All She Ever Wanted - Barbara Freethy [43]
"It's complicated," he said, realizing Natalie was still waiting for an answer. "I don't want to get into it right now."
"Fine. Then tell me what you and Dylan discussed at the club." She paused, her expression turning more somber as her thoughts focused on the problem at hand. "He doesn't think that I—"
"He wouldn't put it past you." Cole saw the hurt in her eyes and wondered why the men in Natalie's past didn't seem to like her anymore. Maybe they never had. He hadn't paid attention back then to what anyone else thought. "How well did you ever know Dylan?"
"Not well. He came to see Emily all the time. They were very close. She used to help him in his magic act sometimes when he worked nightclubs."
"She did?" He knew the kinds of clubs Dylan had worked while in college, and they certainly wouldn't have been places he'd have taken Emily. And why hadn't Dylan ever told him? "What the hell was he thinking?" he muttered.
"Emily enjoyed it," Natalie said. "She loved magic. I couldn't talk her out of the idea that there was something mystical going on in the universe. Believe me, I tried. Actually, it was nice to live with such a positive person. Every breath she took made her happy."
He sent Natalie a long, searching look, hoping to see the truth in her eyes. "So she was happy, right up until the end?" He needed to hear her say it. He needed to believe that Emily hadn't died hating him.
Natalie hesitated a moment too long. "I'm not sure, Cole. I thought she was, but Madison said that I wasn't paying attention, that Emily had things going on in her life that I didn't know about."
"What kinds of things?"
"Apparently, she was thinking about having sex, or maybe she was having sex, but she never told me." Natalie drew in a breath as she ran her finger around an imaginary circle on the tablecloth. When she looked at Cole, there was guilt in her eyes. "I never told her what you and I did, either. I guess there were some things we didn't share with each other."
Cole's chest tightened at the memory of just what he and Natalie had done together. He was glad she hadn't told, ridiculously pleased that it was just between the two of them.
"Madison doesn't know who's behind the book," Natalie continued. "We're striking out, Cole, everywhere we turn. No one who was there claims to know anything."
"Someone is not telling the truth. It has to be Madison, Laura, or maybe Drew. There's too much information in the book for it to be some random person."
"I've been thinking about that. There were other people around, sorority girls who could have described the initiation ceremony. We also had a housemother, Connie Richmond, who knew about some of the incidents. And Diane Thomas, who was our sorority adviser, acted like a confidante for the pledges. Emily talked to her all the time. We were encouraged to go to either Connie or Diane with our problems. Then there were the guys who lived next door to us at Paloma Gardens, Eric and Anthony. They used to hang out in our room late at night. They heard us bitch about all kinds of things. Drew was around. Dylan and Emily were close. And there was Jessica Holbrook, Em's big sister in the sorority house. I'm sure Emily talked to her about things. The list goes on and on. Any good researcher could probably have put the book together just by talking to a lot of people."
"But not without talking to the most important people," he argued. "Maybe not you, because you're the target, but why wouldn't Malone have talked to me or Madison or Laura or Dylan or Josh? Why leave out the core group?"
"He must have known you wouldn't be happy about the book, about seeing Emily's life sensationalized. The others—I don't know."
"I still think we can narrow