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When she wasn’t imagining new and creative ways for the universe to karma-smack Remi and his family, Julianne waited with her ears perked for any mention of Remi’s name around the site. Whenever one of the other guys mentioned Remi, Julianne would hang back pretending to tie her shoe, or take additional measurements on something she’d just measured twice a few minutes earlier. Unfortunately, they never seemed to say anything, except what a great guy and good manager he was.

She was becoming a pro at looking casually disinterested or distracted while secretly absorbing every last syllable being uttered around her. In short, she was well on her way to being the best spy in Southern California.

Okay, maybe not. But definitely the best spy in the Palisades.

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Chapter Nine

!

Julianne crept around the corner, trying to stay crouched down low to escape notice. She was holding a small, electronic stud-finder in her hand, working her way around the perimeter of the wall. If anyone walked by, it would look like she was checking to see where to attach the moldings at the bottom of each wall.

She kept her head down, waiting to make her move.

Only a fellow spy would have recognized that Julianne was honing her skills—waiting for Remi to come around the corner after his 10 a.m. meeting. James Bond had nothing on her.

After three weeks of progressively more intense surveillance—of what she and Chloe were now jokingly calling “the subject”—Julianne had come up with 99

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precious little that was of any help to her cause. She had, however, developed a whole arsenal of easily deployed spy tricks. The stud-finder was her latest innovation. As Julianne knelt on the floor, she was torn between feeling incredibly clever and beyond sketchy. On one hand, she was undercover—complete with techno-props. On the other hand, she was sort of curled into a ball as an elaborate excuse to try to overhear a few seconds of Remi’s morning plans.

She heard footsteps coming and snapped back into her position—her face shielded, the stud-finder level with the floor and beeping softly. The click-click-thump of shoes was getting closer, and Julianne strained to hear what was being said. After a few more moments, she began to get worried. Nonetheless, she kept her head down and the stud-finder level. Five minutes passed, then five more. Julianne’s hands were beginning to cramp up around the stud-finder, and she couldn’t feel her right knee after sitting on it for so long. Finally, her patience was rewarded with a snippet of conversation.

“Dad, I know it’s important . . . of course I do. Yeah, Dad, I know. I understand I have a responsibility. Yes, for the fourteenth time, I promise I will not forget.” Remi’s tone was a blend of stress and annoyance, and Julianne could picture him pulling at the tie around his neck as he walked. “Yes, Dad, I know I’m too old for you 100

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to be keeping tabs on these sorts of things for me. I promise you, I can handle it myself.” Julianne’s ears were burning from the strain of listening in on the conversation. As Remi walked past her along the other side of the wall, she inched slowly in his direction. What could Remi and Mr. Moore be discussing? What was so crucial that only Remi could attend to it? Maybe his dad had him gathering land value information from Bill or from Dawson and Dawson. Or maybe they were going to be expanding the perimeter of their property again and Remi was going to set up the gates. Julianne practically fell over herself to hear Remi’s last words before he turned the next corner into the space beyond her earshot.

“Look, Dad, I have something I need to get to in my office. I know there are other things you want to discuss, but can we just do it later? Yeah, I’ll be around.” Julianne heard Remi’s cell phone click shut before he’d even spat out “Goodbye.” As his footsteps faded in the distance, Julianne refused to be deterred. After waiting a few minutes to be sure he’d left the house, she popped her head up to see whether the coast was clear. No one on the left; no one on the right. Julianne crouched like a sprinter waiting at the starting block and, after a second’s hesita-tion, dashed out toward the trailer, stud-finder still in hand.

She tiptoed around the back of the site trailer, being 101

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careful not to step in any of the patches of dry, brown summer grass around the perimeter, just in case they made a crunching sound and gave away her where-abouts. She knelt down in the space under the trailer’s back window, steadying herself with one hand on the grass and one on the plastic siding of the trailer. It was like waiting with the stud-finder all over again, only now her spy prop just looked silly. She waited and waited to overhear even a hint of conversation coming from Remi’s desk, but he wasn’t talking and her calves were screaming from her awkward crouch.

Patience frayed, Julianne hopped up onto her tiptoes and peered in the back window of the trailer, careful to keep her head down and her mane of curly hair—always a dead giveaway if someone was trying to spot her from a distance—out of sight. From her new vantage point, Julianne found she was able to hear much more clearly than when she had been hunched behind the trailer. She could hear the drip stop of the coffee pot by the desk and the whir of the photocopier in its power-save mode.

Then she heard a squealing sound from inside the trailer.

Squealing tires are secret-agent pay dirt, she thought.

Shifting to get a better view, Jules was just able to make out the trailer’s bathroom door opening. Her mind worked hurriedly to figure out what sneaky, no-good things Remi was up to in the trailer bathroom, but before she was able to formulate any sort of convincing 102

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hypothesis, the door slid all the way open and Remi appeared in her line of vision. Wearing nothing but a towel.

Jules felt her eyes grow wide as her gaze followed Remi’s body across the trailer. Hanging around the construction site had been kind to him; his muscles were smooth and well defined. Even the farmer tan from his rolled-up work shirt sleeves showcased how strong and tight his arms were. Julianne had always thought that

“rippling muscles” was just a figure of speech, but as Remi made his way across the room she had to admit that his muscles were, in fact, rippling. A few stray drops of water from the shower lingered on his chest, clinging stubbornly, until one by one they slid way down to six-pack abs, tracing a trail down his stomach, then finally disappearing into the towel.

As Julianne peeped through the window, trying to control her breathing, she heard a series of mechanical knocks on the door of the trailer. It sounded like someone was banging a cookie sheet with a baseball bat, and the noise was just enough to startle Jules into ducking her head out of view. Huddling against the back of the trailer, she heard the clomping of business shoes on the front steps. Julianne pressed her ear against the wall.

“Remington, I presume this isn’t what passes for business casual on a site these days.” Julianne heard a sharp baritone scolding Remi. She couldn’t imagine anything 103

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more humiliating than one of his bosses from Dawson and Dawson popping by to check on the project site and, instead, finding him half-naked. She felt a pang of sympathy for him.

“Dad?” Remi gulped. “What are you doing here?” Julianne felt as shocked as Remi sounded—she never would have guessed that the voice belonged to Remi’s father. He sounded so cold and businesslike.

“I think a better question, young man, might be what are you doing? Last time I checked, pants were still required at work,” Barton Moore countered. Ouch, thought Jules. He clearly just took a shower. His hair’s still wet!