Silver Master Read Free Page A

pattern that indicated that she possessed some sort of fairly strong talent.
    Mentally Celinda ticked off the reasons why a police detective and a man who worked in the security business might want to speak to her. It was a very short list. She suddenly went cold. The specter of fear that had become her constant companion during the past four months suddenly leaped from the shadows and wrapped icy fingers around her heart.
    “Has something happened to someone in my family?” she whispered, her pulse skittering wildly.
    “No.” Alice Martinez gave her a quick, unexpectedly reassuring smile. “This doesn’t involve any of your relatives.”
    “Thank heavens.” The relief was so overwhelming she sagged a little against the desk. “For a minute there I was afraid…” She let the sentence trail off.
    Davis’s eyes narrowed ever so faintly at the corners. She knew he had taken note of that brief moment of panic.
    “Detective Martinez and I are cooperating in an investigation,” he said quietly.
    She gave him a polite smile while she took stock. For years she’d known exactly what qualities she wanted in her dream man. She was a professional matchmaker, after all; she knew what to look for in a mate. The list was long and detailed: kindness, intelligence, loyalty, a strong sense of responsibility, the ability to make a commitment and stick to it, a capacity for love, the right attitudes toward money, children, and family obligations, etc., etc.
    But until now she had never had a visual image of Mr. Perfect.
    Her ideal man, it turned out, had hair as dark as a midnight sky and eyes of an unusual shade of silvery gray. His face was all hard edges and dangerously interesting planes and angles. He was of average height, but beneath the jacket of the dark business suit there was a lot of sleek muscle, especially in his shoulders.
    It dawned on her that he had not taken his seat again. Instead, he stood quietly in that centered, controlled manner that seemed to characterize everything about him.
    “As Detective Martinez told you, I’m with Oakes Security.” He handed her a card.
    She glanced down and read the fine print. “It says here that you’re not exactly with Oakes Security. You’re the president and CEO.”
    His mouth curved faintly at one corner. “Yeah, that, too. Oakes is a private consulting firm. We specialize in corporate security.”
    “I see.” She was more mystified than ever. Nevertheless, she made an effort to appear intelligent. “Corporate security. That would be the expensive version of a private investigator?”
    “The very expensive version,” he agreed neutrally. “In the same way that a matrimonial consultant is a real pricey version of what most people call a matchmaker.”
    Okay, no mistaking the icy sarcasm in that comment.
    She smiled coolly. “Pricey is right. But we only do Covenant Marriages here at Promises, Inc. The way we look at it, the stakes are high, so our fees should be, too.”
    The marriage laws had been relaxed slightly in the past two centuries, but they were still extremely stringent. There was a lot of talk about loosening them up, but everyone knew that, realistically speaking, that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.
    The rigid rules governing marriage had made sense two centuries ago when the colonists had found themselves marooned on Harmony. Survival had been the first and most important objective. The philosophers, social scientists, and political leaders who had framed the new Constitution had known that the key to keeping the fragile flame of civilization alive was the family unit. They had, therefore, cemented the sanctity of marriage in both law and tradition, ensuring that families remained intact regardless of the price that had to be paid.
    The laws applied to everyone. Society put just as much pressure on gay people to form Covenant bonds with their partners as it did on heterosexuals.
    The institution of the Covenant Marriage was a contract that,