know Jake Lawrence doesn’t deliver on his promises?” she asked again.
    “Oh, that’s right,” he remembered, nodding. “Simple. I checked. There was this one girl who told me on the ride back to the lodge all about how Mr. Lawrence was going to take care of her sick mother. Lawrence convinced her of that while the two of them were sitting on the cabin’s couch in front of a fire drinking Irish coffees. She was still pretty drunk