“Sounds like they’re having a dinner party tonight,” Sunday said, glancing through the rest of the email. “And Lila was hoping for backup.”
Adeline wandered back into the main area of the office. “What’s up?”
“Lila is asking Olivia to come to a dinner party tonight,” explained Sunday. “Apparently, she would feel more comfortable if one of us was there. She said that Rhys would be there, and Olivia could easily pose as his guest.” Adeline snorted. “What the hell is attending a snobby dinner party going to do for the case?”
Sunday shrugged. “Unclear, but it might provide us with some more thorough insight on how Dr. Bannon functions in social situations. It’s kind of funny, though. It’s almost like Lila is trying to set up Olivia and Rhys on a date.”
Olivia balked and nudged Sunday aside so that she could read the email properly.
I do hope it’s not a huge overstep, but I was thinking that it would be a good idea if Olivia accompanied Rhys to the dinner party. He’s so eager to help, and it would really comfort me to have both of you there. Drake gets even more egotistic at events like this, and the aftermath is always so exhausting…
“She isn’t playing matchmaker,” Olivia told Sunday with an eyeroll. “She’s just scared.”
Adeline snickered. “Maybe.”
Olivia placed her hands on her hips. “What’s with the sarcasm?”
“I think we all noticed the tension between you and Rhys yesterday in the conference room, Liv,” Adeline said. “Including Lila.”
In response, Olivia squirmed and moved away from the computer, taking another swig of her coffee and busying herself with tidying up the paperwork on the coffee table nearby.
“There’s no tension between me and Rhys,” Olivia argued. “We barely know each other.”
“Perhaps, but the way he looked at you, it was pretty obvious he wanted some tension between you,” Adeline countered with a pronounced smirk. “Plus, don’t act like you’re not attracted to him.”
“Literally nothing about this case has anything to do with my attraction to Rhys. If there is any kind of chemistry between me and our client’s brother-in-law, it is because we both want what is best for Lila.”
Sunday exchanged a loaded glance with Adeline, their eyes twinkling with amusement.
“Whenever you get defensive like that, it usually means we’re right.” Sunday chuckled. “But, regardless, I do think it might be a good idea for you to accept this invitation. We can wire you up, and you can observe Dr. Bannon in his natural habitat. Get a good look at how he behaves around his wife and family and friends in public.”
“Don’t you think it might be a little weird for him to see one of his patients show up at his house for a party?” Olivia asked.
“That’s where Rhys comes in,” Adeline responded, sitting on the couch and yanking out her phone. “Last session, you mentioned to Dr. Bannon that you met a guy. That guy could be Rhys. I think it would be interesting to see what Drake thinks of you being attracted to his identical twin. Their relationship is strained already, and it might be enough to push him further in his attempts to control you in your next session. Did you say that Rhys told you that Drake always wanted to be the favorite? Well, there you go.”
Olivia groaned. She hated it when Adeline made sense like that. Sunday, too. Accepting Lila’s invitation to attend the dinner party with Rhys would not only comfort their client, who was paying thousands of dollars for their services, but it would also give Olivia a chance to get an inside look on the life of their target, which wasn’t always a guaranteed aspect of the cases they worked. Furthermore, Adeline was right when she said that Dr. Bannon seeing her and Rhys together might push him into action. “I just don’t understand why Rhys needs to be involved in this,” Olivia grumbled. “I understand that he cares about his sister-in-law and that he’s a huge source of support for her, but it’s always risky to involve a client’s family member like this.”
“Well, in this case, it will make our job easier,” Sunday offered with a shrug. “I think he’s nice. This isn’t really something we’d come up with on our own, but didn’t we come in today to strategize? It kind of seems like this opportunity fell into our lap.”
Adeline nodded. “I don’t think there’s any harm. Worst case scenario, you spend an evening with Rhys and Lila is comforted by her hired investigator’s presence.”
“Yeah, and we could wire Rhys up, too,” Sunday added. “I doubt there’s anything that we could really gain from him, given that he’s not close with Drake, but it would be useful to have a second set of ears there. It’s not like we can put wires on Lila, just in case Dr. Bannon caught her with them.”
“Fine, fine, fine.” Olivia sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.
She was, yet again, regretting pulling the short straw this time around. Despite the fact that their cases almost always involved difficult relationships, they rarely had to pose as someone’s date or otherwise seduce a target. It figured that, in the rare situation that it was part of the strategy, Olivia was the one to lead the case. She was perpetually single, and the girls were clearly very excited to create some kind of connection between her and Rhys.
“Great.” Adeline grinned. “Why don’t you give Rhys a call then?”
Olivia
“All right, Rhys, strip it off,” Adeline ordered.
Olivia’s sighed at the sound of her friend’s playful command as she straightened out the wires on the table. It was early evening, and Rhys had arrived to get wired up alongside Olivia. When she called him that morning and asked him if he wanted to participate, he enthusiastically agreed. Apparently, Lila already mentioned it to him, and he was practically waiting by the phone for the offer to dabble in espionage.
Out of the corner of her eye, Olivia watched as Rhys unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged it off his shoulders. His toned chest and abdomen rippled, and his tattooed arms flexed as he rolled his shoulders.
“Oh, you have more tattoos than I thought,” Olivia remarked.
Rhys smirked at her. She was determined to keep her eyes trained on his gaze despite how desperate she was to rake her eyes over his form. She’d already seen how gorgeous his body was from his social media pictures, but it was an entirely different story in real life.
“I’m hoping to get a back piece soon,” he replied. “When I was a kid, I knew that I wanted to be covered in tattoos. I like that our skin is like a blank canvas. Tattoos are a cool way to express our individuality, you know?”
“Sure,” she said, keeping her tone casual.
Rhys cocked his head to the side. His dark eyes glittered with a playfulness that consistently made Olivia’s stomach flip.
“Do you have any tattoos?” he asked her.
Olivia tugged apart two wires that were tangled together, perhaps a little more roughly than necessary.
“Nope.”
“Well, if you ever decide you want one, the artist I go to is fantastic,” said Rhys.
“Cool. Hey, Adeline. The wires are ready for you,” Olivia said.
However, when she turned, Adeline was nowhere to be found. While Olivia didn’t need Adeline to be the one to tape Rhys up, she didn’t want to put her hands on him. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep her cool.
Adeline’s heels echoed in the next room over. “Sorry, Liv! Can you do it? My hands are tied.”
Adeline was clearly enjoying the fact that Rhys was standing half-naked in front of Olivia. Similarly, Melanie was looking incredibly busy in the kitchenette as she took stock of the mugs in the cupboard for no reason at all. Sunday’s eyes were glued to her computer screen, feigning shrewd focus.
No points for subtlety for three of them. Olivia sighed, telling herself to get a grip, and turned back around to face the bare-chested man.
“Okay,” she told him. “Be still, and I’ll attach these.”
She approached. Rhys was quiet, watching her with an intense gaze as she fixed two of the wires to
his chest with tape. His muscles flexed under her touch, and his skin was so warm and smooth that it took every ounce of willpower for Olivia not to touch him any more than necessary.
“Your hands are cold.” He chuckled quietly. His voice was low and intimate, just loud enough to speak with her and not be overheard by the others.
“Sorry,” Olivia replied at a normal volume, forcing her expression to remain impassive. She wrapped the wires around his back and taped them to the base of his spine. He had dimples in his lower back, which Olivia found simultaneously cute and sexy.
“Do you do this often?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at her.
“No, honestly,” Olivia said. “I mean, I do work with surveillance gear often, but it’s usually on myself. If we ever have to wire up someone else, Adeline typically takes the lead.”
“Well, you seem pretty skilled at it,” he said. Olivia swallowed and avoided his gaze. She hoped that he didn’t notice the blush on her cheeks as she checked to make sure the wires were in place before hooking up the rest of the equipment.
“Well, it is my job.”
Behind her, the girls remained decidedly uninvolved. Olivia was definitely going to give them a piece of her mind later. Their efforts to give her a moment alone with Rhys were obvious and annoying.
“You’re very good at your job.” He grinned. “I mean, I don’t know much about this stuff, but it definitely seems like you know what you’re doing.”
“Thanks,” she said, keeping her voice cool despite the fact that his compliments caused her heart to soften. It sounded as if his admiration was genuine. “So, this little mic box will hook into your waistband. You’ll want to hide it under your shirt or your suit jacket.”
“Thank you,” Rhys told her, accepting the device from her and clipping it into the waistband of his trousers as instructed. “This is so cool. Thanks for giving me the chance to help Lila out. Honestly, I’ve felt so useless these past few years, watching her struggle but not being able to really do anything to stop my brother.”
Olivia blinked, surprised by the vulnerable admission.
“Well, hopefully, we’ll be able to make some progress after tonight,” Olivia said. “Um, anyway, Sunday will be the one listening in to your mic. There’s no need to do anything out of the ordinary. In fact, it’s best if you act as normal as possible. Really, the only reason we’re wiring you up is so the girls can pick up as much information from the party as possible. You know, whispered gossip or commentary that one of us might not otherwise catch.”
“Sounds good,” Rhys said with a nod. “Can I put my shirt back on now?”
Olivia wished he didn’t have to, but then she was embarrassed for thinking that.
“Please do,” she said, tossing his shirt at him and walking away. Even if she wasn’t totally unbothered by his sexiness, she could at least pretend to be.
After all, she was convinced there was no way that Rhys was as attracted to her as she was to him. She saw the kind of women that he was into from his social media accounts. She wasn’t the kind of girl who would wear a tiny bikini, partly because she barely had the chest to fill something like that out, but also because Olivia was a modest person at the heart of it.
It annoyed her that she wished she were different. That she were closer to Rhys’s type. She told off Adeline for being inappropriate about their client’s brother-in-law, but Olivia knew she wasn’t very good at walking the walk.
Deep down, she was excited to spend the evening with Rhys, even if it was all a ruse in the heart of the lion’s den.
Rhys
“Wow, I didn’t realize the house was this big,” Olivia whispered as she and Rhys approached the sprawling front lawn of the luxurious condo in downtown Orlando.
“Yeah, it is pretty nice, huh?” Rhys replied with a chuckle. “For all my brother’s shortcomings, he has excellent taste.”
“Is your place like this?” Olivia asked him.
“No, nothing like this.” He laughed. “But it’s decent. Smaller and filled with less expensive furniture. My brother makes more money than I do. Maybe I should have chosen a more lucrative career.”
“Money isn’t everything,” Olivia replied simply as her heels crunched in the gravel walkway that led up to the grand French doors of the condo. She was dressed in a modest frock, chosen specifically so that she could look the part of the woman Dr. Bannon believed her to be. It was deep burgundy, and though it hugged her slender frame, it had a high neckline and low hemline.
“I wholeheartedly agree,” Rhys said. He wished he could see the kind of outfit that the real Olivia would have dressed in. She looked good in what she had on, but something told me that it was far more conservative than she would have normally worn. Rhys tucked her into the crook of his elbow as they walked through the entrance together. Olivia flinched at his touch, but she quickly relaxed beside him. It made him think that she either didn’t touch men often, which found unlikely given how stunning she was, or that he made her nervous. While the thought amused him, he also wanted to keep his ego in check. A woman as smart and career oriented as Olivia was would never in a million years be interested in a guy like him.
Lila was standing in the high-ceiled, marble-floored foyer. She looked the picture of the perfect wife, smiling like a queen and greeting everyone with equal warmth.
“Rhys.” She grinned in welcome. Her eyes sparkled as she turned to Olivia and pretended as if she’d never seen the woman before. “Who is this?”
Rhys fought the urge to smirk. “This is my friend, Olivia Vinning.”
“Welcome,” Lila said to Olivia, shaking her hand delicately and glancing between the two of them. “Thank you for coming.”
“Of course,” Rhys replied. Lila was nervous about most social events that Dr. Bannon held nowadays because she was who had to deal with the lingering effects of his ego when the party was over. “I wouldn’t miss my big brother’s dinner party.”
“Big brother?” Olivia asked with a confused frown.
“Just by two minutes, but he never lets me forget it,” Rhys explained.
“Come on in this way,” Lila said to them, motioning for Rhys and Olivia to follow her across the dark marble floors and into a spacious, brightly lit room that served as their formal living room.
The low din of voices and music from the hired string quartet filled Rhys’s ears. Everything about the event was pretentious, but he expected it. Drake loved to surround himself with all of the things that created an image of glamour, including the snobbish crowd of attendees milling around.
Olivia clung to him, her grip tight either because she was playing her role well or because she genuinely felt out of her element. Rhys couldn’t tell.
“Speak of the devil,” Rhys muttered under his breath as he caught sight of his brother approaching from across the room. Olivia tensed, and pulled in the subtlest of inhales beside him.
“He recognizes me,” Olivia said.
“Hey, Drake,” Rhys said to his brother once he was within hearing distance, forcing himself to sound casual. He could feel the wires attached to his skin underneath his shirt and blazer.
“Rhys,” Drake said by way of greeting, his voice dripping with faux politeness. His keen eyes flashed to the beautiful woman beside Rhys. “Olivia, I must admit that I am completely and utterly shocked to see you here!”
Olivia blushed and glanced down at her shoes.
“I hope it’s okay that I came,” she murmured nervously. Damn, she was good. “I only just made the connection when Rhys mentioned you were his brother. It was silly of me to think the resemblance was just a coincidence.”
Drake chuckled and reached out to gently squeeze Olivia’s arm. Rhys wanted to smack his touch away from her, but he managed to keep his cool.
“No worries at all, Olivia.” He smiled. “How long have you been seeing my brother?”
“Oh, um, it’s new,” she muttered, blinking fast and biting her lip. If Rhys didn’t know
any better, he would think that he was suddenly nothing more than chopped liver next to his brother. Olivia was looking at Drake with obvious, girlish desire. She wanted to make him think that he was the brother she wanted, not Rhys.
Drake caught on immediately, of course. He was an expert at reading body language.
Lila reappeared with two glasses of champagne for Rhys and Olivia.
Drake’s arm snaked around his wife’s waist. “No champagne for me, honey?”
“Oh, sorry,” she said, obviously trying not to flinch as he touched her. “I thought you might want scotch instead.”
Drake kissed Lila’s temple and then grinned at Olivia. “She knows me so well.”
It was all a game to him. In front of strangers, Drake would act like the perfect, doting husband. Rhys couldn’t wait for everyone to see who his brother really was when this was all over.
“What’s new in your world?” Rhys asked his brother.
“Nothing much,” Drake replied coolly. He glanced away, making it clear that he wasn’t interested in chatting to Rhys for longer than what politeness required. “I believe our parents are here somewhere.”
“Oh, really?” Rhys asked. “I didn’t know they were coming.”
“Well, of course they didn’t RSVP.” Drake chuckled, clearly irritated by that.
“They shouldn’t have to RSVP,” countered Rhys. “They’re our parents, man.”
Drake forced an incredibly convincing smile. “I suppose.”
“Well, I should probably go say hello to them,” Rhys said, allowing Olivia to loosen her grip on him.
Lila grinned. “Yes, I’ll come with you. They’re such a sweet couple, Olivia. Of course, they made such sweet sons, so that makes perfect sense.”
She was good at faking it for her husband. Olivia played along, giggling as Drake rolled his eyes playfully at his gushing wife. Rhys could tell, however, that Drake was annoyed by her compliment for no reason other than it allowed Lila to temporarily sound more charming than he did.
“You two go ahead,” Drake said to Lila and Rhys. “I’ll catch up in a minute. I’d like to get to know my little brother’s new girl a little better first.”
Olivia, Striking Back (Iron Ladies Book 4) Page 5
