He grabbed his cell and connected the call.
He couldn’t say he was surprised when he got shunted to voice mail.
“Jesse, man. It’s me. Again. We need to talk. Call me back, okay? Or text me. Or answer one of the million emails I’ve sent.”
Wes disconnected and tossed his phone beside his computer. AJ hadn’t figured out the meaning of that garbage code that appeared on all the affected devices. That was the key, he knew it. If he could figure out the significance of that, it would tell him—
“Do you not own a shirt? Is that the problem?”
“Jesus!” He banged his knee on the underside of his desk as he spun around in surprise, frowning as he caught sight of his black-clad interloper. “Don’t you knock?”
AJ’s grin was smug. “Guess the reports of my stealthiness aren’t so greatly exaggerated after all, huh?”
“You shut down a wall of infrared and broke into my place in the middle of the day just so you could throw my comment back in my face?” Now that his heart rate had slowed some, the ballsiness of that struck him. He gave a philosophical shrug at his own summation. “That’s a level of petty that I can respect.”
He also respected the fact that she’d bypassed his system. He’d have to shore up whatever loophole she’d found to get into his place. Maybe Max had been on to something when he’d hired her after all. Once he exacted revenge on whoever had ruined his life, he might have to see if AJ wanted a job at Soteria.
Wes got to his feet. In deference to his visitor, he dragged an abandoned black T-shirt over his head before joining her in the kitchen area of his swanky loft. “You want a victory beer?”
Her smile faded. “Sure. But you might want to change your order to a beer of the ‘drown your sorrows’ variety. You’re not going to like the reason I’m here.”
Unease prickled along his spine as she followed him at a distance. “What am I not going to like?”
“The reason you’re off the hook.”
Well, shit.
Grabbing two longnecks from the fridge, he twisted off each of the caps with a satisfying hiss and lobbed them into the sink. Then he slid one of the beers across the butcher-block island to her, and his own personal harbinger of doom caught it with ease.
The brown-glass bottle in his hand had already begun to sweat when he tipped it against his lips and indulged in a long swallow. A little fortification couldn’t hurt. “Talk.”
AJ picked at the edge of the label, as she erased a drop of beer from her cupid’s bow with her tongue.
The fact that she was stalling made his shoulder blades itch.
“You know how when Whitfield Industries got hacked, the surveillance footage was missing?”
Wes nodded. While he’d been hauled into Whitfield’s office to give a preliminary damage report, Jesse had worked tirelessly to try to unscramble the feed. To no avail. And thank the gods for that, because otherwise Vivienne would be rotting in jail.
“Well, when I was looking into it on the down low for Max, I found that it had been clipped.”
Wes set his beer on the counter with a loud thunk. “What?”
“The section that would have revealed our perp wasn’t scrambled. It was missing. Poof.”
A litany of swear words rolled through his brain, even as a hit of adrenaline jacked up his senses.
“I haven’t poked too deeply, but chatter is that the G-men have gotten their hands on the footage and—”
“Shut up.”
AJ’s brows dove low over brown eyes glittering with venom. “Listen up, dickwad. In case you’ve forgotten, you came to me. I didn’t ask to help you ou—”
“I’m serious. Stop talking, AJ.” Wes stalked over to his desk.
“What the hell is your problem?”
He rooted through the jacket he’d slung on the back of his chair, liberating his wallet and keys. “My problem is that if you say what I think you’re going to say, then you’re taking away the only possible course of action I have to protect the woman I lo—” He cut himself off. “Someone who matters a lot to me.”
He shoved his phone in the pocket of his jeans as he met her eyes. “So don’t say what you came here to say. Once I take care of things, then we can finish this conversation.” He could almost see the pieces of his plan clicking together in her brain, and AJ’s mutinous expression cleared when they did. “Tell Vivienne I said congratulations.”
Wes nodded curtly, hoping it conveyed even a fraction of the gratitude coursing through him right then.
No one understood how to work around the law like a former thief...except maybe a kick-ass lawyer. He hoped the future Mrs. Brennan would accept the necessity of his plan as easily as AJ just had. But Wes would worry about that hurdle when he came to it. First, he had to get her to open the door.
* * *
Vivienne was at loose ends, dressed casually in jeans, a white T-shirt and bare feet. In her kitchen. In the middle of the afternoon. On a weekday.
Unemployment didn’t suit her, and now that she didn’t have Wes’s case to distract her...
And she could definitely use some distraction, because as soon as her brain was left to its own devices, it kept turning doggedly back to the same subject.
He’d been gone a week, but the sexual specter of him lingered.
In her bed. On the couch. On her dining room table. But worst of all, in her head.
Vivienne took a deep breath, staring at the sink where the Le Creuset pan still sat at the same awkward angle that he’d left it in.
She should have cleaned it up, but something kept stopping her. Vestiges of the sentimentality he used to tease her about.
Maybe today was the day she’d be able to erase the last evidence of their time together.
A loud rap at the door saved her from having to follow through.
She hurried over to answer the summons, though she wasn’t expecting anyone. But even with no expectations, her visitor shocked her.
“Wes?”
Her synapses stuttered at the sight of him, and for a moment, she couldn’t be sure if he was really there, or she’d just conjured him with her single-minded preoccupation.
Then he pushed past her, barging into her place and sanity returned like a punch in the face. As did her snark.
“No, please. Come in.” Vivienne shut the door behind him.
“Put this on.”
She caught the small box he’d lobbed in her direction against her chest. Tiffany blue with an iconic white ribbon.
Unease slithered between her vertebrae.
“What is this?”
“Absolute perfection. At least according to the sales associate who assured me she had ‘just the thing’ before putting a sizable dent in my credit limit.”
Her hands shook at that announcement. She wasn’t sure what felt worse—the way her heart kept throwing itself against her ribcage or the fact that her lungs refused to fully inflate. Her gaze ping-ponged between Wes and the box as she undid the ribbon, lifted the lid, opened the hinged jewelry case inside.
Twinkling up at her was a huge, flawless princess-cut diamond set in platinum with a fleet of smaller diamonds flanking it.
It was, indeed, absolute perfection.
She hated everything about it.
“What is this?”
“Exactly what you think it is.” Wes sounded grim.
Vivienne had wasted enough youthful dreams pondering this moment, and to have them acted out in this macabre pantomime felt cruel.
“You cannot be serious. If you think I’m going to marry you because of a couple of glorious orgasms then—”
“Eight.” Her would-be fiancé glared at her. “You had eight glorious orgasms, but we don’t have time to go over our highlight reel right now. City Hall closes at five.”
“This
is ridiculous.” Vivienne snapped the box shut on the sham of a ring and held it in his direction. “I’m not marrying you.”
Wes remained completely still. “Yes, Viv. You are.”
The deadly seriousness of him finally penetrated her shock, centered her. Something was very, very wrong. “What’s going on?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because the less you know the better!” His words were harsh, but there was something tortured about them, as well. Like he no more wanted to be saying them than she wanted to hear them. “Hell, the less I know the better. Something bad is coming, and after what you did to help me, what you gave up...” Wes raked a frustrated hand through his hair.
“A week ago, it wouldn’t have mattered. But we don’t have attorney-client privilege going forward. And now I know things that can hurt you.”
I’m the one who hacked Max’s company, okay? I know you didn’t do it, because it was me.
Her foolish confession pulsed hot in her brain. Shame burned through as she came to grips with what an untenable situation she’d put them both in.
“But you know things that might be able to help me figure this out. And now that they’ve let me go, the investigation is...pursuing new leads.”
Oh, God. Her knees shook as she read between the lines. At the realization she was in the crosshairs.
“Now we need to improvise. The faster the better. Get your purse.”
She couldn’t drag him any further into this than she already had. Not when spousal privilege was black-and-white, and his plan was soaked in so much gray. Vivienne shook her head, trying to make him understand. “This will never hold up in court if it comes down to it. There are a million ways to poke holes in what each of us knew and when we knew it. It won’t keep either of us safe for long.”
She could see she wasn’t getting through to him. That his mind was set.
“We were together for two years,” he countered. “We lived together, and we broke up when you got accepted to Yale. Now work has thrown us back in each other’s lives, and old feelings have resurfaced. Just stick to the salient facts. Let people assume the rest.”
Hearing her inner feelings laid bare made Vivienne tremble. She tried to make him see the truth wasn’t enough.
“If they have the kind of evidence that would send you to Tiffany’s before knocking on my door, then things are too far gone to fix. I’m guilty of what they think I am, Wes. Best-case scenario is that this buys a little extra time while they figure out how to prove our marriage is a sham designed to keep us from testifying against each other.”
“Time is exactly what I need to figure out who did this to you. Why the blackmailer targeted you to get to me. How it all fits together. And I will do whatever it takes. I swear it. I will get us both out of this, but I need your help to make it work.”
Her breath shuddered from her lungs, as though it was filled with razor-sharp ice crystals. Not exactly the “I need you,” she used to dream of when she’d been sure Wes’s proposal was inevitable. The fun house–mirror version of it sat like a rock in her gut.
“You’ve got two choices here.”
Vivienne dropped her gaze to the ring box.
“It’s me, or prison. And orange isn’t your color.”
He stepped close, and his finger was warm against her chin as he tipped her head up, blue eyes boring into hers. “Let me protect you this time, Viv.”
The shift of it prickled through her veins, mixing past memories with present in a way that warmed her blood, that made her want impossible things.
Wes’s fingers brushed hers as he gently tugged the forgotten ring box from her grasp. He opened it and held it between them, a silent offer, not of love, but of momentary safety.
It wasn’t nearly enough, and yet it was so much more than she deserved.
With a trembling breath, she pulled the ostentatious solitaire out of the ring box and slid it on her finger, ignoring the way his shoulders loosened when she did. Because this was going to be painful enough without letting emotions and foolish what-ifs into the mix.
Vivienne dumped the Tiffany packaging on the table beside the door before grabbing her purse. “We should get going.”
Wes nodded, pulling the door open for her.
“And for the record,” she rallied, squaring her shoulders as she stepped into the hallway, “I look great in orange.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE PROCESS OF procuring a marriage license seemed absurdly easy, Vivienne thought, strangling her purse with sweaty palms as they sat on a bench outside the room where she would become Vivienne Brennan. Just as soon as the ceremony scheduled before theirs was finished.
A couple of signatures and a few dollars was all it took to change your life irreparably. That and the possibility of a prison sentence.
“We should have a contingency plan.”
Wes looked up from his phone at the sound of her voice. Calm and cool as ever.
How he could be so blasé about this was beyond her.
“What are you talking about?”
“Divorce papers, in case I end up going to jail.” Her voice wavered, and she hated the show of weakness. It took more effort than she’d have liked to swallow it down. “I could presign them so you can just file them if they have enough evidence to lock me up even without your testimony. Or maybe an annulment would go faster for you. We could say I coerced you into marrying me...”
She didn’t realize her knee was vibrating with nerves until the heat from Wes’s palm seeped through her jeans, stilling her leg. But not her brain.
“Fraud might be better, actually. You could tell them that I—”
“Hey. Take a breath.”
He squeezed her thigh in silent acknowledgment as she took his advice.
“How about we get married before we worry about the divorce?”
She nodded jerkily. The bleakness of the situation stained her heart.
Then the doors beside them burst open, and a grinning band of revelers appeared. The bride was radiantly happy, and very pregnant, garbed in a silky white dress and birdcage veil, one hand full of fuchsia peonies, the other hand laced with her groom’s. He wore a vintage blue tux and a megawatt smile.
Viv’s stomach twisted at the happy scene, and she reflexively clenched the cotton of her T-shirt, her nails digging into her abdomen and the cold, empty feeling there.
What could have been was a knife to her heart.
Still, she couldn’t look away from them, her throat tight as the newlyweds kissed and giggled and oozed optimism all the way down the hall, surrounded by their merry entourage of friends and family.
“Wes and Vivienne? We’re ready for you now.”
They stood in unison, and the gray-haired justice of the peace introduced herself and the hired witness Wes had paid extra for, before warmly inviting them into the room where they would become man and wife.
But when Wes would have followed, Vivienne grabbed his forearm, stalling him on the threshold.
“I can’t do this. I can’t do this to you.”
“And I can’t do this without you.” Wes stepped close, lifted his hand to cradle her jaw. She leaned into the warmth of his palm, trying to steal just a little bit of his strength. “But we’re out of options here. So we’re going to have to do it together, okay?”
His lips brushed her hairline. “All you have to do is close your eyes and pretend with me, just a little longer.”
Pretend. Yes. Viv nodded. She could do that for him.
With a deep breath and her cold hand engulfed in Wes’s warm one, she followed him inside.
* * *
You may now kiss your bride.
He could still taste her on his mouth. The fake sweetness of whatever she’d used to make her lips glossy. Their
kiss had been brief, little more than a chaste peck, punctuated by an unrelenting awkwardness that had caused the justice of the peace to clear her throat before hurrying them through the document signing and sending them on their way to register the union so that Los Angeles County could do their part in making everything legal and official. So he could keep her safe.
His bride.
His wife.
How surreal was that?
Not the title so much as the way it had all gone down. Nothing like either of them had thought when they were young and in love. When he’d thought marrying her was kind of a foregone conclusion—not an if, but a when.
Looked like he hadn’t been wrong on that front.
Vivienne was quiet in the passenger seat of his tricked-out Range Rover, staring contemplatively out the window as he navigated the start-and-stop traffic, toying with the gaudy ring on her finger. But he knew it was a temporary lull. That her brain was churning, looking for dots to connect, ways to fix things.
He wanted to kiss her again. A deep kiss that would make her forget, for just a second, that they were no closer to finding their puppet master. A slow kiss that would stop her brain from spinning in circles and remind her that she wasn’t in this alone.
She’d gotten him out of prison, and he intended to keep her out in return. To finish his quest for revenge on whoever had blackmailed her into this debacle in the first place. Because if he’d doubted for even a second that he was being framed for this, the fact that she’d been dragged into the fray let him know that this had been an intensely personal attack.
“Can I ask you something?”
She straightened in the black leather bucket seat at the sound of his voice, but it took another second before she tore her gaze from the window and shifted it to him.
“Why didn’t you come to me? When you got blackmailed?”
She stiffened like he’d hit her with a cattle prod and looked away from him, staring straight ahead.
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