All the Secrets We Keep (Quarry Book 2) Read online

  Table of Contents

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  OTHER TITLES BY MEGAN HART All the Lies We Tell Lovely Wild Precious and Fragile Things The Favor All Fall Down Little Secrets The Resurrected Passion Model Driven Beneath the Veil Seeking Eden Exit Light Beg for It Perfectly Restless Hold Me Close Vanilla Flying Stumble into Love The Space Between Us Collide Naked Deeper Switch Stranger Tempted Broken Dirty Tear You Apart Captivated (with Tiffany Reisz) Taking Care of Business (with Lauren Dane) No Reservations (with Lauren Dane) Order of Solace series Pleasure and Purpose No Greater Pleasure Selfish Is the Heart Virtue and Vice

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Text copyright © 2017 by Megan Hart All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle www.apub.com Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates. ISBN-13: 9781503942783 ISBN-10: 1503942783 Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  This book is for the hungry ones. Feed yourselves.

  CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER TWENTY CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE CHAPTER THIRTY CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE CHAPTER FORTY CHAPTER FORTY-ONE CHAPTER FORTY-TWO CHAPTER FORTY-THREE CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE CHAPTER FORTY-SIX CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT CHAPTER FORTY-NINE CHAPTER FIFTY ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE Theresa Malone had made a lot of mistakes in her life, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t capable of making a few more. One of them was sitting across from her right now with a glass of whiskey on the table in front of him and a smirk that looked like every kind of bad idea. She’d invited Ilya Stern to Dooley’s tonight, so she had nobody but herself to blame. She ought to have known he’d be no different with her than he was with anyone else. Charming and difficult. “You are bound and determined to make my life miserable, aren’t you?” She frowned. “C’mon, Ilya. Why? What good is any of this going to do? You’re delaying the inevitable.” “It’s not at all inevitable, Theresa. And it’ll make me feel better.” He sipped from the glass with a grimace and set it down before leaning back in the chair to link his fingers behind his head. His grin was hard and didn’t soften his expression at all. Theresa drew in a slow, calming breath. “They’re not going to offer you more money or any kin

  CHAPTER TWO By the time they pulled up in front of his house, the whiskey had settled in his gut with a low, roiling reminder that he meant to quit drinking any day now. Ilya didn’t feel drunk, but that was part of the problem. He hardly ever did, not until he got out of the car and the ground tilted under his feet so that he had to grab the door to keep from tripping. Ilya turned his face to the sky for a moment, letting the late-night rain tickle his closed eyelids. He opened his mouth, tasting it. So maybe he’d die from the poisons in the water, whatever. Something else could kill him first, and worse than that. “Life,” he said aloud like an answer to a question Theresa hadn’t asked. “Life’s what kills us.” “Oh my God.” She sighed, and he looked at her. She’d gotten out of the car and was leaning on the roof. Her hair—that cloud of soft, dark, curly hair—was getting wet. She pointed at him. “You need some help getting inside?” “No, nope. I’m good.” He closed the car door. From acros

  CHAPTER THREE Then They’d made out for hours, but that girl was never going to let Ilya in her pants. He was going to spend the rest of his life with his balls aching. He should have given up long ago. Gone out with someone else who’d at least agree to jerk him off. When it came right down to it, though, Ilya knew he could date a dozen—no—a hundred other girls, and not one of them was ever going to be Jennilynn Harrison. He’d never met anyone else like her, and even at seventeen, he somehow knew he never would. What if he asked her to be his girlfriend, like be legit? If they held hands in the school hallway, went to dances? She’d wear his class ring, he thought as Jenni easily slipped his hand away from between her legs with the same skill she always did. Kiss him at the lockers before the homeroom-bell rang. When he asked her that question, she laughed aloud. “Us? Dating? Like a real thing?” “You don’t have to make it sound like such a bad thing,” Ilya answered, irritated. “Yeah, us.

  CHAPTER FOUR “Are you disappointed in me, too?” Ilya’s words had echoed in Theresa’s dreams all night long, and she couldn’t figure out why. She woke without being rested. She’d intended to stay in the guest bedroom that she’d used the last time she slept here, but it had been full of construction supplies for the repairs she knew Ilya’s younger brother, Niko, was doing. The bed had been covered in boxes, while tools and paint cans had been scattered on the floor. The couch in the Sterns’ den wasn’t the most comfortable in the world, but it was better than the backseat of her car, which was where she’d been sleeping for the past two weeks. Theresa had spent the past nine months or so crashing on couches and guest rooms with a series of excuses to her friends, all so she didn’t have to tell them the truth. She didn’t have an apartment to go to, and she couldn’t afford a hotel room. She could barely afford to cover her cell-phone bill or buy gas. There were only so many stories she could

  CHAPTER FIVE Then In the Stern house, Theresa had a room all to herself. There was a bed with a fluffy comforter and soft sheets. A dresser for her clothes, only hers—no sharing with her dad, three drawers for her and three for him. The bathroom situation wasn’t the greatest—one for the entire household, including two teenage boys who made a big mess and never cleaned up after themselves. Aside from that, she loved living there. She was grateful for it; that was the truth. Every day. She’d come home from school to find Babulya in the kitchen slicing red beets and boiling chicken bones to make stock. The fact that there was someone at home to make any kind of meal on a regular basis was also one of those things Theresa appreciated. Homemade soup, even the weird kind that Babulya made, was a luxury compared to the days of canned soup and stale saltines. Off-brand cereals. Soured milk. It was one of the things, back in the first days when her dad had started seeing Galina, that Theresa ha

  CHAPTER SIX The sound of voices woke him, but the smell of food was what brought him downstairs. The sight of Theresa sitting across the table from his brother took Ilya by surprise. For a moment, he wondered if he was still dreaming or had somehow slipped backward in time to just after Babulya died, when Theresa had ended up staying with them. “Hey,” she said when she saw him. “Umm . . . it was late last night. I crashed here. Better than falling asleep at the wheel and crashing my car.” “Don’t look at me. It’s not my house, as my mother’s been so kind to point out over and over the past couple months.” Ilya scratched at his bare chest idly, narrowing his eyes at her. “Coffee?” Niko pointed wordlessly to the counter. Ilya helped himself, then fixed a plate from the veritable feast someone had made. He took a seat at the table, looking up only when he felt the weight of two sets of eyes on him. “What?” “You look like shit,” Niko said. Theresa pressed her lips toget
her against a smile.

  CHAPTER SEVEN A month had never seemed like such a long time to Niko. Even during the worst times in his stint in Antarctica, knowing that even if he wanted to get out and leave there was no way he could, he’d never felt quite this restless. Eager. In four days, Alicia would be coming home. What that meant for the two of them, he wasn’t sure. He’d encouraged her to go on her trip without him, but there’d been a lot of lonely nights over the past three and a half weeks when he’d stayed awake, staring at the ceiling of his attic bedroom and thinking about how much he missed her. He’d been following her social-media accounts. Pictures of her grinning in front of landmarks. Snapshots of her artistically lit food. He’d been unable to stop himself from scanning each to see if there was a man in them, someone who showed up more than once, even in the background. Someone who’d been taking the place Niko had wasted so much time before claiming. His phone chimed just as his eyes were finally clo

  CHAPTER EIGHT Then “When I was girl in Russia, I never asked Mother why on Fridays we had white bread, and on all other days only brown. She never spoke of being Jewish. It wasn’t allowed, you know.” Babulya handed Theresa another egg to crack into the bowl. “But she made the Jewish bread every week. Many times I’m sure she went without or had to scrimp, save, barter for the eggs and white flour and the butter. But she always did it.” “Now you do it.” Theresa threw the eggshells into the trash and turned back to watch as Babulya added some softened butter and salt to the center of the flour. Babulya nodded. “Yes. Now I do. And you do, too.” “I’m not Jewish, though. Is that okay?” Frowning, Theresa dug her hands into the mess in the bowl when Babulya waved at her to start mixing all the ingredients. “None of us here in this house are very Jewish,” Babulya said. “But we eat the Jewish bread. Is fine.” When the dough had become smooth and thick, only a tiny bit sticky, Theresa put it all

  CHAPTER NINE His whole life was crumbling all around him, and what was Ilya wasting his time doing? Sitting in Alicia’s old desk chair, looking up tanks on the Internet. It was easy enough, relatively speaking, to get one. If you had the money to pay for it. He’d have to settle for a school bus, he thought as he scrolled through several pages on a website. Take off the front and back doors to make it safe. Remove the seats so that divers could swim all the way through it. He’d sink it far enough away from the helicopter to keep it interesting, although the bus itself wasn’t going to attract anyone. Most every dive site around had one. A tank would bring people in. He wasn’t idiotic enough to put any money down on one, though. Not because of the expense—in the past he’d taken out loans and lived on hard-boiled eggs and tuna for nearly a year to make upgrades to the Go Deep dive site. But why would he waste his time and money acquiring, hauling, and sinking a tank when it didn’t look lik

  CHAPTER TEN Theresa’s phone buzzed from its place in the center console of her car. She’d plugged it in to charge but had turned off the car engine so that she wasn’t wasting gas. The night air in April could still dip low enough to be considered chilly, but under the weight of a few blankets and wearing fleecy pj bottoms and a heavy sweatshirt, she wasn’t worried about being too cold. With the inflatable car mattress in the backseat, she wasn’t even particularly uncomfortable. She fumbled for the phone to glance at the screen, assuming it was her father. He had a way of forgetting what time of day or night it was, his messages rarely urgent and never frequent, but generally inconvenient. At first, the name on the screen confused her, and Theresa had to rub at her eyes to make sure she was seeing it correctly. Then she sat up in the backseat of her car, the blankets tangling around her feet, to hold the phone closer to her face. Another text buzzed through as she looked. With a sigh, s

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Then “Wake up, girl. C’mon.” Theresa fended off the tugging hands and grabbed at her comforter. She tried to burrow back into the pillows. It had to be a nightmare, but no, again the blankets were yanked away, and her father’s hands were shoving. Pulling. “Get up—now. Pack your shit. We have to go.” Theresa, bleary-eyed, sat and gathered the blankets to her chest. “What’s—” “She’s kicking us out.” Her father was hollow-eyed, hair sticking up all over the place. He stank of nervous sweat, and his gaze darted around the room without settling too long on any one place. He paced, grabbing things and throwing them in a giant black plastic garbage bag. If she didn’t get out of bed and stop him, he was going to ruin her stuff. He’d done it before. Lots of times. “Dad, stop, I’ll get it.” He tossed the half-full bag onto the floor in front of her. “We have an hour.” “Or what? What happens in an hour?” She was already bending to scoop up the bag and put it on the bed, then pulled

  CHAPTER TWELVE Alicia had only been home for a couple of days, but it seemed like a million years had passed since the last time she’d stood in the farmer’s market in Thailand, eating mangoes and sticky rice. A bagel with cream cheese and a large French vanilla latte weren’t quite the same, but that didn’t make it bad. The travel had been fantastic, beyond her wildest dreams, but the money from the sale of the dive shop wasn’t going to last forever. If she was going to travel again, she’d need to go sooner rather than later, because soon enough she was going to have to start thinking about getting a job. She sipped the hot drink and set it on the table, shrugging out of her jacket as she juggled her purse and laptop. She’d come to the coffee shop because sitting at home was becoming tedious and suffocating. She figured she’d start researching job possibilities, and maybe another trip, too. She and Nikolai hadn’t talked about what would happen if she wanted to leave again. Mostly, they

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN Then “Do you know how proud I am of you?” Theresa’s father was in a good mood. He’d shaved, put on clean clothes. So far as she could tell, he wasn’t using, at least not at the moment. When he hugged her, Theresa closed her eyes and let him. They’d just returned from her high school graduation. She wasn’t at the top of her class, but she did well enough to get a small scholarship to Millersville University. She was going to study accounting. This didn’t thrill her, but it felt like a good, steady choice. She’d be able to get a job. She wouldn’t have to live in a crappy apartment with roaches in the walls and rats by the dumpster. Not ever again. “Very proud,” her father added when she didn’t answer. “Thanks, Dad.” She squeezed him in return, then let go. It had been a tough year and a half since Galina Stern had tossed them out. Her dad had quit his job at the hospital two months ago, or so he said. Theresa suspected he was fired. Again. You couldn’t miss so many days

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN Then If there’d been men in his mother’s life, Ilya hadn’t known about it. Hadn’t wanted to know about it. The fact that she’d been bringing this joker around for the past couple of months should’ve set off warning bells. “She says they’re going to get married!” Ilya paced in Jennilynn’s den. Her parents were still at work, and her sister was upstairs in her room with the radio playing loud. Summer vacation just started, but already they were a little bored, wanting to get into trouble. He and Jennilynn had planned to smoke a little weed and watch some shitty scary movies, the kind with a lot of bare, bouncing boobs and blood. He didn’t feel like doing any of that now. Jenni tossed her long blonde hair over her shoulder. “She’s going to marry that guy? The one from the hospital?” “Barry Malone. Yeah. That’s what she says. Next month. Talk about short notice.” Ilya threw himself onto the couch beside her. “Maybe she’s knocked up,” Jennilynn said, and ducked away from th

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN The dive shop didn’t have much of a sound system, just a small radio set on one of the shelves behind the front counter, and an MP3 player dock in the office. Ilya supposed Alicia must’ve listened to music through her computer, but that was nowhere near loud enough for what he wanted right now. The heavy equipment had come in this morning while he was working on setting up another trip. The constant crashing and noise were making him crazy. That, and watching them destroy everything. He wanted to listen to some music to drown out all the noise, but the best he coul
d do was tune in to a scratchy soft-rock station that wasn’t loud enough to cover up the sound of a squirrel farting, much less three dump trucks and a bulldozer. Muttering curses, Ilya went to the front door to watch. It didn’t take long for them to clear away the pavilions and the bathhouse, neither of which had been in the greatest shape to begin with. Still, it stung to see them go down in a clatter of spl

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN It would take more than a few days for Theresa to fully settle in so she could feel like she lived here and wasn’t merely a houseguest, but it helped that Alicia had been spending a number of nights out with Niko, so Theresa often had the house to herself. Theresa had insisted on talking over everything with her new landlord/roommate—who’d be responsible for what chores, what Theresa was expected to contribute to the household, whether or not it was cool to drink the other’s milk without asking. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was find herself homeless again because she’d crossed some line she hadn’t known about. Tonight, Alicia had gone out with Niko to the movies and dinner. She’d told Theresa not to expect her home until around midnight. Theresa had spent the day pursuing leads and checking in with a few new contacts she hoped she could connect with an architect who was interested in turning an old power plant on the outskirts of town into upscale apartm

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN “Stop it.” Theresa’s dark hair, still wet from her shower, had tumbled all over her shoulders and down her back in thick spiral curls that made Ilya want to tug them just to watch them spring back into shape. “That’s low.” “I mean it.” Ilya drank half his glass of wine. He looked at the crystal glass. It had been a wedding gift from someone on Alicia’s side. He’d never liked the pattern. Theresa dropped into her chair. Behind her on the stove top, a bit of steam drifted off the golden challah. “Please don’t mess with me.” “I’m not. Let’s say I had an epiphany. A sign.” He thought again of the shadow in the water, the push of it against him. The flash of orange and black. “Do you believe in signs?” “I don’t.” He smiled faintly. “Babulya used to do that thing with her fingers, remember that? She’d poke her fingers at you and spit to the side. Pfft, pfft, pfft. It was supposed to ward off bad luck.” “I don’t remember that,” Theresa said after a reluctant second. “But I b