by Ivy Layne
"Cynthia?" I prompted.
She looked up, biting her lip, one eyebrow raised. "Oh, no, it's fine. Smokey can stay. Don't worry about it."
Summer watched her employer, eyes narrowed. "Who are you texting?"
I was surprised at her tone. She was usually deferential to Cynthia. A smart move considering that Cynthia was used to the world fawning over her. She did not enjoy being challenged.
For once, Summer didn't seem to care. Cynthia turned her phone upside down and shoved it half under the side of her plate. "Nobody. Nobody you need to worry about. It's nothing."
For an Oscar-winning actress, she'd suddenly turned into a terrible liar. Summer appeared to agree. "Bullshit. Who are you texting?" When Cynthia opened her mouth to dismiss Summer's question again, Summer leaned forward and said, "Don't make me come over there."
Cynthia sighed. "Clint, okay? I've been texting with Clint."
"Is he trying to set up a meet?" I asked. Cynthia had been putting him off since the party. He had to be getting impatient. He hadn't attempted to get through the gates again, but eventually, he would.
"No. Well, yes, but he's trying to convince me that all the rumors are just rumors. That there was nothing going on in that picture with the girl, that he hasn't touched a drop of alcohol or anything since he left rehab. He said someone is spreading lies. Trying to drive us apart."
"And you believe him?" Summer asked.
Summer knew Clint Perry, had known him when he and Cynthia were happy together. Until he'd started drinking and cheating on Cynthia, she'd liked him.
Cynthia's shoulders slumped. She rubbed her thumb along the rim of her coffee cup, staring at the dregs staining the white china.
"I've believed him so many times. I'm tired of feeling like a fool. But when I talk to him—"
"He's been calling, too?"
Cynthia shot Summer a quelling look. Summer dropped it. She knew her limits.
"When I talk to him," Cynthia continued, her words wistful and sad, "he doesn't sound like he's lying. I don't know. I don't know what to do." She looked at me, entreating, "Can you find out if someone's spreading these rumors? If it's true?"
I was torn. Axel had an office in LA, and his team there knew the scene. Knew the players. Tracking down whoever was spreading these rumors—if they were rumors—wouldn't be too hard.
We're talking about celebrities, not super-spies.
If I was going to leave town for a few days, now was the time. Smokey wasn't going anywhere for seventy-two hours. My mother was safe, headed to Vegas with Axel. He had a lock on his city, and his place was a fortress. No one would get to her there.
We had Tsepov's unknown deadline bearing down on us. A deadline with no date to find an unidentified prize. The elder Tsepov, the one Emma had shot, never would have been so sloppy.
If the Russian actually wanted us to find what my father took, he might have told us what it was. And when he wanted it.
Fucking amateur.
That didn't mean he didn't have an army at his disposal. An amateur heading an army was more dangerous than a professional. We could have negotiated with his uncle. Worked something out. This guy—this guy was all bravado and ego. There was no negotiating with someone like him.
He was dangerous, but not so much that we had to hide in the castle until we neutralized him. I wouldn't let him cage us with his open-ended deadline.
On the other hand, Cynthia's planned visits with family and friends, the visits the party was supposed to spark, had never happened. With Clint lurking around, she'd stayed close to home. Isolated.
She'd come to Atlanta for peace, but the Cynthia I knew was social. If she resolved things with Clint once and for all, maybe she'd feel free to live her life again.
"This isn't the best time to leave town," I hedged.
Cynthia, sensing an opportunity, gave me a pleading look that would have been affecting if it weren't so practiced. "Evers, it would mean the world to me if you could do this. Really. The world."
"Define the world," I countered.
The sweetly pleading look melted away. Deadly serious, Cynthia said, "It means that if you can give me an answer, one way or another, I'll pay the original fee despite all of these interruptions in service."
Well, damn. She really wanted to know if Clint was telling the truth. After the break-in at the party and our trip to North Carolina, she'd negotiated me into taking a bath on the job. Going back to the contract price was a big swing.
We'd originally been on track to make a sweet profit. You don't get to be the premier security agency in the country by ignoring business. This job had gone sideways, but if a quick day or two in L.A. could salvage it from a red line item back to black it would be worth it.
Summer watched me with hopeful eyes. I didn't need to ask what she wanted me to do. I did anyway. "Are you okay if I go to L.A. for a few days?"
Below the tablecloth, she slid her hand up my leg, her pinky grazing my cock. "I'll miss you, but if you can find out what's going on with Clint it really would mean a lot."
My body at attention, I leaned over and pressed a kiss to her cheek. "Thanks," I said softly, my lips brushing her smooth skin.
"You two are so sweet I have a toothache. You know you owe me, right?"
Summer rolled her eyes at Cynthia. "Maybe. But I still remember you kissing him, so…"
Cynthia cocked an eyebrow. "Well, you weren't kissing him, and it's a crime to let a man like that go un-kissed."
Beside me, Summer let out a harrumph. Shooting me a dark look, she said, "He didn't deserve to be kissed."
I didn't like where this conversation was going. I stopped her mouth with mine. When her cheeks were flushed and she'd forgotten why I didn't deserve her kisses, I picked up my fork and dug into breakfast. I filled my stomach while I went over logistics in my head.
"Let me call Axel, see who he can set me up with out there. I can't be gone long, but I should be able to find something out and come back in a few days."
"Thanks, Evers," Cynthia said, relief easing the tension in her eyes. She turned to Summer, going over some video she wanted to shoot for her social media. Summer pulled out her phone, taking notes with one hand while she ate with the other.
I was going to miss breakfasts at Rycroft Castle over the next few days. Plate clean, I stood, telling Cynthia, "I'll get Alice working on a flight. I'll let you know what's going on as soon as I'm done."
Chapter Thirty-One
Evers
As I'd expected, Axel had exactly the right guy to help me out. His team in L.A. focused on celebrity protection details, and they knew everyone. Who was up-and-coming. Who was on their way out. Who had a secret drug problem. Who was sleeping with whose husband, or wife, or lover. Who was in the closet, and who was about to come out of the closet.
If there was a secret in Hollywood, Axel's guys knew it.
He offered to have them handle the investigation without me, but I'd promised Cynthia I'd do it personally. Griffen would stay at Rycroft in my place. With Axel in Las Vegas and Cooper holding down the fort in the office, Griffen was the only other person I trusted to keep the job under control and watch out for Summer.
An hour later, I was kissing Summer good bye and heading for the plane. Leaving Summer behind felt like cutting off a limb. We'd only just found one another again. I didn't want to go anywhere without her.
It would fade eventually, this feeling that I had to have her in arms’ reach. The faint, nagging fear that I was going to fuck it all up and lose her again. When we were together, I could fool myself into thinking we were solid. That we'd made it out the other side.
When I was alone, I remembered the way she'd thrown me out. The distance in her eyes in the safe room.
When I was alone, I remembered that I'd told her I loved her, and she'd never said it back.
I'd make it a quick few days. If it took more than that, I was passing the job off and coming home.
I'd planned on no more
than seventy-two hours. Not counting travel time, it took less then forty-eight.
Cynthia's rival for her upcoming film hadn't taken her loss of the lead role very well. She'd tried spreading rumors that Cynthia was old, washed up, and had a drug problem.
None of those had gained any traction.
When her attacks on Cynthia didn't work, she decided to go after Clint. With his history of addiction and infidelity, he was an easy target. It didn't take us long to track down the ingénue crawling all over him in those infamous pictures. A little persuasion and she'd spilled everything.
The life of an up-and-coming actress in L.A is expensive. Fake-it-until-you-make-it is tough when parts are thin on the ground. She needed the visibility to get cast, and without the right roles, her bank account had been running dry.
I didn't need the hint. Enough of a bribe—one I'd bill to Cynthia—and she was more than happy to go on record with the whole story. I promised her the recording would stay between us. She'd been desperate enough to take the risk.
Between her video confession and an audio recording of Cynthia's rival drunkenly admitting what she'd done, we had everything we needed. I was on a plane headed east an hour later, more than ready to leave LaLa land for home. For Summer.
We'd talked on the phone a few times while I'd been gone. Rycroft Castle had been quiet. Smokey was bitching and moaning about all the rules. No drugs. No getting drunk. Summer was at her wit’s end. He had less than twenty-four hours before I was throwing him out, and she was counting every minute.
When I got to Rycroft, I should have gone straight to Cynthia. She was the client, and I'd been in LA for her. Instead, I went hunting for Summer. Cynthia could wait.
As luck would have it, she and Summer were working together in the library. I stepped into the room, my greeting caught in my throat as my eyes fell on Summer. Two days and it felt like a lifetime.
The scuff of my shoe on the floor caught her attention, her blue eyes lighting with joy. She leapt out of her chair and threw herself into my arms. I didn't like being away from her, but if this was what I got on return, maybe it had been worth it.
Cynthia gave a sigh of impatience at our reunion and said, "Well?"
I released Summer and took the chair beside Cynthia, pulling my phone from my pocket. "I can't give you this video. I promised Annette I'd delete it as soon as you saw it, but she admitted that Meredith Porter bribed her to go after Clint. Meredith staged the whole picture, fed it to the paps, everything. Annette said she's also behind the rumors that Clint's been drinking again."
"That bitch. It's not my fault she wasn't good enough to get the part. What—"
"Do you want to see the video?" I asked, interrupting the tirade to come.
"Yes, I want to see the fucking video," Cynthia snapped.
I held up my phone and hit play. We were treated to a five-minute recording of Annette Hunt looking less than red-carpet-ready as she blubbered through her confession.
In photographs, she looked so sophisticated. Mature. On the video, it was easy to remember that she was barely more than a teenager. Still a kid, and in over her head with the far more savvy and experienced Meredith Porter.
I played the recording of Meredith's confession, lubricated by vodka, watching Cynthia's limpid green eyes grow shadowed and thoughtful. When the recording ended, Cynthia sat back. More to herself than to us, she said, "I need to talk to Clint."
Summer studied her with concern. "Are you going to give him another chance?"
Cynthia shook her head No but said, "Maybe. I don't know. I need to talk to him. I'm calling him now. When he gets here, I want the two of you nearby. Not in the room, but don't go far, okay?"
I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen Cynthia Stevens this uncertain. Even when she was young, before she'd left home to find fame and fortune, she'd been brimming with confidence. Determination.
I shook my head. "I'd rather be in the room, just in case—"
"No. Clint's not dangerous."
"Cynthia," I started, prepared to argue. She cut me off with a sharp shake of her head.
"No. Outside the door is fine. Not in the room. This whole situation has been embarrassing enough, I'm not having this conversation with an audience."
Clint must have been waiting for Cynthia's call. He had a room at The Intercontinental, not far away. Ten minutes later he was rolling through the gates in his rented sports car.
Now that he had the meeting he wanted, I expected him to be brash. Aggressive and demanding. He was none of that, thanking me for letting him in and staring at Cynthia the way a man dying of thirst looks at water. As if he were parched for her and only her.
Summer and I followed them to the parlor where Cynthia firmly shut the doors.
"Do you think—" I started.
"Shhh." She shushed me, holding up a finger. "I want to see if I can hear what they're saying."
I could have told her the doors were too thick for that unless they started yelling, in which case we'd be through them in a second. I didn't bother. Instead, I moved to stand beside her, sliding an arm around her waist.
I would have preferred Cynthia allow us in the room for security reasons, but I didn't mind a little time alone with Summer. I tried not to laugh as she pressed her ear to the door. Nothing. With a little grunt of annoyance, she pushed away from the door, whispering, "Be right back," over her shoulder as she disappeared down the hall. She came back a minute later with an old-fashioned crystal glass she must have grabbed from the bar. Pressing it to the thick door, she strained for a hint of sound.
Doing my best to keep the laugh from my voice, I said, "Nothing?"
She straightened, dropping the hand with the glass to her side. "Nothing."
Wandering to the terrace doors, she set the glass on a side table and stared out the window to the garden. I came up behind her, my arms sliding around her waist, my heart settling when she leaned into me, giving a low hum of pleasure.
"I missed you," she said under her breath. "I know you were barely gone, but I missed you."
"Me too. I didn't want to go."
"I'm glad you did, though. No matter what happens with Clint, she needed to know the truth."
Not sure it was the right time to get into it, I said slowly, "I don't travel for work as much as I used to, but I do travel. Sometimes I can take you with me, but—"
"I travel here and there, too," she said, turning in my arms and raising her face to mine. "We'll figure it out."
"Most of the time I can't talk about my work," I said, not knowing why I felt the need to lay it all out, show her all the pitfalls of being with me.
Summer shook with silent laughter. "I already know that, Evers. Considering my clients, sometimes I can't talk either." She reached up, taking my face between her palms. "Stop worrying. I know all the bad stuff. We're past it. Aren't we? Are there any other secrets you're hiding?"
"No more secrets," I promised, letting her draw my face to hers, my eyes sliding shut as she pressed her lips to mine. This was what I'd missed. Summer, her flowers and lemon scent, her gentle hands, her sweet mouth. Her open heart.
I kissed her, savoring her taste, the slow slide of her tongue as it danced with mine, the low sounds of pleasure humming in her throat.
I needed to keep one ear on the parlor door. There was staff wandering around, both Cynthia's and my own.
I didn't care.
I was a second away from tossing Summer over my shoulder and carrying her to my room when the sounds of footsteps and giggles reminded me where we were.
Two of the day maids crossed the hall carrying a vacuum and a bucket of cleaning supplies, both sets of eyes glued to Summer and me. Reluctantly, I released Summer, shifting to block her from their view as she swiped a thumb beneath her lip to clean up her smudged lip gloss.
"Oops," she said with an embarrassed giggle. Rising on her toes, she kissed the side of my jaw as she said, "I'll save it for later."
At the thought o
f what she was saving for later, I groaned. Two days had never seemed so long. I'd gone far longer without sex, but going without sex with Summer was a whole other ball game.
Putting a little space between us, she stepped to the doors, looking out into the garden again. I burned to close the distance but stayed where I was, willing my body to stand down. As much as I wished it were, this was not the time. We were both working, even if, for now, that meant standing and waiting.
Summer's eyes scanned the garden behind Rycroft with its manicured beds and bright flowers. "I kind of miss having a garden. It's the downside of a condo. No maintenance, but no yard for a garden."
I thought about the land around my house. It wasn't a ton. I lived in Buckhead, not in the country, but it was enough for a garden. I didn't say anything about that to Summer. I'd only just gotten her back. I didn't need to scare her off by asking her to move in. Yet.
There was time. Now that I had her back, we had time. Summer was studying the garden, lost in thought, and I was studying her—the swoop of her cheek, the curve of her ear, the shades of blonde threading her curls—when she stiffened, her eyes narrowing.
"Is that Smokey?" she asked, raising a hand to point through the glass at a figure moving along the wall on the west side of the property, coming through the trees, back toward the house. "What the hell is he doing?"
"I don't know, but we're going to find out." Keeping an eye on Smokey, I eased the terrace doors open and led Summer outside. We kept tight to the back of the house, staying mostly out of Smokey's range of vision. He kept moving until he reached the door set in the wall by the garage and began to tinker with the lock.
"Is he trying to get out?" Summer hissed. "I swear, I'm done. I am just done. All that stuff he admitted in the safe room was bad enough, but we offer to help him, and now he's trying to sneak out?"
"Or let someone in," I said, darkly. If that was his plan, there would be hell to pay. Before I could stop her, Summer, driven by betrayal and rage, called out, "Dad! What are you doing?"
