Two Sides to Every Story (Love Spectrum Romance) Read Free

She looked at the rented furniture, cringing at the cost. She’d had no choice in that either. She couldn’t bring her own furniture. Her parents had to believe she was out of town. It was good to know that they would be taking care of her home while she was gone. Only her brother and her cousin would know where she really was. If she encountered the private investigator they’d hired, he wouldn’t know her. All he’d ever seen of her was her checks.
    Lucky for Angela, her parents always used the cell to reach her. Her job as a technical writer with Kline, Inc., which she could do at home, provided her with the means and the time to look for the mysterious woman who could alibi for her brother.
    She had a reason for undertaking the investigation herself. She didn’t believe the investigator was doing all that he could. Even as she thought it, Angela knew the man didn’t have the one piece of information that she possessed: a name. Even so, she still thought he could do more. And when she found the person she was after, she was personally going to fire the investigator. Until then he could keep looking. Besides, they were working different angles.
    Angela felt chilled and wrapped her arms around her body to stop a sudden tremor. She hoped that what she was doing would help her brother. Her plans did not include getting arrested by the cops before she even moved into the neighborhood. The possibility of her parents having grief over another child was definitely not on her agenda.
    She smoothed out the ticket she’d retrieved from her car. At least that gave her a chance to focus on something other than her extreme loneliness. She didn’t like lying to her parents about what she was doing, but she couldn’t tell them. They would be worried, and in the last two years they’d had enough of that to last them the rest of their lives.
    Angela thought about the cop who’d given the ticket to her. Something about the man niggled at her way down deep. She told herself it had nothing to do with his green eyes but she could see herself getting lost in them. She shuddered and shook that thought away. She wasn’t there to drown in a man’s eyes. She was there to find Teresa Cortez, the woman her brother said knew the truth.
    Still, thoughts of the green-eyed Hispanic pushed their way into her mind. She wondered how he’d shocked her and made her burn with just his touch.
    * * *
    Raphael did his job the same as he did every day, only now there was something just a little bit off-kilter. He found that he was on the alert for a speeder, and not just any speeder. He was looking for the woman who’d had such ice in her eyes when she’d glared at him that it had seemed to stop his heart.
    In the few minutes it had taken to issue her a citation he’d seen a lot that she’d more than likely wish he hadn’t, like the visitor pass on the passenger side of her car that told him she’d recently been to Statesville. Maybe that was the reason for her hostility, but he doubted it.
    Despite her anger he’d noticed her big beautiful brown eyes. Iced topaz , he thought. And the sound of her voice had been pleasant in spite of the sarcastic bite. Raphael bit his lip. His thoughts should not be going in this direction but he couldn’t help it. The woman had intrigued him; he wouldn’t deny it.
    For days all that he’d thought about was the way his skin had first tingled and then burned on touching her, and his godmother’s prediction. I shouldn’t be listening to Titi Nellie , Raphael thought. She’s just a foolish old woman. There is no way that a person’s hatred could stop your heart .
    Yet his had stopped for a moment.
    And it made him wonder.
    Raphael laughed at his foolishness. There was definitely no way that love could restart it. But for the first time in his life Raphael was wondering if he’d been right to shun the thought of loving someone.
    Why was he thinking of these things? He didn’t want a woman in his life; his