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 togethe