Shattered Illusions: Love, Lies, and Redemption

Chapter 83

Remington had headed back to Oakridge Heights early, pulling up to a stop.

Leaning back in his seat, he was eyeing the villa with a gaze as heavy as the air pressure around him.

The place was pitch–dark, a dead giveaway that Lizetta hadn’t come home again.

He lingered in the car, not getting out, until Cedric piped up. “Mr. Remington? You freaked out Lizetta’s friend at the hospital, she might be steamed. Maybe you should sweet–talk her a bit?”

Remington glanced over. “And how do you suggest I do that?”

“Grab a bouquet? Throw in some sweets, girls dig that stuff. Flowers and treats always cheer them up.”

Cedric felt partly to blame for today’s fiasco and was eager to make amends, throwing out suggestions left and right.

Remington’s lips curled into a mocking smile. “Girls also dig jewelry, don’t they?”

He hadn’t forgotten the morning’s episode, where he pushed a jewelry box towards the girl, only to have it chucked squarely at him.

Remington was starting to think his assistant was becoming useless; his skills were going downhill.

Forty minutes later, in the shadows beneath Yolanda’s apartment building.

There he was, in the driver’s seat, with a bunch of gaudy red roses, courtesy of the florist’s hard sell, sitting on the passenger seat.

off. Lizetta wasn’t

spotted a

the flowers, ready

taking the shopping bag off

other, obviously, chatting and laughing as they

Lizetta on the shoulder, and instead of ducking away, she beamed back

emotion draining

for a bit outside the building. Lizetta waved goodbye cheerfully to the guy before taking the bag and heading

watching the lights flick on floor by floor until they hit the sixth, then he turned and

in the car, Remington

wasn’t ticked off, not by a long shot. She seemed in

that’s all:

he tossed the roses into the trash bin and drove

to the corner store for some necessities and bumped into Granny Susan’s grandson

taken a tumble by the flowerbed a few days back, and

קיד.

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Chapter 83

the good news that

to big trouble; she could

went to pour herself some water and heard a familiar

hand, walked over to the window for