Jennifer Apodaca - Samantha Shaw 04 - Batteries Required by Jennifer Apodaca

phone number for you to return his calls?”
    She looked up at me. “Suspicious, aren’t you? Nope, all that is supposed to be in here,” she looked down at the sex-toy kit, then back up at me, “remember?”
    Damn, she had me. I knew what was the matter with me. “You’re right. It’s just that you really scared me, Angel. I thought you’d been kidnapped.” My stomach clenched around the few bites of salad that I had eaten. It wasn’t Mitch that made me uneasy, it was leftover fear of something bad happening to Angel. In the hours we thought she’d been kidnapped, I had been devastated. “You are my best friend.”
    Angel pulled off the ribbon and unconsciously wrapped it around one hand. Forgetting the sex-toy kit for a minute, she said, “I never meant to scare you like that. Hell, you wouldn’t have been that scared if dumbass Hugh hadn’t trashed my place.”
    I watched her wrap and unwrap the creamy ribbon around her hand. “Are you sure it was Hugh?” Gabe didn’t seem convinced, but I didn’t tell Angel that.
    She nodded yes. “It was Hugh. It’s the way he is. Everything that goes wrong in his life is my fault. I told him it was his fault. He’s the one that got that lab technician to change the results on his sperm test. The only reason I found out was that she botched the job and was fired. All I did was tell the FBI agent doing the background check the truth.”
    She was right. Hugh might do something like trash her house. But still. . . “That knife in the couch, did that seem like Hugh?”
    Angel dropped her shoulders, releasing some of her tension. “That is just like Hugh. Remember there was some blood on a dish towel, right? Hugh probably got a knife from my kitchen, went into my office and started slicing up my lingerie merchandise and cut himself. In anger, he jammed the knife into the couch.”
    “I can see that.” I took a drink of my soda, thinking. “But I didn’t see any cuts on Hugh.”
    She yanked the ribbon tight around her hand. “Good, maybe he cut off his own dick.”
    I laughed. “He was walking fine, at least when Gabe wasn’t slamming him into the walls.”
    “Now there’s something I’m sorry I missed seeing.”
    I studied Angel. I remembered how pissed she seemed to be at Hugh at the casino on Friday night. “Angel, is there something more going on between you and Hugh?”
    She raised her eyebrows. “He trashed my house and destroyed most of my lingerie.”
    True, but I felt like I was missing something. “But, Angel, you were upset Friday night at the casino, before he trashed your house.” When Linda had mentioned seeing Hugh to Angel at the casino, Angel got upset.
    “Because he’s an ass.” She unwound the ribbon from around her hand and tossed it into the trash can at the end of my desk. “Right now, I need to focus on Tempt-an-Angel. Recoup some losses from Hugh’s stunt. So let’s take a look at that sex-toy kit. That might be a good moneymaker.” She reached over to the velvet box in front of her.
    Something wasn’t right there. I’d never known Angel to worry about money. She had invested well in the stock market after her divorce from Hugh. I started to say something about it when a scream erupted from the reception area.
    Angel and I both jumped up and ran out of my office.
    Zoë stood in the doorway of Heart Mates and pointed at Bob. “You must be R. V. Logan! I knew it! I knew Samantha knew him!”
    Bob stood by Blaine’s desk, his hazel eyes open wide and his mouth gaping at Zoë. “Do you mean me?” He thumped himself in the chest.
    Zoë fast-walked in the door to Blaine’s desk. She was toting a shopping bag with her. “Of course, you. You look exactly like I knew you would. Very masculine.”
    I glanced up at Blaine, who was behind his desk holding the clipboard of forms that Bob had filled out and the digital camera he had used to take pictures. Meeting my gaze, his thick lips twitched and he shrugged his big shoulders up