A Dangerously Sexy Secret

by Stefanie London

  She shrugged, seemingly unaware of the questions her words had stirred. “Whatever works. I’d rather get out there today and keep this guy onside. He sounds like a bit of a control freak.”

  “Let’s keep our insults about the client to a minimum, shall we?” Rhys pushed up from his chair and stuck his phone into his back pocket.

  “Sure thing, boss. Whatever you say.” Quinn grinned at him as they fell into step.

  After a quick pause at her desk so she could collect her things and confirm with the client that they would now be coming to complete the site visit, they were off.

  “This will be fun. We haven’t had an excursion together in ages.” Quinn had a spring in her step as they walked through the office.

  “That’s because you’re annoying.”

  He didn’t mean it, but he and Quinn had that kind of relationship. There were no filters, no walking on eggshells. She was one of the first people he’d hired when he’d started as IT manager four years ago. They’d developed a deep mutual respect. She was whip smart and loyal to the bone, two qualities that were sorely lacking in the world.

  “I’m annoying?” She pressed her hand to her chest and he noticed a small, heart-shaped ring on her finger. “Those are mighty words coming from Mr. Spreadsheet himself.”

  He ignored the dig. “What’s with the ring? I’ve never seen you wear anything that didn’t have a skull on it.”

  Her cheeks turned hot pink. “It was a gift.”

  “Are you engaged?”

  “No.” She laughed as if that were a ridiculous notion, but her voice sounded tight and a little strange. “It’s just a ring.”

  “A ring from your boyfriend.” He nudged her with his elbow and she immediately swatted him. “Hey, I’m not judging. I’m happy you’ve found someone who puts up with you.”

  “He’s man enough to handle me.” Her expression turned serious as they entered the elevator. “I know you two didn’t get off on the right foot, but he’s it for me. I love him.”

  Rhys had been forced to hire Aiden because he was friends with the boss, Logan Dane. Given Rhys’s feelings about hard work and the need to prove oneself, it hadn’t been a great start to their working relationship.

  “You’re getting all mushy on me, Dellinger,” he joked.

  “It’s true. He’s a good guy, Rhys. I want you to respect him.”

  Rhys didn’t point out that respect had to be earned instead of given out like candy. But Quinn was practically family to him, so he would keep his feelings to himself and take the high road. He always took the high road.

  “I do respect him. He’s on my team now so I’ll treat him the same as I treat any other employee.”

  She grinned. “Tough, but fair.”

  “That’s my motto.”

  “I appreciate it.” She laid a hand on his arm, the pink stone in her ring glimmering. “Honestly.”

  He cleared his throat. “For what it’s worth, you deserve to be happy.”

  “So do you, boss. Why don’t you ever seem to have any ladies hanging around?”

  Probably because Rhys kept his work life and his love life totally separate. He’d never believed in mixing the two, though he accepted that not everyone agreed with him on that.

  But that didn’t mean he could avoid the little stabs of envy he got watching his friends pair up and find happiness. Maybe it was old-fashioned, but he wanted that stability. He wanted a woman to come home to, wake up next to. To make him feel like he was valued. Needed.

  “This is not appropriate conversation for a manager and his employee,” he said, reminding himself that the goal right now was to have fun with a woman and not worry about the future.

  “Stick-in-the-mud,” she grumbled.

  She might be right, but right now Rhys didn’t have anything that he wanted to share. Especially not with being so occupied by Wren and her painting. His whole body hummed as she drifted back into his mind. There was no way he’d be able to forget what he’d seen, so he’d just have to stage a meeting with her to clear the air. And maybe fulfill a few fantasies...

  4

  “YOU’RE AVOIDING SOMETHING, WREN.” Sean Ainslie’s voice cut into Wren’s thought process.

  Her brush hovered over the same patch of blank canvas that she’d been attempting to start work on for the last half hour.

  “Avoiding something?” She put the brush down onto her workstation and looked up. “What makes you say that?”

  His eyes swept over the lackluster canvas. A few strokes of color decorated one of the bottom corners but it was clear she had no direction. She hadn’t sketched anything out, hadn’t planned what the painting would look like. Hell, she couldn’t even legitimately claim that she was too swept away by her Muse to do any of the preparatory work.

  She had nothing, and as a result, the painting was nothing.

  Oh, it’s something all right. It’s a hot freaking mess, is what it is.

  “I saw so much inspiration in your portfolio, Wren. So much...” His hands fluttered in the air in front of him. “Passion. Creativity. Your paintings were bold and vibrant. This...” His hands dropped down to his sides. “I don’t know what this is. Do you?”

  “I’m a little blocked,” she admitted.

  Every time she tried to touch the paintbrush to the canvas she pictured Rhys’s expression when he’d looked at that painting. The memory filled her with a strange mélange of excitement and shame, anticipation and disgust. Part of her wished that she’d let him stay. If for nothing more than to see where they would have ended up. Visions of his deep brown skin and warm eyes filled her mind.

  “Just paint whatever pops into your head right now.” Sean touched her shoulder and she jumped, startled as she reached for her brush almost involuntarily. “Whatever image is in your mind now, paint it. I want you to get over this hurdle, Wren.”

  Biting down on her lip she shut her eyes and let the memory of Rhys gazing at the painting wash over her. His full lips, the wicked way they’d parted as his eyes had widened. The slight flare of his nostrils.

  She started mixing paint as she let her mind wander. His pupils had grown as he’d looked at her canvas, his breath stalling in his throat. Her life had contained few moments as electric as that, as intensely intimate and vulnerable. Wasn’t that the purpose of art? Laying yourself bare?

  Being open and receptive?

  But that’s how she’d been hurt before. With her heart so open and unprotected, it was ripe for the picking. Her fingers tightened around her brush as she stopped midstroke. The faint sketch of a man’s face—the high points of his cheeks, the rough contours of his lips and the strong angle of his jaw—filled the canvas.

  People can only hurt you when you let them. So don’t give them the opportunity.

  Her hand hovered again, the moment lost like steam into air. Fear had crept back in and chased inspiration away. Sighing, she threw the brush down into the palette, flicking sienna paint across the carefully mixed palette of earthy flesh tones.

  It was useless. She was useless.

  Sean opened his mouth to say something but they were interrupted when Lola poked her head into the room. “Sean? I’ve got the security people from Cobalt & Dane here to see you.”

  “Tell them I’ll be out momentarily,” he said. As Lola disappeared he turned back to Wren. “I want to see a complete painting next week. The whole point of you being here is to work on improving your art. I can’t help you with that if you don’t produce anything.”

  “I understand.”

  “If you’re not able to do that I’ll have to find another intern. It’s not fair for you to take a valuable position in my program if you’re not going to do the work. There are plenty of other artists who would eagerly step into your place.”

  The
words stung but she kept her face neutral. “I’ll do better, I promise.”

  When Sean left the room, Aimee turned from her station and offered a sympathetic smile. “It’s not easy to be creative on demand, is it?”

  The genuine empathy caused moisture to rush to Wren’s eyes, but she blinked the tears away. She wasn’t the kind of girl to let her pain show; she locked it all away where no one could see how much she allowed other people’s words to cut her.

  “No,” she admitted. “It’s not.”

  “You just have to give yourself permission to be crap,” Aimee said.

  “That flies in the face of every piece of advice I’ve ever received.” Wren frowned at her canvas as she picked up her brush.

  Her whole life she’d told herself she needed to be incredible, that she needed to be “the best.” That’s why it’d hurt so bad when Kylie had initially been chosen over her to gain a place in Ainslie’s internship.

  If she couldn’t be the best, then her parents would never consider her art as anything but a hobby. But if her talent was honed and she pushed herself hard, they might believe in her.

  Giving herself permission to be crap was laughable.

  “Hear me out.” Aimee put her brush down and flicked her long blond ponytail over one shoulder. “I can almost guarantee you’re psyching yourself out of this painting. You keep thinking that no matter what you do it’ll never be enough, right?”

  “Well, not exactly...”

  “But close enough?”

  Wren huffed. “Maybe.”

  “So give yourself permission to paint something no matter how crappy it is. Better at this point to have a crappy painting than no painting at all.” She folded her arms over her apron and smiled with an air of smugness. “Trust me, it’ll get the creativity flowing again.”

  Maybe she had a point. If Wren failed Sean’s ultimatum, it would put a swift end to her mission. Better to give him a mediocre product rather than a blank canvas. He might kick her out of the internship anyway, but she could still have a chance. Whereas if she continued on the path she was on, she’d definitely be out.

  Wren sucked in a breath and touched her brush to a shade of burnt orange. Perhaps painting Rhys would help get him out of her head. Then she could kill two birds with one painting.

  * * *

  RHYS FOUND HIMSELF tuning out as the client went on a diatribe about how underappreciated artists were. Judging by Quinn’s glazed-over eyes, she was struggling to pay attention, as well.

  “Why don’t we talk through the security incidents you mentioned over the phone, Mr. Ainslie?” Quinn suggested tactfully. “You said there was some unauthorized access to your storage room...?”

  “Right.” Sean Ainslie narrowed his dark brows and interlaced his fingers. “I have a storage room where I keep all the paintings that aren’t on display. They’re very valuable, you see.”

  “Of course.” Quinn nodded, one hand fiddling with the pink ends of her braid. “What alerted you to the break-in?”

  “The thief didn’t actually get into the room. The incorrect pin code was entered three times and I have my system set up to alert me when that happens. I had to reset it the following day. I questioned the staff here but no one has owned up to it.”

  “So was anything stolen?”

  “No. Nothing. But I think the culprit may try again, so I’d like to take some preventative measures. I’ve been a customer of Cobalt & Dane for quite a few years now, but I’ve never had an incident this severe before.”

  “I assume you’ll be happy to give us access to your security-camera footage,” Rhys said.

  Sean looked sheepish for a moment. “There isn’t any.”

  “You don’t have security cameras?” Rhys resisted the urge to raise a brow. “Or the footage isn’t accessible?”

  “There are no cameras.”

  Rhys’s suspicions were instantly roused. What kind of person would store a bunch of valuable paintings in a room with a high-tech locking system and then not have security cameras? It didn’t make sense.

  “Hasn’t someone from Cobalt & Dane advised you that a monitoring system for the gallery would be a good idea?”

  “I don’t like the idea of having cameras on my employees,” he explained. “I trust these girls, and the idea of having cameras on them felt a bit 1984.”

  Quinn cast a glance to Rhys, which confirmed that she also wasn’t buying his story. “Okay,” she said slowly. “You also mentioned an email breach...?”

  “I was looking for an email in my inbox the other day but I found it in the deleted folder. I definitely didn’t delete it. I think someone has been accessing my emails, as well.”

  “Quinn can have a look through the email security logs and see if there’s any strange activity,” Rhys said. “Do you have any idea what this person might be after?”

  “Not a clue.” Sean shook his head, but there was a guardedness to his expression that didn’t seem to match his words. The guy was hiding something; Rhys was sure of it. “All my paintings are valuable, but there isn’t one that’s worth significantly more than the others.”

  “Try to think if there’s anything in particular a thief might want. It might not be a painting. It could be information. We strongly recommend that you install cameras. It will be hard for us to assist you in keeping this place secure if there isn’t anything for us to monitor. In the meantime, it might be worthwhile for us to have a chat with your employees. I understand you’ve already talked to them, but it would be good for us to go over anything that they might have seen or heard.”

  “Of course.” Sean motioned for them to follow him back out into the gallery.

  “You can take the lead in talking to the staff,” Rhys said to Quinn as their footsteps echoed through the spacious gallery showroom. “If you get stuck I’ll jump in.”

  “Great.” Quinn nodded, lowering her voice as they let Sean walk ahead. “We should debrief when we get back to the office.”

  “Agreed.”

  After spending a few minutes with a dark-haired woman named Lola, who appeared genuinely shocked that anything was amiss, they headed past Sean’s office to the studio.

  “My other two interns are in here,” Sean said as he rounded a corner into an airy space lit with streaming natural sunlight. “Aimee and Wren, this is Rhys and Quinn. They’re here to ask a few questions and I expect you both to give them whatever they need.”

  Rhys’s chest clenched when he caught sight of Wren, her golden-blond hair piled messily on top of her head and a streak of dark orange paint on her cheek contrasting against her fair skin.

  What a coincidence.

  Her blue eyes widened in mild panic as her lips formed an O shape. No sound came out.

  “I need to make a phone call,” Sean said. “I trust you two will be fine to talk with the girls?”

  “Quinn, why don’t you talk with Aimee in one of the other rooms and I’ll stay in here with Wren,” Rhys said, his voice smooth and unflustered. He knew exactly how to sound in charge—the product of years of faking it until he made it.

  “Sure thing, boss.” Quinn introduced herself to the other intern and they left him alone with Wren a minute later. An easel and canvas partially obscured his view of her.

  “Well, this is quite a surprise,” Rhys said, keeping his distance. The last thing he wanted to do was spook her, especially given how their last encounter had ended.

  “You’re telling me,” she said, her hands knotting in front of her. She wore a long flowing dress colored with swirls of pale blue and purple. The thin straps left plenty of skin visible. A simple silver chain held a piece of roughly cut blue stone just below her bust. “What are you doing here?”

  “We’re looking into a few security concerns for your boss.”

  “Oh
?” Her tone and expression gave nothing away.

  “There was a failed attempt to access the storage room as well as suspected email hacking.” He leaned against the wall and folded his arms across his chest.

  “I don’t know anything about that.” The response was too automatic. Defensive.

  “That’s okay. We’re going to be taking some preventative measure to ensure it doesn’t happen again.” He inched closer and noticed her body tense up. “Is it okay if we talk? I can bring Quinn in, if that would make you more comfortable.”

  “No, that’s fine.”

  “What are you working on?” He thought he’d start with something easy, something nonthreatening. But the second he took a step forward she visibly pulled back, her body language screaming at him not to come closer.

  Maybe he’d misread the situation when they had had dinner together.

  “It’s no good.”

  “I’ve seen your work, Wren. I’m sure it’s incredible.” God, who had treated her so badly that she thought so lowly of herself? Of her work?

  “You seem to have a lot of blind faith in my abilities,” she said, her hands wringing in her lap.

  “Well, I’m no expert but I know what I like.” He inched closer.

  “It’s not finished,” she said with a note of resignation. Her eyes lowered to her lap and he peered around the edge of the canvas.

  The image struck him. It wasn’t more than a collection of rough strokes, lacking the depth and shading that she’d no doubt add later on. But the image was unmistakable. He recognized his own deep brown eyes and broad nose, the warm tone of his skin and the heavy shadow along his jaw.

  Words eluded him.

  “You weren’t supposed to see this,” she said, pushing up from her stool.

  “That’s the second time you’ve said that to me.” He tore his eyes away from his own image.

  “I don’t know which one was more embarrassing,” she admitted, folding her arms across her chest. “But in any case, you’re not here to discuss my work. So ask me what you need to ask me.”