Boss, Your Wife's a Whole Detective novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Terms

Oona admits she is a homicide detective who married Rowan to get inside his company, and he proposes a new deal with her husband as her inside man.

The police took statements until midnight, and Rowan did not speak to me once.

He stood in the corridor with his lawyer and watched the head of security go out in cuffs.

Then he said, "The study," and walked ahead of me up the stairs.

Garvey House was a limestone mansion that had been built for his great-grandfather and never warmed since.

The study had a green lamp, a long desk and a leather chair set so the person in it faced the door.

He sat me in that chair.

He did not sit himself. He leaned on the front of the desk with his arms crossed, three-piece suit unbuttoned at last.

"Oona Pell," he said. "Paralegal. Estate law. Bridgeport."

"Yes."

"Try again."

I took off my glasses and folded them.

They were plain glass. I put them in my pocket and finally let my shoulders down.

"Oona Corrigan," I said. "Homicide detective, Chicago PD, Area Central. Six years. I resigned fourteen months ago."

He didn't move.

"My partner was Frank Dwyer. They found him in his car at the bottom of Pier 14, on your Calumet Terminal, with a blood alcohol of point one nine."

I kept my voice flat. It was the only way I had ever been able to say it.

"Frank was fourteen years sober. He kept a thermos of coffee so bad it could strip paint. He did not drink."

"The report said accident," Rowan said.

"The report was written by people who were told to write it."

I took the red notebook out of the pocket of my cardigan and put it on the desk between us.

"The month before he died, Frank was looking at a company called Lakeshore Mercantile.

It takes money from your Terminal and sends none back. Three of its signers sit on your board."

"Which three?"

"I'll tell you when I know which one."

A muscle moved in his jaw.

"So you answered my lawyer's advertisement," he said slowly. "You lied about your name. You married me."

"I married your board," I said. "You were the door."

He looked at me for a long time.

Then he went to the window and stood with his back to me, hands in his pockets, shoulders square under the shirt.

I watched his back and waited for him to throw me out.

It was a good back. I had noticed that before, and I resented it.

"You understand that you have just told a man he might be a murderer," he said to the glass.

"I told you your name is on my list."

"Is it near the top?"

"It's on it."

He made a sound that, on anyone else, I'd have called a laugh.

"Of the four candidates," he said, "I picked you in four minutes."

"I remember."

"I told my lawyer it was because you were the only one who didn't ask what the dollar was for."

"Is that true?"

"It's what I told him."

He turned around, and I couldn't tell if he was angry or amused.

"Answer me as you'd answer a suspect," he said. "Why did you do it tonight? You could have kept the cardigan on and let him say 'fell.'"

I looked at the notebook.

"Because the report would have said fell," I said. "And the man who did it would have walked."

"And your cover?"

"Frank would have done the same."

Rowan's eyes held mine a second too long.

He crossed the room, picked up the notebook, and opened it to a page.

"You write in capitals," he said.

"Give that back."

"Open-topped fours," he said, turning the page. "Frank, Frank, Lakeshore, Frank."

"Give it back, Mr. Garvey."

He held it out.

I took it, and for a second his fingers lay across mine.

He was warm. Heat went up my arm.

"Here is what happens now," he said. "You can't leave.

If this marriage ends, Lionel Lonergan, as trustee, takes my votes for two years."

"The clause about a stable household."

"You read the contract."

"I read everything."

"Then you know that if you walk, I lose the company, and the company is where your partner's money went."

He said it as simply as that, like a man putting down a card.

"Stay," he said. "Be my wife. Be furniture, if you like. But I'm your inside man now, and you will tell me everything."

"And if I find that it's you?"

"Then you'll tell me that first," said Rowan. "To my face, before you arrest me."

I stood up. The chair was too big, and I was still in my stockings.

"Deal," I said.

"Deal. Nothing else changes. Separate bedrooms. Paragraph nine stands."

"Paragraph nine," I agreed, and was annoyed that it came out husky.

He nodded once.

At the door he spoke again, without turning.

"Breakfast is at nine."

"Who's coming?"

"Lionel Lonergan," he said. "The man who just watched you take apart a crime scene. He's the trustee, and he wants to see a marriage."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend