That was the wrong thing to say. His smile was nauseating, knowing. “You might not have to work all that hard,” he suggested, reaching for her knee again—and this time, when she tried to get out of the way so he would miss, he was very deliberate in grasping her and holding her in place.
She was stunned into staying completely still, too horrified to move. No wonder he wanted her to come in alone. If only she hadn’t told Braxton he had to stay away! He could have done something about this. She wouldn’t have to endure this humiliation if he was there.
“Mr. Bergman, I don’t feel comfortable with this.” She looked down, noticing his wedding band. What a joke. “Maybe I should go.”
“Now, why would you want to do that? I asked you here so we could get to know each other better. I like to know my actresses before they start filming, just to make sure I still agree with their casting.” His hand crept up higher, under the hem of her dress, creeping up and up no matter how she tried to squirm away.
“I don’t want this. This isn’t what I came here for. Just stop it!” she shouted when he made a move to slide his hand between her thighs. The sound of her hand cracking against his cheek surprised her, just as the pain in her palm did. She hadn’t planned on slapping him, but she was glad she had when she saw the look of utter surprise on his face.
Surprise very quickly turned to outrage. “You little bitch—” he snarled, getting out of his chair to move over her.
It all happened so fast. The door burst open, and Braxton was on him in a second. The face that had only just been moving in closer was suddenly yanked away by a pair of hands that Serenity knew from experience were large and strong.
Braxton threw Paul into the chair behind his desk. “Keep your hands to yourself!” he snarled, leaning in close the way Paul had just been doing to her, only it wasn’t a kiss he had in mind, not with the way he bared his teeth.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Paul stammered. “Take your hands off me!”
“If you ever try anything like that again on her—or if I even hear you ever tried it on anybody else—I will personally cut your hands off at the wrist. Do you understand?” He then shoved Paul hard enough to send his chair slamming into the bookshelf that held those awards.
He then turned to Serenity and gathered her up before she had the chance to move on her own. Everything was such a mess in her head she couldn’t make sense of it. It was actually a relief to have him there to help her walk from the office through the waiting area where Paul’s assistant stood there looking ashamed but not surprised, where Melody’s ashen complexion told Serenity she knew what had just gone on.
“Everything will be okay,” Braxton assured her as they rode the elevator down to the lobby. She barely realized until they reached the ground floor that his arm had been around her all the time, that she’d been leaning against him.
She could almost believe everything would be okay when she was in his arms, under his protection even if she knew deep in her heart that she’d just lost her chance at her big break.
Chapter Nineteen
“I’m such an idiot.”
That had to be the tenth or fifteenth or hundredth time she’d said those very words since they got in the car and returned to her house. “I’m such an idiot.”
“You did what you felt like you had to do.” It was all he trusted himself to say as he paced the living room. She sat on the sofa, miserable, with Melody at her side.
“I should never have let you go in there alone,” Melody kept saying. It was like the two of them took turns, fighting over whose fault it really was that she’d been mauled by that pig.
“You didn’t know what would happen,” Serenity whispered. She’d looked so fresh and pretty when they first left the house. She now looked rumpled, worn out. He guessed having one’s hopes and dreams crushed in a matter of moments would do that to a person.
“I had my suspicions,” Melody admitted. At least she had the decency to look ashamed. “That’s why I wanted to go in. Paul Bergman might be King Midas when it comes to the movies he produces, but he has a reputation. You must’ve heard something about him by now. You’ve been around long enough.”
“I never thought he would try that with anybody like me though.” Serenity covered her face with her hands. “I’m so ashamed. How could I be so dumb?”
“You have nothing to be ashamed of.” He knew he could have sounded gentler when he said it. It came out as more of a bark than a reassurance, but that had nothing to do with her. His wolf still strained to be free, to get the satisfaction he wanted so badly. Images of tearing the man’s throat wide open were even more tempting than Serenity’s kiss. How he would’ve loved to murder Bergman right there in that office, to let his blood spatter over the damned awards lining his bookshelves.
“He tried to take advantage of me, and I walked into it not suspecting a thing!”
“Still, he’s the one who should be ashamed. Not you. You didn’t do anything to invite that, and just because you want to be in a movie doesn’t mean you should expect that sort of thing. It’s disgusting.” He realized his claws were starting to protrude, digging into the flesh of his palms when he clenched his fists.
He turned away from them, staring out toward the patio, willing himself under control.
“Braxton’s right,” Melody whispered. “Paul’s the one who should be ashamed, not you.”
“He’s not ashamed,” Serenity reminded her with a bitter laugh. “He’s probably angry. Pissed off. And now he’ll probably take me out of the movie. All because I didn’t play along.”
There was something in her voice that almost stopped Braxton’s heart. He turned his head slightly, looking back at her over his shoulder. “I hope you don’t blame me for that,” he murmured.
“Oh, no! No, not at all. If anything, I wish you’d come in sooner.” Then, she tipped her head to the side. “What made you come in, anyway? I wasn’t that loud, was I?”
Dammit. She was too smart for her own good. No, she wasn’t very loud, but his hearing allowed him to pick up on even small things.
Not to mention the fact that he’d felt her despair, her rising panic. He’d known right away the reason why she would feel like that, and by the time he’d kicked the door in, he’d been practically on the verge of shifting.
Especially when he took in the way that pig had stood over her, threatening her.
He had to push those thoughts, those memories away. It didn’t do any good to remember now. “You were loud enough to be heard,” was all he’d say.
“And that assistant was acting pretty sketchy, too,” Melody added. “How a woman can allow that to happen to another woman without even trying to help is beyond me.”
“He probably pays through the nose,” Serenity snickered.
“Yeah, well, I could tell she was uncomfortable. It was obvious there was something more going on.” Yes, but Melody hadn’t exactly tried to throw herself in front of her client, had she? She hadn’t even really protested not being allowed in the office. Sure, he’d sensed her discomfort, but it hadn’t gone any further than that. He bit his tongue to keep from reminding her that maybe she shouldn’t talk about women letting things happen to other women when she’d pretty much done the same thing.
After all, Serenity was her client—a client whose paychecks eventually filtered down to her. It would only benefit her to be the manager of a superstar, which Paul Bergman could evidently have made her if he felt like it.
Now he wouldn’t do any such thing. Braxton didn’t need to know the ins and outs of Hollywood to understand that much.
The guys were out on the patio, having just treated themselves to a swim at Serenity’s urging. Sledge was still in the water while Jace and Zane stretched out on lounge chairs.
He couldn’t help the flash of envy that flared up when he saw them like that. Good for them, being able to relax when he could barely keep his thoughts together and struggled to keep his wolf deep inside hi
s consciousness.
“Working hard or hardly working?” he asked, stepping outside to join them.
“It’s about time. You clearly need to cool off.” Jace shot him a knowing look. “Maybe you should’ve taken a swim earlier today so you’d be cool at the producer’s.”
“I know. You don’t have to tell me, but I doubt a swim would do me much good.” He took a seat, groaning as he settled in. “What a day. What a few days.”
“A few days in which you’ve attacked two people,” Zane reminded him.
“I wouldn’t say I attacked both of them. Hell, I barely touched the guy outside the hotel. I practically forgot about him until just now, actually.”
“Yeah, but I bet he didn’t forget about you. I bet that producer or the head of the studio or whoever it was did everything they could to keep that out of the news. Now?” Zane shrugged.
“Whose side are you on?”
“Yours, obviously. I’m just saying things might get complicated. I’m not blaming you for anything.”
Braxton looked around. “What would you have done? Any of you? Would you have hung around outside that office when you knew what was going on inside?”
“Are you kidding?” Sledge snickered as he climbed from the pool, water pouring off him. “I would’ve thrown that guy out the window.”
“Seriously, I admire your restraint,” Jace agreed.
“Way to be a cliché,” Zane murmured. “You hear about guys like that all the time, but you don’t wanna believe they exist. She was so excited about the meeting too.” Braxton felt a sense of pity settle over the group, and he understood they’d all sort of taken Serenity under their collective wing.
“She slapped the shit out of him though,” he grinned. A red mark the size and shape of her hand had already started blooming on the producer’s face by the time he’d broken into the room.
“I still feel sorry for her though,” Sledge murmured as he dried off. “And for the girls who didn’t have somebody to come in and save them when that happened to them.”
“This town is a cesspool,” Braxton muttered. “She’s too good for this place.”
“It’s what she wants,” Zane reminded him—as if he needed reminding. As if he hadn’t reminded himself countless times in just a few days.
“I hate to tell her, but she might be in for a lot of disappointment after what just happened.” Jace looked inside the house where Serenity and Melody were both still on the sofa, talking with their heads close together.
“You don’t need to tell her that,” Braxton murmured, watching her. “She knows. She knows what this means, but it is what it is. She also knows she doesn’t want to be that person. She doesn’t want to sacrifice her self-respect. It’s a shame it has to come down to that at all for anybody.”
“Sort of makes me rethink ever going to see a movie again,” Zane snickered. “Now I’ll always wonder about the people in the movie. What they might have had to do to get where they are.”
“Wow, this got depressing real fast.” Sledge swatted at Braxton with his towel. “Anyway, you better let Logan know what happened today. Word might trickle down, and it might happen fast. Whoever first reached out to him with this job is bound to reach out to him again, especially if that Bergman guy decides to blacklist Serenity.”
“I think we all know it could be worse than that,” Braxton muttered, his mood sinking lower and lower with each passing minute. “For all I know, he’ll threaten to sue. Not that I did much to him—and I think we all know I didn’t do what I could’ve done—but he’s still breathing.”
“And his assistant was standing right outside the open door, from what you described,” Jace added, looking and sounding troubled.
“Then again, that’ll mean admitting he was doing something wrong in the first place. Otherwise, why would you have barged in? Right?” Zane looked around, hoping for affirmation. He didn’t get any.
“He could just as easily say I’m some jealous boyfriend or it was all a misunderstanding. Something like that. Probably complain that he’s in pain now too. I wouldn’t be surprised if he threatens the entire firm. Dammit, I didn’t think before I acted.”
Jace shook his head. “None of us blame you. I doubt Logan will, either. Our job is to protect that girl, and she needed protecting. She probably pissed him off when she slapped him, and God only knows what he would’ve done if you hadn’t broken in there when you did. I only wish I could’ve been there to do something myself.”
That was easy for all of them say since they weren’t the ones who had just put their entire business in jeopardy. He pulled his phone from his pocket, knowing he had to get the phone call over with sooner rather than later. It wouldn’t do any good for Logan to hear about it from somebody else before hearing it from him.
He didn’t get the chance to finish punching in the number before a scream from inside the house wiped everything else away. He was on his feet in an instant, charging through the door and into the living room with the rest of the team on his heels.
Melody was on her feet, pointing at the TV with her other hand over her mouth.
“Oh my God!” Serenity turned to him, her skin chalk white, her mouth hanging open in shock. “Oh my God.”
Chapter Twenty
“I’m telling you she has no comment! Stop calling me!” Melody shouted into the phone before ending the call, cursing to herself as she did.
Meanwhile, Zane was on the phone with Logan, talking low, his voice and his expression intense. Sledge and Jace hovered around him, all of them wanting to know what their boss thought about this latest turn of events.
“I feel numb. Why don’t I feel anything?” she whispered, staring at the TV where the reports came in nonstop. Things like this didn’t happen every day in Hollywood—at least, not to the fabulously rich and successful, the worshiped and adored.
And when they did happen, the press swarmed around like flies on the carcass—the carcass, in this case, being that of Paul Bergman, who was found shot in the head in his office that afternoon.
She hated seeing his face on the screen—smiling, confident, at the peak of his good looks and fame. Not unlike the man she’d met only hours earlier. Only hours before his death.
“You’re in shock.” Braxton’s hand closed over hers, squeezing gently. His touch barely registered on her consciousness. He had to be right. She was in shock. The entire day had been one shock after another.
“I just don’t understand. We were just there! He was alive.” Very alive. Extremely alive.
“I know. It’s stunning. I don’t know what to make of it myself.” Yet there was something in his voice that told her otherwise. Even now, in the most profound shock she’d ever experienced, she knew that much.
She turned to him, finally managing to pry her eyes away from the TV screen. “What do you honestly think? You can tell me. I can take it.”
“What makes you think there’s anything more to say?”
“Call it a hunch,” she murmured. “You won’t look at me, for one thing. Which tells me there’d something you’re not saying. You might as well get it out.”
“Fine.” He looked at her, shrugging. “I’m not sorry. He probably deserved it. Maybe somebody got so sick of his bullshit they decided to end it. If I knew who it was, I would probably shake their hand.”
“Don’t hold anything back,” she whispered.
“Don’t worry. I won’t. That’s not my style.” He shrugged again. “You told me to come out with it. So, I came out with it.”
“It’s not even like I completely disagree with you, which kind of makes me wonder about myself. Not that he necessarily deserved to have his brains blown out.” She shivered involuntarily, unable to imagine how horrible that sort of death could have been even if it was quick. “But I don’t doubt that he was a shady guy.”
Melody piped up from across the room. “This will go one of two ways. Either we’ll find out about all the skeletons in his closet, or the m
edia will paint him as a saint who didn’t deserve the terrible thing that happened to him.”
“I just can’t believe I was just with him. I mean, that can’t leave much time for somebody to go in there and kill him, can it? They must’ve had security cameras around the place. They’ll figure out who it was.”
“I have no doubt that somebody with his money and his influence will be top priority for the police department for a while,” Braxton predicted.
When her phone rang only moments later, she picked it up without thinking twice. “It’s an LA number,” she whispered, looking to Braxton like he could give her an answer to an unspoken question.
“I’m surprised it took them this long,” he murmured.
“You think it’s the police?” Her hands were shaking as she answered. “Hello?” Her voice was shaking, too.
“Is this Serenity Starr?” The clipped, official way the question was asked told her she wasn’t talking to a fan or a reporter. The background noise, the sound of dispatchers calling out instructions to patrolmen clued her in too.
“Yes, it is.” She found herself wanting to lean against Braxton, wanting to take strength from him, but that was a dangerous thing to do. A slippery slope. She couldn’t get too used to him being around because he wouldn’t be around forever.
“This is Detective Santiago with the LAPD. I would imagine by now that you’ve seen the reports of what happened to Paul Bergman earlier today.”
“Yes, I’ve been watching the news for the last hour or so.” At that very moment, a montage of images from Paul’s many triumphant awards ceremonies was running by on the screen. Even with the sound muted, it was easy to imagine the drama with which the news was being delivered, the praise being heaped on that pig.
Even if he was dead, he was still a pig who’d tried to force his hand between her legs.
“We’ve spoken to Mr. Bergman’s assistant, who said you came in this afternoon for an appointment with her boss.”
Wolf Shield Investigations: Boxset Page 38