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Henry inhaled sharply. “I want to find whoever gunned you down,” he snapped out each word, “but it is difficult when you only give me pieces of information.”
Taylor heaved out a heavy sigh. “I worked with him at a coffee shop in Maine,” she rambled out quickly.
Henry’s facial expression didn’t change, he just remained stone-faced. And the silence stretched between them.
Derrick knew what Henry was doing. He was trying to let the silence bother Taylor into saying more. But Taylor was the queen of letting silence stretch, and she wouldn’t break.
“You worked in a coffee shop,” Henry finally stated, disbelief lacing his tone.
“Yes,” Taylor replied, nodding.
Henry continued to stare at her, absorbing this information. “Taylor Preston worked in a coffee shop in Maine?” he asked.
Taylor scrunched up her face. “Sort of?” she responded in question form.
Henry’s face started to turn red from frustration, and Taylor was worried he would blow. And so, before it wasclean up in aisle seven, she let it out.
“I-ran-away-from-my-crazy-uncle-and-lived-under-an-alias-with-a-disguise-and-I-worked-in-a-coffee-shop-and-that’s-where-I-met-Ben,” she rambled out all in one breath.
Henry looked less red, but his expression did not change as he took a second to digest the news that had just been spewed at him machine-gun style.
“Okay, and this Ben, he was a co-worker?”
“Yes,” Taylor said easily,
Henry cocked his head, “Onlya co-worker?”
Taylor flicked a look to Derrick, then looked at the floor. “We were friends, but there was a, uh, a mutual interest.”
“Did you two have a relationship?” Henry prodded.
“Nothing serious,” Taylor quickly confirmed, and then added, “we did kiss.”
“What?!” Derrick exploded, unable to keep his emotions inside any longer.
“What do you meanwhat?” Taylor exploded back.
“You kissed him?” he asked, absolutely flabbergasted. “When?”
“Ten minutes after we got married, Derrick,” she shot back with angry sarcasm. “It was before I came back. Before us.”
“How long ago was your interaction?” Henry interjected delicately.
“What, like four, five months ago?” Taylor said, trying to do the math.
“Haven’t you two been together for two years?”
Whoops.
“Uh,” Taylor and Derrick said in unison.
Henry pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. “Listen—”
“So basically that was all a lie,” Taylor admitted before Henry could lose his temper again. “I ran away. After about three years, I found the town in Maine and worked at the coffee shop. I worked there about a year and a half when Ben started there. I was brought back here about four months ago and our “together” story has been fabricated.”
“How fabricated?”
“LikeI was abducted after Cedric was found dead, I came back and found out I had to be married to run the company, and so we got instantly engagedfabricated.”