Perfect Paige Read online

  Also by Inés Saint

  Fixer-Upper

  Needs a Little TLC

  Flipped!

  Perfect Paige

  A Spinning Hills Romance

  Inés Saint

  LYRICAL SHINE

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Teaser chapter

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  LYRICAL SHINE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2016 by Inés Saint

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Lyrical Shine and Lyrical Shine logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  First Electronic Edition: November 2016

  ISBN: 978-1-6018-3952-7

  ISBN-13: 978-1-60183-953-4

  ISBN-10: 1-60183-953-7

  Dedicated to nurses everywhere. Thank you for the long hours, the smiles, the encouragement, the support, and the love you give.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First, a special and heartfelt thank-you to Joyce, for taking such care in answering all of my questions and for filling in the blanks I didn’t even know I had. I hope I did your generous help justice.

  I also want to send a warm thank-you to Oscar; collaborating with you to mix fiction and science was such fun!

  Nurses dispense comfort, compassion, and caring without even a prescription.

  —VAL SAINTSBURY

  Prologue

  Monday, April 27

  “You are so right, Charlene. Women can’t get enough of it. It will not pill, it will not stretch, and it will maintain its shape throughout years of use. I am telling you folks, it is absolutely fabulous!”

  Alex Hooke ran one hand through his hair and balled the other into a tight fist. “What the hell is Perfect Paige doing now?” he grumbled into the mike.

  “She’s watching Ashley Garcia’s show—she’s the new breakout star of the Sweet Home Shopping Channel,” Field Supervisor Nelson Boyd answered from inside the surveillance minivan. Chuckles from the other agents crackled through the lines at his words.

  “Hey, I’m supposed to know these things. I’m a married man,” Boyd explained, his thick Brooklyn accent more pronounced than usual.

  “That’s your explanation for everything,” another agent responded. More soft laughter.

  Alex smiled. A raid on a McMansion in suburban utopia was soft-core for someone who, up until eight months ago, had been on the Chicago Division’s SWAT. The huge, traditional houses surrounding him now were perfectly situated on rolling, Kentucky bluegrass–covered lawns cut down to exactly 1.5 inches. The setting was lulling and seemingly worlds away from the drug and prostitution busts of Chicago. He missed the crazy adrenaline, but this low-tension camaraderie was good, too.

  One of his last and most memorable experiences in Chicago had taught him that in the grand scheme of things, this raid was no less important.

  “Well, she should’ve left for her PTA meeting fifteen minutes ago,” he breathed out. The Galloways’ housekeeper, Beatrice, had agreed to be wired. The woman left work every day at 6:31 on the dot. It was almost seven. Glenn and Paige would soon wonder why she was still there.

  “Viewers at home should log on and read the reviews for this dress. Last time we had it on, it sold out in thirty-one—”

  “Don’t you have two closets full of dresses already?” Glenn Galloway’s voice came through the earpiece. Alex straightened.

  “Yes. No. I mean, I wasn’t really watching. My attention is on the ovens. The gluten-free breakfast cookies I’m making for the rest of the week will be perfect as soon as they’re a light golden brown, and the brownies in the second oven should be moist and firm in ten minutes—just in time,” the sickeningly sweet sound he’d come to know as Paige Galloways’ voice answered, and Alex couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the words “gluten-free.”

  “Just in time for what?” Glenn asked, sounding much like Alex felt. Paige Galloway was more caricature than human. She looked like the dozens of versions of Barbie dolls little girls played with. There was Workout Paige, Trophy Wife Paige, Society Paige, and the one who was causing trouble now—PTA President Paige.

  “The PTA meeting. We moved it here because the school is having the floors waxed tonight.”

  Various cusses filled his ears next. The PTA meeting Paige went to on the fourth Monday of every month was at seven. It was six fifty. As if on cue, a luxury SUV turned and pulled up to the curb in front of the Galloway’s long, paved driveway. He took a quick look around. A few more minivans and SUVs were winding up the usually low-traffic road.

  Alex waited for Boyd’s new instructions, though he knew they had no choice but to proceed. Boyd was coordinating four separate but connected raids, and the time was now. A reporter from the Cincinnati Tribune had outed a good chunk of their investigation the day before. Glenn Galloway and his cohorts were anxious and alert.

  Boyd’s calm voice radioed in, “Fifteen, move in on my count. Twenty-two, as soon as fifteen moves, get to the woman who just got out of her car, tell her to leave, then block the road. Twelve, escort the housekeeper out of the house and to her car. Everyone else, move in as soon as the door opens. Ten”—Alex’s ears perked up at the sound of his call sign—“take charge of Paige Galloway.” The countdown began.

  The FBI had been investigating this particular case for almost four years. Alex had been involved for the past eight months, following paper trails and figuring out patterns from old records at the Chicago Biomolecular Research Institute, where it had all begun, to the Technological Institute of Indiana, where the initial tip had come from, and then on to the University of Southern Ohio, where they had finally gathered enough incriminating evidence.

  It would now all soon be over. They had a pawn right where they needed him.

  Agent Sean Donnelly marched up the front steps and pounded on the door. A moment later, there she was: the shopaholic, brownie-baking, fund-raising, beauty-pageant-beautiful doting mother of two their squad had dubbed Perfect Paige. She was dressed as Casual-Chic Paige today, in tight pants that hit just above her ankles, low strappy heels, and a billowy top.

  * * *

  Paige Galloway stared at the oven as she breathed in and out, and in and out, and in and out. The scent of sweet, baked dough wafted out of the oven then, and Paige peered into it once again. The nutrition-packed, gluten-free breakfast cookies had turned golden brown. She slid them out of the oven, just as the door began to pound.

  “You get it,” Glenn grunted. “I’m in no mood for any more empty-headed chitchat. I get enough of that with you.”

  Paige pasted a smile on her face and made sure it reached her eyes befo
re heading to the door, the sting of his words making her forget she was still holding the hot baking sheet in her oven mitt. She nearly dropped the sheet when she saw a man dressed completely in black at the door. He handed her a paper and hollered, “FBI, we have a search warrant,” into the house.

  Stunned, all Paige could do was stand there, until the man made a hand motion and a group of similarly dressed men and women came out of the woods and began swarming her house in what seemed like one second flat. The whole thing felt like a scene out of a television show.

  Paige blinked and saw another man talking to Charlene McBride, of all people. The look of confusion on Charlene’s face got her to move. Not knowing how she was supposed to react to the surreal situation, she let out a fake laugh and began half-sprinting, half-teetering down the winding, paved walkway, yelling and laughing after Charlene. “Wait,” she called. “There’s been a mistake!” Behind her, she could hear Glenn yelling first demands, and then threats.

  Paige collided with a hard body and began to fall backward, her breakfast cookies flying into the air. In another heartbeat, rough hands grabbed her tight before she fell. Cookies rained down around them, just as Charlene slammed the door to her Cadillac Escalade.

  Paige looked up into the bottle-green eyes staring down at her from under pale blond eyebrows. With his cropped, spiky blond hair, strange eyes, towering height, and muscular build, the man looked like a Russian KGB agent from the old cold war movies of the eighties. She and Glenn were upstanding citizens. KGB agents invading her home made as much sense to her as an FBI raid.

  But when the man spoke, his accent was very much Midwest USA, and it brought her head out of its initial daze and into the nightmare surrounding her. Everything came into sharp focus. Glenn demanding they stop the search until he called his lawyer. The carrying voices from the PTA members who were being turned away down the road. The man who’d pounded on their door was issuing calm yet commanding answers to Glenn’s outrage as other men and women invaded their home.

  What was going on?

  KGB-Man held her by her right arm and began leading her back to the house, issuing orders as he went. “You will sit on the couch, and you will not move or interfere—”

  The cold condescension in his voice and the hurtful hold he had on her was the last straw. It was all too much. Glenn’s indifference, whatever misunderstanding they’d had the bad luck of falling into, Charlene’s confused and then smirking face . . .

  She struggled out of his grasp and the seldom-used, deep angry bass growl—the one her sisters had dubbed her poltergeist voice—rasped out of her throat. “Let. Go. Now,” she snarled. His eyes widened in surprise, and his grip on her arm loosened for a split second. It was all she needed.

  She kicked off her heels and began running down the grass slope that led from her house to the street—the quickest way to the cars that were turning around. All she could think of was that those were Riley and Tyler’s friends’ moms. Riley’s birthday party was in two weeks, and the parents in their community wouldn’t let their children come to their house if they thought anything dangerous or untoward was going on in it. She had to explain it was all a mistake. She had to make it right before it was all over town and her kids were ostracized.

  * * *

  Alex had been trying to get Paige to stand up so he could lead her to the house, for her own safety. The dazed look she’d worn had made him wonder if she was going to faint. But then she’d ordered him to let her go and her voice had sounded possessed. Demonic, even. He’d never heard anything like it. And in that split second of surprise, she’d run away from him, looking ridiculous as her body teeter-tottered down the hill, her head bobbing up and down, from side to side. One of her heels thunked his head as he took off after her, careful not to tackle her.

  But it wasn’t easy to get a delicate hold on someone while running down a hill. “Stop!” he yelled as his hand shot out to get a hold of her arm. She skidded to a stop and turned to look at him. Unable to stop his own momentum, he ran smack into her, and his arms locked around her body as they fell and rolled down the hill together.

  As fast as it had all happened, he’d still made sure she was as safe as possible the entire way down, and that his back would be the one to hit the pavement when they landed on the sidewalk. But the moment he let go of her, she shot up and tried to run away again. Alex scrambled up and managed to grab her by the arm before she got too far. A second later, he took his handcuffs out of his pocket and slapped them around her wrists.

  He’d been involved in dozens of risky assignments and arrests involving some of society’s sickest, most dangerous criminals . . . and he’d never until that moment managed to lose control of a situation.

  He knew he’d never live it down.

  * * *

  A subdued Paige sat on the sofa under KGB-Man’s threat of arrest for interfering with a federal investigation. Time would slow down when new information managed to hammer its way through her increasingly fuzzy brain, before speeding up again as her world continued to blow up in her face.

  A copy of the search warrant hung from her hands, but her mind’s eye could still see the words Search and Seizure Warrant . . . The person or property to be searched, described above, is believed to conceal . . .

  She looked over at Glenn, who looked outraged, yet dignified and confident. How could she not have known all of this had been going on? How could she not have caught the clues that her husband was going through something huge and stressful at work?

  No wonder Glenn seemed to loathe her more with every passing day. It was in his look, his voice, his entire demeanor. Lately, it seemed to cling to the air long after he was gone, as if it were a living entity. The indifference that had come before it had been difficult, but this was unbearable. And yet she’d borne it for over a year. For her kids. Their kids.

  Last night, as she’d laid his clothes out for the following day, he’d told her he no longer loved her. It was barely a whisper, but they both knew she’d heard. Her lungs had felt ready to collapse. She hadn’t yet read the kids their bedtime story, and the enormous effort to hold back the waves of pain his words had triggered made her entire body begin to shake uncontrollably.

  It was nothing compared to everything she was holding in now.

  Beyond Glenn, the agent who’d threatened to arrest her ripped into her kids’ things without hesitation. As if coming home to a house in disorder wasn’t bad enough for a seven-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy. The others had asked permission and seemed sympathetic before going through anything that belonged to her kids. But this guy . . . he was ruthless with every piece of their property he laid his hulking hands upon. Paige stood up and tore the sling bags her kids used to carry their things to the country club from his hands. He looked into her eyes and reached for his handcuffs, a silent threat. She glared back, daring him.

  Finally, the friendly agent with the heavy New York accent—the only one who’d looked sorry to blow her life apart—said, “Mrs. Galloway, you might wanna pick your kids up at the music school. We’re done with your car, and their lessons are almost finished.”

  “Music school?” she repeated, as she slowly turned around. “I always pick them up at their grandparents’ house.”

  “We’ve got agents there, too, ma’am.”

  Agents at her in-laws’, too? The only words her twice-shocked brain could think to say were the words her mother-in-law always said, without fail, about every little thing, including Glenn’s decision to marry her. “What will the neighbors think?”

  Chapter 1

  Four months later...

  Boyd stopped at the red light and looked around. “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

  Alex stared at the water tower and blinked a few times before finding it necessary to look away. It was painted in black-and-white spirals with the words WELCOME TO SPINNING HILLS printed in big red block letters. An instant headache. How on earth did the townspeople live with i
t?

  The tower seemed to have the opposite effect on Boyd. His eyes widened and he stared at it without blinking. Alex snapped his fingers in front of his friend’s face, and Boyd shook himself out of his daze. “Thanks. The more I look at it, the more it seems to be spiraling into the ground. It was hypnotizing. Like that spinning disc in one of those old Hitchcock films.”

  “Well, that house right there looks like the perfect setting for a horror flick.” Alex pointed to a small cottage with stone battlements and turrets that looked to belong on a large medieval manor, not a tiny house. Unkempt ivy was running up the walls, the grass was overgrown, and a few panes on the dirty, multipaned windows were either broken or missing. From what he’d seen so far, the entire town was made up of storybook-like houses.

  Boyd was looking around. “I don’t know. Most of these houses look real nice. And the spooky ones kinda add to the whole enchanted vibe this town’s got going on, you know?”

  Alex slanted a look the other agent’s way. “‘Enchanted’?”

  Boyd shrugged. “I got two small girls.”

  The sign on the white brick bungalow next to the creepy cottage read FLO’S COUNTRY YOGA. The Y in Yoga was an upside-down stick figure wearing cowboy boots and a hat. Across the street and a few shops up, a steep-roofed, yellow- and green-trimmed stucco cottage had a fancy sign that read, UNCOMMON SCENTS.

  “I’m gonna bring the wife here when we’ve wrapped things up. She and the kids’ll get a kick out of it.” Boyd had been promoted from a Long Island satellite office to the Cincinnati Division a year ago, while Alex had transferred out of Chicago eight months ago. The two men had become fast friends. Boyd and his family were still getting used to the Midwest, and Alex understood why. He’d grown up in Cincinnati, but had only worked in big cities since graduating from the academy. Small Midwestern towns and cities were a definite change of pace from big-city life. This one seemed more different than most.