“It was a lack of passion.” He slid his hand toward her. “You know why.”

She pulled back, putting as much room between them as the chairs and table would allow. “Don’t.”

He stared at her for a few charged seconds of silence before nodding. “Then tell me what you had on him. If it wasn’t whatever he was doing with the business accounts, what was it?”

Terrible secrets that would result in mutually assured destruction and epic collateral damage. In other words, nothing she could say out loud or divulge even to Liam. “I honestly didn’t know about the money.”

His mood shifted again. “He’s dead, Jessa.”

“I’m aware.” Just hearing the word started that hollow sensation in her stomach again. Money problems. Asshole. Bad divorce. It all mattered, but it didn’t change the fact she’d married him, hoping for, and dreaming about, a very different ending.

“I won’t judge,” Liam said.

She really looked at him then. Searched his face. Watched his hands. Did he know? But he couldn’t know. There was no way. No matter what that annoying reporter said.

The secrets she harbored needed to stay buried with Baines.

She forced a smile. “Maybe someday.”

Chapter Twenty-One
Gabby

Spending all day looking at financial documents on Saturday made Gabby obsess the next day about what she didn’t know. By the time she got to Monday, she needed to investigate. The word sounded silly even in her head. What she really wanted to do was snoop around Baines’s house in search of answers. What he’d done with the money, why and how he’d really died . . . and who was in that room with her when she lived her worst moment.

That all sounded good in theory, but she’d forgotten about the crime scene tape at his front door. Getting in was easy enough since she had a key and could go around the back of the house, out of sight of nosy neighbors and without having to disturb the yellow tape. Walking inside—crossing the threshold—proved almost impossible.

She forced her legs to move and stepped into the kitchen. She could smell him even in here. The peppery scent of his soap. Weeks had passed, and Liam had paid a special crew to come in and clean up, but none of that had killed Baines’s looming presence. She saw him reflected in the crisp white quartz countertops, a choice he’d made during some minor remodeling after she’d moved out.

Walking through the house led her to the great room with its vaulted ceiling and wooden beams. Past the fireplace with the photograph of all three of them above it. To the photographs of them on various vacations throughout the years. This room gave the impression of family, of still being together, of moments of happiness before the divorce.