he moved inside her, she wrapped her legs around him and clung to him. His face pressed against her neck and she cupped his head, holding him to her as though it were the end.
It most likely was. In the morning he would realize he’d made a mistake, and soon she would be going home. Blinking back tears, she pressed her lips to his cheek, urging him on with soft whispers.
With a final thrust, his whole body shook. There was no air between them; there was nothing that would force them apart. Except tomorrow.
RHYS PACED UP and down in front of Logan’s office. He hadn’t even made it into the Cobalt & Dane headquarters before he’d been summoned with a terse email. This was it. All his hard work fighting to get people to believe in him, to believe in his talents, would be over.
Never before had he felt so conflicted. He was angry—at himself rather than at Wren. How could he have not suspected her? Was a pretty face all it took to throw him off his game?
But that was the problem, Wren wasn’t just a pretty face, and that was exactly why he’d wanted to get close to her. She was inspiring, refreshing. She made his blood pump harder. Her spontaneity called to him, which was odd. It should have bothered him how she never planned anything or how she never spent time worrying about sensible things like buying a bed frame or throwing her underwear into a clothes hamper. She probably didn’t even own a clothes hamper.
It certainly bothered him that she’d put herself into a potentially dangerous situation for something that wasn’t her problem.
Yet he was breaking the rules for her. Something that went totally against his nature.
It’s because you know she’s right. Sean Ainslie has proved what he’ll do to get his own way, and you have a responsibility to make sure you listen to the facts.
But the fact was, Wren had done the wrong thing by trying to dig into Sean’s business. Still, he could rationalize his decision to keep quiet because she hadn’t stolen anything and her attempt to access Sean’s storage room had failed. Therefore, her indiscretions were minor. He just had to make sure they stayed that way.
You’d better hope to hell she took your advice to steer clear of the gallery.
He shook his head. If he’d been able to take the day off to make sure she didn’t leave her apartment, he would have.
He pushed down the worry and tried to prepare himself for the beat down he was about to get. For a brief second he’d toyed with the idea of lying, but he’d dismissed it just as quickly. Tough but fair, that was his motto. And he hadn’t gotten that way by being dishonest.
“He’ll see you now,” Logan’s assistant said.
Rhys pushed open the door and walked in with his head held high. Sure, he’d made a mistake but he was still the same person, still the same guy who prided himself on following the rules and doing the right thing.
“What the fuck went down last night?” Logan raked a hand through his longish hair. “Sean Ainslie called me at the ass crack of dawn to say that you physically threatened him.”
“Did he tell you that I threatened him after he attacked one of his staff members?” Rhys braced his hands on the back of a chair facing Logan’s desk.
The room was bright and airy, thanks to a window that overlooked Manhattan. Yet no amount of sunlight could make this room feel warm and inviting. Logan had an air of authority that chilled even the warmest space.
“He said that he’d gone to meet one of his employees to talk about a work issue and that you barged into her apartment and threatened to break his hands.” Logan shook his head. “For starters, what were you doing at her apartment after-hours?”
“She lives in the same building as I do—her apartment is the one across the hall from mine. I heard yelling.”
“So you know this woman…?” He looked down at his notes. “Wren Livingston.”
“She was new to my building. We’d met a few times in passing before we started investigating Ainslie’s complaint.” He left out the bit where she’d showed him her erotic paintings. “But I didn’t know she worked for Ainslie until the day that Quinn and I went to the gallery.”
“Did you make a note of it in your report?”
“No.”
His brows furrowed. “Why not?”
“I didn’t think she was involved.”
“You mean to tell me that you immediately ruled out the employee of a client with a security breach even though the signs pointed to it being an inside job?” Logan rubbed a hand over his face and exhaled. “Why would you do that?”
“She didn’t appear to have any motive.”
“And you determined that how?”
This was where things got messy, because he’d determined it based on gut instinct, which wouldn’t fly with Logan. Hell, if one of Rhys’s employees had come to him with the same story, it wouldn’t have flown with him, either.
“She didn’t appear to have the skills to break into Ainslie’s account.”
“Because lurking in someone else’s email requires a lot of technical skill, does it?” Logan held up a hand. “That’s bullshit and you know it. I want you to be straight with me, Glover. Because I can tell something is going on here and I will not be kept in the dark.”
Rhys drew in a long, deep breath. “Quinn and I came across information that indicated Sean Ainslie was assaulting his employees. Wren Livingston was able to corroborate this information for us, and then, last night, I saw it for myself. He came to her apartment and physically assaulted her. If I hadn’t overheard them fighting, she’d be in much worse shape than she is currently.”
“How did evidence of assault come up in the course of a routine security monitoring job?” Logan dropped down into his seat, his expression guarded but his tone no longer filled with ice.
Rhys ran Logan through everything they’d found—from the digging Quinn had done into Ainslie’s ex-employees to the conversations between Wren and Aimee.
“But,” Rhys continued, “what tipped us off first was that he had a monitored security service for the building and some heavy-duty protection on his storage room, but no cameras.”
“According to his file, we installed the alarm system for the building about eight years ago.” Logan leaned forward and looked at his laptop screen. “The security room was done five years ago. Since then we’ve only had the odd incident response call and two site visits for equipment maintenance. Nothing in here about security cameras.”
“Don’t you think it’s odd to go to all that trouble with the outside of the building and for one room, but not to put cameras inside the place?”
“That is unusual,” Logan said with a slow nod of his head. “But it’s not our job to investigate our clients. They hire us for a purpose and we fulfill that purpose.
