Wicked Pleasure

by Taryn Leigh Taylor

  Her heart ached at the graceful, familiar way he tugged it on.

  When Liam looked back at her, the intimacy they’d shared a moment ago was gone. “I’ll drive.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  MAX WAS TAKING the news better than Liam had expected.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  Or not.

  “You’re sure about this?”

  AJ nodded. She was slung out in the visitor chair beside Liam, lounging carelessly. “Am I ever wrong, boss?”

  For some reason, Liam liked that despite her dogged loyalty to the prick on the other side of the desk, she treated him with the same amount of deference she’d always spared Liam—which was to say, none.

  He almost laughed at himself. For some reason. Right.

  He’d all but blurted out that he loved her, and she’d walked away. She’d made her choice.

  “—FBI. What do you think, Kearney?”

  Liam’s head snapped up. Since all he’d been thinking was how much he wanted to drag AJ into his arms, for the first time in his life, he was glad Max was on top of things. “Yeah. Sounds good.”

  Jesus. He needed to stay focused.

  Max hit a button on his desk phone. “Sherri, get Special Agent Behnsen on the phone for me. Tell her it’s urgent and see if she has any time to meet this afternoon. And send Vivienne up to my office, too.”

  “Vivienne’s not back from vacation until Thursday. Greg Chapman is the interim lead for the legal department.”

  “Right. Send him up.”

  “Legal?” Beside him, AJ straightened up in her chair. There was an edge of panic in her voice, and it took everything in Liam not to touch her, remind her to breathe.

  “What are you... The FBI is coming? Why?”

  “If he gets word of this, Brennan could be in the wind in minutes. We need to strike hard and fast.”

  The answer did nothing to dissipate any of AJ’s sudden nervous energy.

  While Liam agreed with Whitfield’s approach—Wes Brennan wouldn’t know what hit him by the time his lawyers were done with him—the cold, robotic part of Max was too focused on calculating the next move. Which was great for nailing Brennan to the wall, but not quite so good for the woman trembling beside him.

  Liam glanced over at her, and the fear on her face had him turning in his chair. He ignored Max and his own better judgment and placed his hand over hers—the one white-knuckling the armrest. Her skin was freezing. “Hey. AJ. Look at me.”

  It took a second for his voice to penetrate her consciousness, and another second after that for her eyes to focus in on his.

  “I won’t let you fall.” But he knew those words were just a stand-in for the three he really meant. The three she didn’t want to hear.

  Relief washed over her face, and she let go of the chair to grab his hand instead, eyes pleading.

  So he gave her the one thing he knew she really wanted—an escape hatch. “It’s okay. You don’t have to stay.”

  “What do you mean she doesn’t have to stay? She’s the one who found everything. Who else is going to present the evidence to the FBI? You’re staying.”

  Liam got to his feet, lamenting the loss of her hand. “I thought you cared about her.”

  Max’s glare said he’d overstepped. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means look at her, for Christ’s sake! You of all people should know what she went through to put her scumbag ex in jail for what he did to her. The trial was invasive as hell, and that one barely made the news.

  “This one is going to be a circus when the media get ahold of it. And not just because we’re business rivals, and not just because Wes Brennan is the king of security, but because you just turned in your father. They’ll figure out where she lives. They’ll hound her for comments, shove cameras in her face and stalk her everywhere she goes. They’ll eat her alive.”

  Max frowned. “And we’re going to do what when they ask how we figured all this out? How strong is our case going to be if we all get charged with perjury?”

  “Jesus, Whitfield. We’re tech magnates. You think we can’t convince a bunch of laymen whose eyes glaze over the second we open our mouths about code that we found the anomalies ourselves?

  “AJ might have put the evidence together, but it’s all still there. I can explain the coding anomaly that shows up in the knockoff version of The Shield, and the Soteria antivirus program on my laptop. You found the same chunk of code in the program that got loaded onto one of your employee’s computers, and your sister is going to need to vouch that she got that phone from Wes anyway if we’re going to tie this up.”

  Liam pulled a hand through his hair. “Everyone saw our blowout at Henry Mitford’s party. We just say that you accused me of hacking SecurePay, I accused you of leaking The Shield to a counterfeiter, and we figured out that we’d both been victims of the same scam.

  “Jesse Hastings will be so desperate not to have his business fall apart when this breaks that he’ll turn on Wes in a hot second. It’s a slam dunk without her.”

  Max looked over at AJ. It wasn’t a big tell, but Liam knew that if he didn’t have the man convinced already, he was close. So he pressed the final advantage.

  “Think about it. Wes is the one who caught her hacking your company. If anything, bringing her into this will give Brennan’s attorney a case to play this off like revenge.”

  “Fine. We do it without her.”

  Something shifted in Liam’s chest, and when he turned to face AJ, she was staring at him, brown eyes bright with unshed tears. “You should probably get out of here. The fewer people who notice you leaving the better.”

  She nodded, pulling the hood of her sweatshirt up as she stood. To his surprise, she stopped as she drew level with him. Her fingertips brushed his, and he closed his eyes to memorize the touch.

  “Thank you.” It was barely a whisper. But he heard it. And then she was gone.

  Liam opened his eyes, but he didn’t turn around to watch her leave this time. He couldn’t bear it. Instead, he turned his attention back to Max to find his business rival appraising him with a calculated interest.

  “Is there a problem, Whitfield?”

  Max shook his head. “No. It’s just a little surreal to have you in my office. Guess it struck me for the first time that we’re on the same side.”

  Liam understood the dissonance of it. He and Max had been at odds for a long time. Although Liam couldn’t deny that knowing Max had kept AJ out of prison, helped her nail her scumbag ex, offered her a job that had improved her life, had softened his opinion of his rival. A little.

  “You might not believe it, but I am sorry for John’s death.”

  Max’s jaw flexed, and his gaze dropped to the little statue on his desk—a horse with a flaming mane. “Thank you. I am, too.”

  “I know it doesn’t help, but if I was faced with the same opportunity today, I wouldn’t dabble in such a gray area. He assured me there was no conflict of interest with his job at Whitfield, and because I wanted it to be true, I didn’t vet his claims. If there was a way for me to retroactively fix it, I would.”

  Max shoved his hands in his pockets. “You could always postpone the release of The Shield until SecurePay is ready for release.”

  Liam smiled despite himself. “Not fucking likely.”

  “Worth a try,” Max said with a shrug. “I guess I’ll have to settle for you helping me rain fire and brimstone on Brennan.”

  Now that was a plan Liam could get behind. “It would be my pleasure.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THREE DAYS OF hiding out and psyching herself up later, AJ found herself back at Whitfield Industries.

  Max looked up as she stepped into his office.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Oh, just jumping
headlong into the unknown without a parachute, she thought wryly. Thanks for asking. But what she said was, “I’m your three o’clock appointment.”

  Max frowned. “I don’t have a three o’clock...” The denial faded into a sigh. “I thought we discussed that hacking my schedule was not a sanctioned use of your skills.”

  “I didn’t want you to have any excuse to brush me off.” AJ took a deep breath and screwed up her courage. “There are a couple of things I need to say, and I didn’t want us to be interrup—”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Max surged to his feet and AJ whipped around as a statuesque brunette with a razor-sharp bob and hellfire in her eyes stormed into his office. Another person she’d never met, but AJ knew Whitfield Industries’ top-dog lawyer by sight. Vivienne Grant was even more intimidating in person than she was in her security clearance photo.

  “I was gone for three days. Three days! And I come back to this?” She strode toward Max’s desk, holding her phone in front of her. The screen was playing some news footage of Wes Brennan’s arrest, the money shot of the FBI marching him out of the Soteria Security building in handcuffs as the newscaster filled the audience in on the scandal.

  “You honestly think Wes betrayed you? He would never do something like that!”

  “Vivienne—” Max’s voice was low and even “—I know it’s a shock. I’m still processing it myself, but if you’ll just take a seat, I’ll ask AJ to leave and we can discuss—”

  Vivienne’s eyes flickered dismissively over her, like she was noticing AJ’s presence in the office for the first time. Obviously, she’d been judged beneath notice, as Vivienne returned her attention immediately to Max.

  “There’s nothing to discuss. The fact that you would team up with Liam Kearney, of all people, to ambush Wes with all these heinous accusations when he’s done nothing but try to help you. His business is security, Max. You’ve ruined him.”

  Max’s eyes turned cold and icy. AJ had seen it happen before on-screen, but it was much frostier in person. “Before you say another word, I caution you to assess where your loyalties lie on this issue.”

  “I know exactly where my loyalty belongs.” The woman reached into her purse and pulled out a lanyard filled with keys and security passes. It hit Max’s desk with a clatter of finality.

  “That’s why I quit.”

  Max stayed dead still until Vivienne had stridden out of his office and the glass door swung shut behind her.

  “Fuck.”

  As far as outbursts went, it was the appropriate amount of subdued that she’d expect from Max Whitfield, given his cold-as-ice reputation.

  “Take a seat, AJ. I’ll be right with you.”

  AJ figured he could use a break, so she flopped into the nearest visitor chair as Max called security and gave a couple of instructions about ensuring Vivienne Grant left the premises and revoking her security clearance.

  Then he straightened his tie.

  “Okay, what can I do for you?”

  “Well, that’s kind of a hard act to follow,” AJ ventured, “but, uh... I quit, too.”

  She pulled the phone that she used solely to contact Max out of the pocket of her leather jacket. It felt weighty in her hand, bogged down in symbolism and the last five years of her life. Years she’d considered the best of her life. Until she’d met Liam. Until he’d made her see that hiding out wasn’t enough anymore. Until he’d made her want more. A real life. No more layers. AJ held her breath as she set the phone on the edge of his desk.

  “Of course you are. First Emma, then Kaylee. Now Vivienne.” Max sighed. “Why not you, too?”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of starting to look like you’re the common thread, huh?”

  Her joke fell flat, and she was treated to that frosty gaze he’d just used on the lawyer.

  “But, I mean, you live with Emma now, so workplace sexual harassment policies being what they are, her quitting was probably best-case scenario. And your sister ended up changing her mind, so you dodged a bullet there. Really, it’s just Vivienne and me, so, you know. Could be worse.”

  “How delightfully glass-half-full of you.” Max leaned back in his fancy chair.

  “Yeah, I’m toning down the cynicism. Trying something new.”

  “Liam Kearney, huh?”

  His name made her chest tight. “I’m sorry you found out the way you did. I never meant to betray you. I was trying to help you, to prove he did it. And then somewhere in the middle of it all, it just...” She trailed off, because the rest of that speech was for Liam, and she wanted him to hear it first.

  Max shook his head. “You don’t need to apologize. I was... You caught me off guard, that’s all. Now that I’ve had time to adjust, it’s... I just want you to be okay.”

  “I am okay. I mean, I’m going to be. Actually, I thought I might look into starting my own thing. Contract work. Do a little security here, a little forensic hacking there.”

  Max stared at her for a long moment before he spoke, and even though AJ braced for his verdict, his words still made her heart stop.

  “It’s about time.”

  “What?”

  “You’re incredibly talented. I knew it the second Wes...the second you were brought to my attention. When we met... Christ, AJ. You were so broken and bruised. I understood that you’d need some time. Some space. That was a lot of shit you went through. More than anybody should. And it leaves marks.”

  Something about the way Max said it caught her attention. And to her surprise, her boss, her ex-boss, dropped that inscrutable poker face for a moment, just long enough to let her see that he understood what she’d been through. He wasn’t just a witness to her pain that day. He’d survived some of his own.

  She blinked against the burn of unshed tears. “It does. I’m... I’ve let it make decisions for me for a long time, but I’m working on it. I’ve been talking to someone recently. A therapist. She thinks it’s time I started being more direct about what I want.”

  “Hence the quitting.”

  “Hence the quitting,” she confirmed.

  “I always knew you wouldn’t stay forever. If I weren’t such a selfish bastard, I would have shoved you out into the world a long time ago. I’m proud of you. It’s a good decision.”

  AJ thought her chest might burst. She hadn’t realized how much she’d needed to hear the words. How much Max’s opinion really meant to her. He was a big part of her life. But Liam was right. He couldn’t be her whole world.

  “Starting your own company, I mean. Verdict’s still out on Kearney.”

  With a sniff, AJ tugged the cuff of her hoodie over the heel of her hand and wiped her eyes. “I think I’m allergic to your ugly corporate office.”

  “Well, that’s going to be a bitch when you open your own business.”

  “I’ll stock up on antihistamines.”

  Max nodded. “Probably wise.”

  AJ got to her feet. “I should get out of here. You’ve got a lot to deal with. And there’s someone I need to go see.”

  She’d only managed two steps before Max’s voice stopped her.

  “AJ. Keep the phone.” He tossed it to her, and the relief that clogged her throat was overwhelming. “Give me a call when you’re up and running. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’m in the market for a new security firm.”

  “Was that a joke?” She affected her best scowl. “Not cool. Just because I won’t see you as much, doesn’t mean you get to fuck with our dynamic. You’re the inflexible hard-ass. I’m the funny one. And don’t forget it.”

  Max actually smiled. A little. “I’m sure we’ll see each other plenty. And I’ll expect the friends and family discount, obviously.”

  That made her pause. “And which one are you? Friend, or family?”

  Max contemplated that for a moment. “I like
to think a little of both.”

  It was AJ’s turn to nod. Those stupid tears were back. “Yeah. Me, too. But don’t think for a second that means I’m giving you a double discount.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  LIAM STRODE ACROSS the parking lot, adjusting his sunglasses against the California sun.

  Logically, he knew he should be on top of the world. He’d just locked down the government contract that he’d been after for the last two years.

  Several shipments of the counterfeit version of The Shield had been seized coming into the country.

  Wes Brennan had been arrested.

  Business was good. Better than good.

  And he was miserable.

  The Corvette unlocked with a quiet beep, and Liam crawled inside. He’d just turned the key in the ignition when his phone buzzed against his chest.

  He pulled it free of his pocket, but before he had a chance to unlock it, the screen went black.

  Liam frowned.

  Then the words I’m sorry scrolled across the display, and Liam’s grip tightened on the phone.

  Large white text flashed on the screen. SEE YOU SOON. Then it disappeared, only to be replaced by a countdown clock. It was set for eleven seconds.

  Liam’s chest got tight as the seconds ticked by.

  Three...two...one.

  The black screen turned to a blur of giant pixels. Against his will, a slight smile touched his lips. She’d done a pretty good job of duping his original. Thrown in a few nice touches of her own. He watched the image zoom out until he was staring at a Google map with a pin dropped in the last place he’d expected.

  Liam threw the Corvette into gear and headed home. His chest was full of something that felt suspiciously like hope.

  * * *

  He slowed at the last bend, expecting to see a black-clad figure leaning against the stone pillar, but there was no one there. With a frown creasing his forehead, Liam pressed his thumb to the panel so the gate would swing open, and drove up to the garage.