“What’s up, criminal?” Ian murmured into my hair, causing me to laugh in relief.
“You can take care of yourself, huh Kirsten?” Patrick mocked as we broke out of the group hug. “That’s the last time I believe a word my little sister says.”
I cuffed his upper arm. “Low blow, Patrick. You know this was a set-up.”
“Obviously.”
“Kirsten, you’re ice cold,” Ian said as he touched my forehead, frowning.
“Yeah, well, that holding cell wasn’t exactly the most comfortable of places, you know.”
“They didn’t mistreat you, did they?”
“I suppose apathetic neglect counts as mistreatment. But honestly,” I added quickly when it looked like both of my brothers would risk arrest themselves to kick up a fuss, “all I want to do is get the hell out of here. I suppose it’s too early for a burger…”
I glanced up at the clock in the police station lobby. It was just after nine in the morning.
“Considering we’ve all been up all night, I’d say now is the perfect time for a burger,” Patrick said, eliciting chuckles from both Ian and myself.
My eldest brother drove us to the nearest greasy burger place. Ian wrapped me up in his jacket when I couldn’t stop shivering in the car. It might have been late summer, but after spending my night in that holding cell in my tiny dress with the air conditioning blasting, it certainly didn’t feel like summer in Las Vegas.
Patrick ordered our food in the drive-thru, letting us eat to our hearts’ content in his car. This was unusual behavior for my typically uptight, cleanliness-obsessed accountant of a brother, but this was an unusual situation.
I couldn’t say I’d ever drunk soda for breakfast before, but I savored every bubble on my tongue as I soaked up the morning sun.
“Freedom feels wonderful.” I sighed happily after I’d eaten enough for someone twice my size.
“Freedom with limitations, little sister,” Patrick remarked, instantly souring my mood.
“Of course,” I muttered, “but how limited?”
“You can’t leave the city.”
“I worked that one out for myself.”
“You can’t be out of your apartment or the O’Leary family home after ten in the evening unless you’re with your attorney or a police officer.”
“Ugh…great. Anything else?”
Patrick grimaced as if he really, really didn’t want to tell me what came next.
“What is it?”
“You’re not allowed to work,” Ian eventually said. “You’re on unpaid leave indefinitely until the case is cleared up.”
“What?” This couldn’t be happening. My job was my life. I loved it. If I couldn’t work, then I’d probably go insane.
“Your boss didn’t want this, but the detective working your case demanded it. Given what’s happened, it’s…understandable.”
Understandable. Huh. I suppose it was if I thought about it rationally. But this was my life we were talking about. Rational didn’t quite cover it.
And yet there was nothing else I could do about it. Sighing, I said, “Just take me home, please. I’d kill for a shower.”
“Don’t let the detective hear you say that,” Patrick mused, clearly thinking he was hilarious.
“Oh yeah,” Ian blurted. “Rafe’s gonna defend you, like I said he would. He’s the reason we got you out on bail so quickly, so you should probably call him to say thank you.”
“A thank you can wait until I’m clean and out of this stupid dress.”
Ian raised his eyebrows.
I scowled.
“You know I don’t mean it like that, idiot brother.”
“I know, I know. You and your cleanliness. To think you constantly make fun of Patrick for the same thing.”
“That’s not fair,” Patrick said.
I waved the comment off. “There’s a marked difference between wanting a shower after spending the night in a police station and vacuuming my car three times a week. And on that note,” I said, sticking my tongue out when Patrick made a face of mock-outrage at my comment, “that’s my apartment. I’ll call you both later. Thank you so much for picking me up.”
“Any time, little sister,” Ian said as I opened the door and left Patrick’s car.
“Just do your best to make this the only time,” Patrick added with a smirk.
“You’re so funny. Bye, guys.”
“Bye.”
It was all I could do not to run up the stairs and fling myself into the shower the second I got through the door. Instead, I forced myself to put my clothes into the laundry basket, painstakingly removed my ruined make-up, combed through my hair and brushed my teeth. Only then did I allow myself to enter my roomy steam-shower, which in reality was probably big enough for three people.
I reveled in the heat of the water and scent of the coconut shampoo I lathered into my hair. It was bliss.
And it was cut all-too-short. I had barely washed out my conditioner when the buzzer to my apartment rang, startling the life out of me. I was tempted to ignore it, but whoever was at my door merely pressed on the buzzer again, this time more insistently.
Sighing, I turned off the water and wrapped a towel around me, preparing my best ‘I’m not in the mood for this’ face as I did so.
“If this is a damn insurance salesman again, then I swear to God—” I began as I opened the door, but my sentence got stuck in my throat.
It was Rafe.
It was just my luck he’d show up when I was dripping wet from the shower, soapy suds still clung to my skin—of which there was a lot on show. I sincerely regretted not spending an extra ten seconds looking for a bigger towel.
Rafe’s eyes traveled my body. While I’d been freezing earlier, his look created a sizzling heat that landed between my thighs.
He moved his eyes from my towel to my face. “Shit, sorry, Kirsten, I didn’t mean to catch you right out of the shower,” Rafe exclaimed, turning to leave.
“Technically, you didn’t since I was still in the shower when you buzzed,” I replied, smirking despite myself. “Come in, Rafe. We have a lot to talk about.”
I didn’t think I’d ever felt as awkward in my life as I did in the following moments, making coffee for the two of us in silence before handling Rafe a mug of the stuff. He remained standing as I sat down on my sofa.
“You can sit down, you know,” I said, attempting to smile even though I was exhausted. Rafe looked me up and down before he could avert his gaze.
“Are you going to put clothes on?”
“Absolutely not. I’m getting straight back into that shower as soon as you’re gone, Rafe. Unless you care to join me?”
“Kirsten…”
“I know,” I sighed. “No jokes. This is serious and all that.”
“It’s not fair on either of us to be making suggestive comments like that right now.”
“Oh, so what was last night? Just a blip in your self-control? I’m so sorry I caused you to undergo a moment of weakness.” I hated the snarky response that flew from my mouth, but dammit, that moment with him was the best part of my day.
“Kirste—”
“Don’t ‘Kirsten’ me, you dick,” I fired out defensively. “I’m exhausted. I just spent the night in a freezing police cell for a crime I didn’t commit—a crime that, even if it was only for a moment, you believed me to be guilty of, barely sixty seconds after you happily engaged in verbal foreplay with me. So don’t you dare take the moral high ground here.”
Ah, that seemed to work. Rafe collapsed beside me on the sofa, sighing heavily as he leaned his head back against a cushion and turned his head to face me.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know you are.”
“I don’t think you’re guilty at all.”
“I know that too.”
“So are you gonna let me defend you without throwing barbed comments my way every two seconds?”
I shrugged. “We’ll see
,” I said, smiling despite myself. I leaned my head against Rafe’s as I closed my eyes, not caring about my soaking wet hair dripping on him. When Rafe snaked his arm around my shoulders to pull me in closer, I barely smothered a noise of surprise.
“Five minutes,” he mumbled against my cheek. I could feel his breath on my skin as my heart rate rapidly sped up. “We get five minutes like this, and then it’s all business. Just five minutes.”
“That’s longer than we’ve had in years—are you spoiling me, Rafe Wilde?”
“Shh. Be quiet for once in your life and let us have this.”
“You ask for the impossible,” I joked quietly, but I dutifully remained quiet, nonetheless.
Neither of us pointed out when our five minutes was blatantly up, nor when it was closer to fifteen minutes or even half an hour. When we were nearing sixty minutes, however, I could feel myself drifting off and knew falling asleep wouldn’t be fair to Rafe.
Hating myself for doing so, I broke away from Rafe’s embrace, stretching my arms up in the air and yawning as I did.
“Jesus Christ, Kirsten!” Rafe suddenly called out as he pinned me back down to the sofa.
“What?” I asked, confused and excited in equal measure. I had imagined Rafe pinning me down plenty of times, but it had yet to happen in real life. Having the full weight of him on top of me, with his dark eyes boring into my own, was more than I could ever have hoped it would be.
“Your towel was falling down when you stretched,” Rafe murmured, his lips way too close to mine for comfort. “Do you have no self-awareness?”
I laughed. “Possibly not.”
“You’re going to make working together as difficult as humanly possible, aren’t you?”
I smiled “…possibly yes? Not intentionally.”
Rafe sat up from me, laughing uproariously as I rearranged my towel to preserve some decency. “Not intentionally. Of course. All you need to do is exist in the same physical space as me to make things difficult.”
“I guess I could put some clothes on to make it a little easier.”
“For the love of God, please do.”
I was barely aware of my surroundings as I rushed to my bedroom to throw on a little pair of shorts and an oversized T-shirt I used for pajamas. My heart beat way too fast. I knew my skin must have been flushed as well.
Clearly, Rafe and I couldn’t spend an hour together without us both losing our senses entirely.
It wasn’t going to be me who made working together difficult for Rafe. The opposite was true as well.
When I returned to Rafe’s side on the sofa, he’d pulled out a voice recorder and a notepad.
“I guess it’s down to brass tacks now, huh?” I asked, feeling my previous exhaustion return all at once.
Rafe smiled grimly. “Unfortunately so.”
He held my gaze, his eyes intent and interested. How I wished for nothing more than to have those eyes never leave mine.
“Now, tell me, Kirsten—what the hell happened last night?”
Chapter Eight
The Collins Vet Clinic was tucked away down a clean, quiet street unadorned with any of the usual trappings of Las Vegas. There were no neon, flashing signs, street performers or drunken idiots. I mean, it was barely noon, but that didn’t mean there weren’t a fair number of revelers completely and utterly wasted out on the streets already. Time did not exist in Vegas.
I had spent much of Saturday with Kirsten, grilling her on every little piece of information she could provide me with regardless of whether or not she thought it was inconsequential. After the way our day had started, I was worried we wouldn’t actually get any work done, but it turned into an incredibly productive meeting.
Kirsten had always been upfront and honest, so she wasn’t afraid to divulge information others would be reluctant to give in case it lowered people’s opinions of them. We both came from similar backgrounds. She knew I’d understand the context to anything she told me.
At the end of the day, Kirsten wasn’t even remotely involved in the charges placed against her. She was just about as separate from mob life as I was. The work that kept her somewhat related to that life was altogether much more legal and safe than the work I’d undertaken. She’d helped people. I’d covered up for people.
And therein lay the problem. There may have been someone she helped who wasn’t supposed to be helped. Maybe many people. My most prevailing theory was that somebody wanted Las Vegas’ resident underground mob doctor put away for good.
It was also possible Kirsten had been targeted simply to fray relations between the different mob factions as both Ian and I had originally assumed. I had to work from the angle that it was personal before I explored the idea that it was part of an over-arching plot. Ultimately, the one I was defending was Kirsten. It didn’t matter who was actually responsible, be it another person or an entire organization, just so long as I could prove Kirsten was the one who had been framed.
Which meant eventually my meeting with Kirsten came to a fruitless end. She couldn’t think of anyone who might have personal grounds to frame her. Luckily, or maybe unluckily for Kirsten, she had few friends. This would make my investigation far quicker than if she were a social butterfly, but I couldn’t help feeling a little sad that she lived for her job.
That’s precisely where I figured I’d most likely find the answers—at her job. So here I was, standing outside of the Collins Vet Clinic at lunchtime on a Monday, completely reluctant to enter the place.
I knew my hesitancy stemmed from purely personal reasons. Stepping into Kirsten’s workplace meant I would find out a lot more about her from her colleagues, and after spending years dutifully trying to ignore each other, I couldn’t help feeling like I was invading her privacy. Obviously, that was what I was doing—for the sake of her case—but I worried I’d end up asking questions that were entirely unrelated to defending her as her lawyer.
I sighed heavily. I had to trust my years of education and training as a lawyer. I could be professional. I had to be.
That would have been so much easier to do if Kirsten’s boss wasn’t Dean Collins.
The man stood by the reception desk when I entered his clinic, sorting out a prescription for a very grumpy-looking cat his receptionist was having trouble with.
“It’s an easy mistake to make, Grace, so no worries,” he said soothingly. The girl looked as if she had accidentally murdered someone rather than made a work error. “Just double check the measurements on the system. For some things it’s in metric, other times imperial; annoying, I know, but hell if I’m going near the program to see if I can change it.”
Grace laughed at Dean’s comment, which instantly put her at ease. Begrudgingly, I had to admit, what Kirsten had said was right. Her boss really knew how to charm the ladies. Maybe my initial assessment of him being after Kirsten was wrong.
Focus on your bloody job, Rafe, I scolded myself. Dean’s feelings for Kirsten only matter if he had cause to frame her. So…focus.
It was Rose, entering the reception area from an office, who noticed me first.
“Rafe!” she exclaimed, announcing my presence to Dean, who turned from the desk to smile at me. He looked tired and stressed, but the smile did an excellent job of masking both.
“We were wondering if you would show up today,” Dean said, gesturing towards his office. “Kirsten contacted me on Saturday, saying you were defending her. I’m assuming you wish to talk to the staff here?”
I nodded, wondering when Kirsten had contacted the man—I’d stayed pretty late talking with her, and she didn’t go near her phone. Were they close enough to be contacting each other in the middle of the night?
“If I could speak to you first, Dr. Collins, that would be great.”
“Dean is fine.”
Rose regarded the two of us curiously as we entered Dean’s office. I wondered why. It was only once the door was closed and the two of us were sitting down that the man spoke again.
> “So, Mr. Wilde, was it?”
“Rafe is fine,” I replied, echoing Dean’s sentiment from earlier.
“Rafe it is, then. Tell me, Rafe, what do you need to know?”
“Everything in an ideal world,” I said, earning a chuckle from Dean. “But more specifically, I’m assuming Kirsten has told you what she’s been charged with?” Dean nodded. “In which case, my first question would be whether any of your stocks of the following drugs have been lower than expected.” I handed Dean a list, but he shook his head before looking at it.
“We’re not missing anything,” Dean replied. “You think I’d be able to run a legitimate clinic here if I didn’t keep track of the most dangerous drugs kept on-site? Don’t be ridiculous.”
Ah, so the man had a prideful streak. Not unexpected, given how young he was to be running a clinic by himself.
“Do you mind if I ask how old you are?” I ended up wondering aloud. “To be running your own clinic so young—”
He cut through my question with a howl of laughter, running a hand through his hair as he did so.
“I’m really gonna have to take Kirsten’s advice to heart and put my I.D. up on the wall, aren’t I? Rafe, I’m thirty-nine in a few months. I’m not that young. I inherited this clinic from my uncle. He retired three years ago.”
I looked at the man, shocked. I had been sure he was my age. Thirty at an absolute push.
“You sure you’re not a vampire? Off the record, of course.”
“I’m quite certain I’m not. In any case, our stocks are fine, and Kirsten is being set up. I’m sure you’d worked that out for yourself, though.”
“Of course. How informed are you about her…extra clients?” I already knew the answer but had to ask. It would tell me how honest the man was if he was willing to admit to having special clientele.
Dean raised an eyebrow. “I only let her take them on when I’m here. I wouldn’t risk her safety—or that of the clinic—for anything. So you could say I’m well-informed.”
“Did you ever notice any of these clients holding a grudge against Dr. O’Leary, or did anyone come in looking for a previous client?”
Betting On Us (Wilde Love Book 3) Page 5
