He Loves Me Right, Finally novel Chapter 168

Adriel stepped back into the room to find Wynette just surfacing from sleep, her eyes blinking open in a slow, drowsy flutter.

She stared at the unfamiliar surroundings for a beat, momentarily stripped of context, her expression hovering somewhere between confusion and blank incomprehension.

Then Adriel walked through the door, and everything snapped back into place.

"You're up," he said, something quietly amused moving through his voice at the look on her face. "Want to sleep a little longer?"

Wynette pressed her eyes shut and opened them again. "What time is it?"

"Five-thirty." He glanced at his watch.

"I slept that long?" The realization landed with genuine shock.

She'd been out for over three hours.

In her defense, she hadn't slept properly at the farm the night before, and whatever sleep she had managed had been cluttered with restless, shapeless dreams that left her more tired than rested.

The embarrassment settled over her quietly as she pushed herself upright.

"Shirley called while you were out," Adriel said. "I declined it. You might want to call her back."

Wynette reached for her phone.

Sure enough, Shirley's missed call was there, along with a string of messages.

"The news about Justin's illegitimate child is already out," Shirley had written. "I held off on pushing it to trending for now because Justin noticed something and tried to buy the story back. I turned that down. We're set to push it during prime time tonight."

The second message followed. "I also sent someone to Cedar Hollow Town to verify. The person Lorelei described is real. His name is Evan Marsh. But he's gone, and Justin's people are already out there looking for him too."

Justin had apparently seen the story surface, put the pieces together fast, and dispatched people to Cedar Hollow Town to find Evan the moment he realized someone was moving against him.

But according to people in the area who knew the situation, Evan had left for work in another city a couple of years back and hadn't returned since, and nobody had been able to reach him after he left.

Wynette looked up from the screen. "What if Evan is already with Lorelei?"

Lorelei had known who he was all along, and getting him to her side would've been well within her reach.

"I'll have Blaze look into Lorelei's contacts over the last few years." Adriel was already pulling out his phone.

It wasn't an unreasonable theory.

Lorelei knew about Evan, and if she'd done nothing with that knowledge, she wouldn't have handed it over to Wynette as leverage.

While he had Blaze on the line, Adriel also made sure to coordinate their movements with Shirley's, closing off any gaps that could create problems later.

Once that was done, he set his phone aside and produced a small booklet, which he held out to Wynette. "Tonight's auction catalog. Take a look and see if anything catches your eye."

Each lot came with a full write-up and provenance notes.

Everything on offer had been contributed by guests attending the event, since personal collections weren't eligible for bidding.

Wynette paged through it. The usual spread, scrolls, paintings, jewelry pieces, with starting bids that weren't particularly steep, most of them set around the original purchase price.

Then she paused.

A pendant. The stone had that deep, even translucence that only came from quality material, and carved into its surface was a cascade of trumpet vine blossoms, rendered in fine, confident detail.

She looked at it a moment longer than she'd looked at anything else.

Adriel caught the direction of her gaze and made a quiet note of it.

The lot had been contributed by the Robinsons.

Wynette didn't notice him clocking it. She turned the page and kept reading.

Honestly, fine jewelry wasn't an area she knew much about or had strong feelings on, but this was a charity event and she'd come, which meant walking away empty-handed wasn't really an option.

By the time she'd finished the catalog, she had a rough sense of what she wanted.

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