Stranded with the Billionaire by R. B. Fields

Author:R. B. Fields [Fields, R. B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pygmalion Publishing

Chapter 17

John

John’s head snapped back fast enough to give him whiplash. But Anne wasn’t looking at him anymore—staring at the flames as if she couldn’t watch his face while she said it. Or didn’t want to see something that might prove her ex right.

“I didn’t believe it until I called the medical examiner’s office,” she went on. “I don’t trust a word out of Charles’s mouth, for obvious reasons. It took a little convincing with the medical examiner, but because I’m your legal counsel… the head M.E. admitted that you were the one who told them to push the autopsy through. That you brought him a copy of a positive flu test to stick in the files. But I know your father wasn’t sick, at least not with the flu, and there’s no reason to fake that test unless…” She hissed a breath through clenched teeth, her words coming rapid-fire.

Good—he needed rapid-fire. He needed her to tell him everything before she changed her mind.

John forced out, “No reason to fake that test unless I poisoned him—that’s what you mean. Go ahead, don’t hold back now.”

Anne blinked but went on. “Right. Why else would you fake a flu test? Why else would you push to have the body released to the funeral home so soon? At first, I wondered if you were covering for someone else, but I didn’t see you as the…” She trailed off.

But Anne didn’t have to finish that sentence. “Fixer—you didn’t see me as the fixer. I’m the follower. If I’m covering something up, I’m the guilty one.” The loser.

She watched the flames, still refusing to meet his eyes. “Desmond started poking into your father’s death the week after the funeral. He wouldn’t have done that if he were guilty. Finn loved the guy—or seemed to. Archer wasn’t in town…” She shrugged.

Of course, she hadn’t considered Sabrina. No one in their right mind would assume a successful heart surgeon, conspicuously absent from all business dealings, would have a reason to murder him.

“Desmond probably just wanted to be sure,” John said slowly. “He was upset about the will. If Dad was murdered by the Duffys, it would have solved all of our problems.” That much was true.

Hopefully, that was the entire story from Desmond’s perspective. His brother had told him that he believed someone had poisoned their father, that they’d had gotten impatient and killed him the night he finally died, though he’d never accused John. But if one of them had to take the fall… it should be him. After all, he was the follower. The loser.

But Anne hadn’t come to this conclusion on her own. Charles had told her. And if anyone on the O’Connor side went down for this, they’d lose the company—that’s what Charles was banking on. That was his mission.

He watched the flames flicker on her pale cheek—orange, yellow, orange. “That’s what you talked to Charles about at breakfast,” he said slowly. “He found out about the medical examiner, and he told you that I killed my dad over bacon and eggs?”

“That conversation wasn’t only about you.

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