“Hi,” she said almost shyly as she slipped into the seat across from him. A few wavy strands of blond hair had escaped her ponytail and framed her face.
In the intimate space of the booth, his senses were heightened. The accidental brush of her knee against his almost undid his resolve to keep his hands to himself.
“This is a cute place,” she said. “I hope their burgers are good, I’m starving.”
“This isn’t a date, Wren.”
Her lips pursed. “I know that, but thanks for making yourself clear. I’m still ordering food, though.”
“I want to make sure we’re on the same page,” he said, signaling to a server. “This is work, nothing else.”
“Got you loud and clear, Captain,” she replied with more than a hint of sarcasm. “I bet you keep your employees on the straight and narrow.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Her eyes remained on the menu. “You’re a bit of a hard-ass when you’re in work mode.”
“Tough but fair, that’s my motto.”
“Yes, well, I’m sure that’s fine at the office.” She paused as the server took their orders. “But I’m not your employee.”
He resisted the urge to ask her how she classified their relationship. It wasn’t information that would help him right now. “So tell me how you know Kylie Samuels.”
“Gee, you’re not wasting any time, are you? Straight down to business.” She poured water into both their glasses, her hands shaking ever so slightly. “She’s an old friend. We grew up together.”
“And you were aware that she’d interned for a brief period under Sean Ainslie?”
“Yes.”
Wren’s entire demeanor had changed—normally, she had this relaxed, fluidity to her movement. Now she appeared stiff and jerky. She wore an expression on her face that was so closed off, she may as well have been wearing a bag over her head.
“Do you know why she finished up her internship early?”
Her hands knotted in her lap. “Not exactly.”
“I thought you were friends. It seems odd that she gave up an opportunity and returned home but didn’t tell you why...and now you’re here doing the exact same internship.”
“She refused to explain why she came back. She wouldn’t talk about it at all...” Her gaze was riveted on an imperfection in the table.
“Why do I feel like there’s a ‘but’ coming?”
“When she came home, she was all beat up.” Wren picked at the chipped laminate, her lips curling in anger. “She had a black eye, a busted eye socket, a broken wrist and bruises on her arms. Someone had really worked her over.”
Rhys’s stomach churned as he remembered the photos of Marguerite Bernard’s swollen face. “But she wouldn’t say who did it?”
“No. But it didn’t take much to put two and two together. Anytime I mentioned the internship she either burst into tears or started yelling at me to keep quiet.” When Wren finally looked up, Rhys saw a fire blazing in her eyes that was totally foreign. “I asked her if she’d gone to the police and she said no, because there was no proof.”
“Is that why you’re here?” The pieces of the puzzle started to click into place and Rhys didn’t like the final image that was coming together.
“Yes.”
“How did you get the internship?”
“Kylie and I had applied at the same time, but she got the job and I didn’t.” Her cheeks colored but she reset her shoulders. “Sean approached me after Kylie dropped out, and I thought it was the perfect opportunity to find out what had happened to her.”
“Were you the one who tripped the security alert for the storage room?”
She looked him square in the eye, chin tilted slightly. “Yes.”
“Have you accessed Sean Ainslie’s emails by using his log-in credentials?”
Sucking on her lower lip, Wren appeared utterly torn. Her brows crinkled and she bounced her leg in an agitated rhythm beneath the table.
“I want you to be honest with me,” he said.
“Yes. I accessed Sean’s emails.”
Shit. How on earth would he be able to explain that he’d been sleeping with the very person he’d been hired to catch? That he’d been too stupid and too naive to suspect her because she had an angelic face?
“Say something, Rhys,” she said.
“Were you spending time with me because you wanted inside information?”
* * *
WREN FELT THE sting of his question down to the very marrow of her bones. “No, of course not.”
Rhys sat like a hard, immovable lump of stone on the other side of the table. When the server arrived with their food a few minutes later, the young man looked awkwardly from one to the other. The tension must have been billowing from their table.
She’d just admitted to accessing her boss’s email without authorization. To the guy with the black-and-white morals. There was a high chance that her reasoning wouldn’t matter, that he wouldn’t listen to her plea.
But the truth was she’d grown to trust Rhys, and it was clear she wasn’t getting very far on her own. Obviously it would have been better to obtain proof before involving him, but the fact of the matter was that he was already involved.
She’d involved him the second they slept together.
And she didn’t want to lie anymore, not now that they were more than neighbors.
All she could do was hope that he was the good man she believed him to be. That he’d be able to look past her indiscretion to the bigger problem—Sean Ainslie.
“Did you know who I was when you moved into your apartment?”
“No,” she said, glancing at the burger she now had no appetite for. “You being my neighbor is a coincidence.”
His deep brown eyes were coldly assessing. “Did you sleep with me to make me trust you?”
A lump formed in her throat. “How could you even ask me that?”
“There’s so much you haven’t told me, I want to be sure.”
“I’m a painter, not an actress.” She pushed her fries around with a fork. “I can’t fake feelings any more than I can fake orgasms.”
It hadn’t sounded all that dangerous in her head but the moment she’d said the words aloud her stomach pitched. Feelings. What on earth did that mean and why the hell had she clued him in?
He appeared as baffled by her admission as she was. “You do realize that you’ve admitted to lying to me and now you’re claiming to have feelings for me?”
“It’s complicated,” she muttered.
“I’d say it’s more than complicated.”
“You know what? Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s incredibly simple.” Frustration roiled within her, but she couldn’t take it out on him. She’d done wrong, here. But if she could make him see it was all with good intention, he might help her. “I get that I’ve screwed up. I’m sorry for not being totally honest with you. I’m sorry that I let us cross a line knowing it could make things hard for your job. But I am not sorry that I’m here trying to get some justice for my best friend.”
“What did you think was going to happen, Wren?” He rubbed at the back of his neck, a crease forming between his dark brows. “That you would come here and play spy like you’re in a goddamn Hollywood movie? That you would magically find this evidence on your own and wrap everything up with a neat little bow?”
She tamped down the urge to argue with him. She needed him, needed to regain his trust. “Maybe.”
“If Sean did assault your friend, what did you think he would do to you?” His voice was getting harder, louder. “What if he hurt you the same way? What if you weren’t as lucky as your friend?”
That’s when she saw it. His feelings...for her. He was angry and terrified. For her.
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“I’m smart, Rhys. I know how to play him.”
“I don’t want to insult your intelligence, Wren, but what you’ve done is pretty damn stupid.” His fists clenched. “And dangerous...and possibly illegal.”
Cold fear dripped down her spine. “What happens now?”
“I don’t know.” His fingers dug deeper into the muscles of his neck. “But I do know you’re not going near Sean Ainslie until we figure it out.”
“I have to go to work. It’ll tip him off if I don’t. And I have to keep an eye out for Aimee.”
“Why?”
“She had bruises on her arm.” Wren popped a fry into her mouth and tried to force herself to eat, but it tasted like nothing. “Finger-shaped bruises. She said Sean had gotten rough with her, but when I tried to talk to her about it again today she clammed up and said she overreacted.”
He shook his head, the disgust evident on his face. “Did she say what caused him to get angry?”
“Not really. She said they were arguing about a painting. He wasn’t happy with what she’d done. Artistic differences, I guess.”
“That doesn’t seem like a reason for him to get physical.”
“Do you think men who hurt women have their brains wired properly?”
He grunted. “Point taken.”
“I’m convinced he’s hiding something in the storage room.” She gave up eating and instead pushed her food around on her plate. “That’s got to be the reason he freaked out and called your company when I tried to get in. He’s meticulous about making sure no one gets inside.”
“How so?”
“He gave me this big spiel on my first day about how it’s full of valuable paintings and that when we’re setting up for a showing, only he is allowed to get the paintings out. I wasn’t sure what to make of it at first—I mean, a lot of artists are eccentric and private, but he flipped out when he thought Lola was trying to get inside one day when she was mopping the floors.”
“Have you ever seen him go into the room?”
“No, he must wait until we’re all gone for the day. Or maybe he does it early in the morning.”
“Do you think he has any paintings that are worth a lot of money?”
Wren shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. I don’t think he sells as many paintings as he’d like people to believe. His style is...eclectic. But not in a good way.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s no common thread or general theme. A lot of artists will experiment and try new things, but in Sean’s work, I can’t even see an attempt to build upon a particular style or technique.”
“What’s he like as a teacher?”
“Pushy, talks a lot of shit that doesn’t mean anything.”
“What about the other girls?”
“They eat it up.” Wren shook her head. “They’re young and grateful that someone has given them an opportunity in an industry that’s so competitive. They believe he can turn them into wunderkinds.”
“That’s not the case?”
“Not from what I’ve seen. But maybe I’m just jaded and that’s affecting my view.”
Wren had worked with several different art teachers over the years. They’d all given her different advice that often clashed and contradicted. Art, she’d come to realize, was like cutting out a part of your soul and showing it to the world. It hurt when people rejected what you’d made because they were, in essence, rejecting you.
And the closer you got to painting something from deep within, the more likely you were to end up bleeding.
“Why do you say you’re jaded?” He looked genuinely confused.
“I’m not exactly the poster child for a successful career in the arts.” She leaned back against the booth and pushed her mostly untouched plate away. “I’ve had more success painting faces at county fairs than I have painting on a canvas.”
“You’re not giving yourself enough credit.”
“I am. I have to take some responsibility for what I painted and where it landed me.”
She’d spent many nights wondering why she’d left the paintings in a place Christian could easily find them. Why she’d thought it a good idea to paint such provocative things in the first place. Only they weren’t provocative, not really.
“How did you come to paint naked women?” Rhys asked, finally tucking into his meal.
“It happened by mistake, at first.” Wren smiled at the memory. “I was planning on a series of portraits of female farmers. I put up an ad on a rural community forum saying I was looking for models and I found Cassie. When she came to my house I had a chair set up for her and she just...stripped.”
“Without you asking?” A smile tugged at Rhys’s full lips.
“Yep, without any warning at all. I was totally gob smacked, but I didn’t know what to say...so, I painted her.” Wren tentatively reached for her plate and found her appetite returning. “She had this big scar that ran up the side of her leg from a farming accident. When she tried to hide it, I asked her if she would mind me painting it. By the time we were finished she said it was the first time she’d ever felt beautiful with her scar showing. She’d never had the courage to show it to anyone and that’s why she’d applied to be my model.”
“To get it over with?”
“Yeah. That’s when I knew what I was supposed to be painting. These women of all shapes and sizes would come to me and I would paint them as I saw them. Without their barriers or their masks or their shields. Just them and their natural beauty... Like how I painted you.”
“You didn’t know anything about me then,” he said.
“Don’t you ever meet someone and have a connection with them that defies logic? Like you see their truth.” The irony of her words wasn’t lost on her, but she wanted Rhys to understand how she felt. “I could tell you were a good person. I don’t meet a lot of people like that.”
“And I don’t have the connection with anyone else that I have with you...” Silence settled over the table. Rhys looked perplexed.
“But?”
“But that doesn’t mean I can ignore what you’ve told me tonight.”
Wren wanted to reassure him that she wasn’t an evil person. Sure, she seemed to make bad decision after bad decision...but it was all with good intention. That had to count for something, right?
“How long do you think Sean will keep hurting women if we don’t intervene?”
“We don’t have any proof he’s doing that.”
Her heart sank. Could he really turn a blind eye to Sean’s behavior? They didn’t have proof, sure. But Wren was certain they could find it if they worked together. At the very least they could get one of Sean’s victims to speak up—and maybe if one person confessed the others would follow.
“Are you going to turn me in?” she asked.
“I need to think on it, Wren. I’m in a really difficult situation here.” He seemed genuinely conflicted, and that made her feel even worse.
“But you agree that Sean is up to something, right? I know I’m not an angel, but I’m trying to figure out what’s going on so he doesn’t hurt anyone else.” She reached for his hand across the table. His skin was warm, soft, but he didn’t embrace her. Didn’t give her anything back. “Please, Rhys. Give me a little more time. I’ll try to get Kylie and Aimee to talk. I’m on your side.”
“My side?” He pulled his hand away from her grip. “You do realize who hired me in the first place, right? My side is supposed to be Sean’s side...which is most definitely not where you are.”
“But you’re investigating him, aren’t you? That’s why someone from your company called Kylie to ask questions. If you were just helping Sean with his security, you wouldn’t be snooping around and talking to ex-employees.”
“We’re doing w
hat we were hired to do, which is find out who’s been trying to get access to Sean’s information and why.” He pulled his wallet out of his pocket and tossed a few bills onto the table. “And now I know.”
“So that’s it?” Wren pushed up from the table and followed him out of the diner and into the parking lot. “You don’t care that he might be beating these women?”
Rhys whirled around suddenly and she almost face-planted into his chest. “That’s the reason I haven’t made up my mind on how I’m going to handle this yet.”
So it had nothing to do with her. The realization stung, but then she’d known from the beginning that Rhys had a very strong moral code.
Shoving her pain aside, she steeled herself. “I want him to pay for what he did to my friend and I want to make sure it doesn’t happen to Aimee, either. Or the next unsuspecting woman he hires.”
“I want that, too,” he said.
“Then let me help. I’ll get the girls to talk, I’ll keep an eye on Sean at the gallery and I can call you if anything suspicious is going on.” She wrapped her arms around herself, praying that he would give her this chance. “Please.”
“Fine. I’ll keep this under wraps for a couple of days, but you have to promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”
“Don’t you mean, anything else stupid?”
“I mean it, Wren.” His features were hard; his eyes gave nothing away. “I don’t want you to be the next person he hurts. I want to figure this out, but it’s not worth risking your safety. You call me the second anything shady happens, okay?”
“I promise.”
For a man who’d sworn that he wasn’t protecting her, he seemed very set on making sure she kept out of harm’s way.
As she stood in the parking lot of the diner, watching Rhys get into his car, she vowed that she would fix things with him. If only she could find evidence that Sean was the bad guy here, then maybe he’d forgive her for lying.
12
WREN DIALED KYLIE’S number as she walked home. It would do her good to stretch her legs before the sun went down; fresh air always seemed to create space in her mind when she felt jumbled up.
A Dangerously Sexy Secret Page 13
