Chapter Four
House Rules
“You are one smart cookie,” Daniel said, as he stood by the door of his living room and watched the girl as she whipped through the magazines on his coffee table. These were compliments of Valerie who thought his house needed a feminine touch—for what purpose, he wasn’t sure. Alice might have added to the stack with her gardening and organic cooking magazines but he hadn’t bothered to look. He actively avoided them all. When he read, which wasn’t often, he chose historical treatises and the occasional spy thriller—although rarely did he find one that matched the intrigue of his own life.
Lisle’s perusal of the cast off periodicals was surprisingly zealous as if she were
looking for something specific while carefully leafing through each page. He thought of the
