And besides, it was the holiday travel time when the fucking paparazzi had trolls staked out at every airport—something he’d been reminded of at JFK when Roman had dropped him off for his flight.
Kim had ridden in the car with him—at Liam’s insistence. Something he had deftly maneuvered because he wanted Roman to hear every word that they said. His plan had been to lull her into thinking everything was hunky dory because keeping her close where eyes would be watching was better than the frigid no-man’s land of the last few weeks.
It irked him that Roman was having such a hard time figuring out what the woman was up to. She was covering her tracks in a way that let them know she expecting to be watched.
When they hatched the plan to try and sweet talk her, Roman had snarkily griped, “Only a bitch—and a crazy one at that—has a contingency plan for thwarting surveillance.”
Liam enjoyed that the gruff ex-Marine used words like thwart. It reminded him not to let a book’s cover sway him. At six-foot-two, his security guy might be statistically shorter than Liam, but he made up for it through pure, beefed-up brawn.
When they first met years ago, he never would have suspected that Roman Bishop was a modern Renaissance man. Well-traveled and able to speak several languages, he was a Rhodes Scholar with a graduate degree in Philosophy from Oxford. Somehow, the military had recruited him before the ink was dry on the parchment. That part of the story Liam wasn’t privy to. Like everyone—Roman had his secrets.
But he was lucky to have the man at his side. And not just because he had scary-mad hand-to-hand skills. The guy also was adept at reading people and he most certainly had Kim Walsh’s number. At least one of them because Liam suspected she had more faces than a room of mirrors.
In the end, she proved Roman right. During the conversation in the car, it took less than a few minutes to figure out that she was actively trying to get the upper hand while running circles around Liam’s attempt at surveillance. Bitch was stirring the pot, but the why still eluded him. Why was she coming apart at the seams now? And why had she led with a laser-controlled smart bomb when a sloppy Molotov cocktail would have worked as well? She was lucky he let her out of that car alive.
“Really, Kim,” he’d snarled. “Back off. Miss Wilde doesn’t concern you. Yes—she’s an old friend. I’ve known her family a long time.”
Didn’t take long for the conversation to quickly escalate into a full-on confrontation. He was not thrilled to realize his finance expert grew a massive set of cojones overnight and was hell-bent on fucking with him at every opportunity. Liam was pissed that he’d ever trusted the woman trying so damn hard to one-up him. Somehow, he’d missed the part where she was a full-blown psycho.
“Oh, I know all about the family connection, Liam. It’s part of your corporate bio, after all. The starving grad student on a paper-thin scholarship. Doesn’t your old professor gets a mention in there someplace,” she drawled lazily.
“Kim,” he responded coolly as he prepared to assert his authority and shut her down for good, but the fucking cunt beat him to the punch.
“That’s quite a story, by the way. The good son struggling to support his tarnished but saint-like mom. Makes for a compelling read and I’m sure the Baron-Wilde’s fell for it. I mean hell,” she snickered, “I fucking fell for it.”
Liam sensed Roman’s eyes move to their reflection in the rearview mirror. This would be the part where shit was about to get real.
“Your bio conveniently leaves out a bunch of interesting stuff, though.”
She shifted in her seat and looked his way—pushing her sunglasses against the bridge of her nose.
Through lips pursed tight, Kim Walsh, one of the people who had been crucial to his executive team and a factor in his most recent string of successes, lost her fucking shit right in front of him. Boy, had he ever made an error in judgment with this one. She might very well be a financial shark, but she was also one crazy as fuck freak show with an agenda that remained unclear.
Liam sat frozen while she stalked in for the kill shot. He was stunned when it went off, although he gave no outward indication that he cared one whit what she was saying.
“Left out the part where you set your sights on the professor’s teenage daughter. Secret affair? Oh, Liam!” she purred. “That was such a bad boy thing to do.”
The temperature in the car dropped thirty degrees in two heartbeats. Cold fury gathered inside him. Liam felt his hands curl into tight fists and had to will himself to keep from punching the evil bitch in the throat.
“But the, uh . . . family connection?” By this time, she was openly mocking him. “You used them like you use everybody. Get what you want and then move on, right? Isn’t that how it worked, Liam?”
Okay. He’d had enough. Roman’s look of caution didn’t slow him down, not once it was obvious that she’d been poking around in his past. Someone had done quite a bit of digging to come up with what she’d thrown in his face. He had to shut this down before an all-out war began.
“I would have thought that gossip, and old gossip at that, was beneath you, Mrs. Walsh. You surprise me with this unfounded invasion of my privacy.” The sharp edge in his voice could slice through an iceberg.
“Unfounded invasion of your privacy?” she sneered. “Are you serious? I did what any competent financial officer would do when the chief executive starts making business decisions with his dick!”
The gloves, apparently, were off.
“BPG is a global powerhouse. What you’re doing with the export-import and shipping division is going to change the way that system works. World leaders know your name. Our manufacturing targets are set to explode this year and what the hell do you do right in the middle of all that? You make a vanity acquisition without consulting your team. A fashion magazine? A fucking pop culture photo rag?”
The throat punch seemed more and more like a good move.
“Couldn’t you have just fucked the silly girl and be done with it? Be honest Liam—that’s so much more your style. As I would know. Why do you have to jeopardize everything we’ve worked so hard for over some goody-two-shoes who has no idea who you really are?”
Liam leveled one cocked eyebrow in her direction. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” There was so much in that statement to react to, but it was her final salvo that jerked his neck ramrod straight. He was seething with anger and made no attempt to hide it.
“Maybe she should have a chat with Adam Ward. I’m sure he’d be happy to enlighten her as to what an upstanding guy you are.”
Time ground to a halt. Literally. A complete, dead stop. Everything around him was frozen and still, but he seemed to be moving at normal speed. At least his thoughts were in motion. Not so sure, though, about the rest of him.
Adam. Fucking. Ward. How in the mother fuck had this stone cold bitch put that together? The wary expression he saw in Roman’s reflection reminded Liam that she’d managed to uncover his darkest secret whereas his security chief, someone close enough to the situation to be a friend, was clueless.
They were almost at the terminal when she took a well-timed parting shot that rocked Liam’s world to its core.
“Humph,” she snorted with feigned shock. “Now that I think about it, you and Adam Ward are very much alike. Don’t you think?”
The vein pulsing in Liam’s temple felt like it might explode.
“I believe your old man liked amusing himself with innocent girls, too. And didn’t you both just walk away when the fun got too real?”
Liam had been in a hundred situations when something he’d done or said caused whatever poor soul coming up against him to blanch and go vacant. He’d watched it happen countless times. Right now—he was the one experiencing the sensation of losing all his color when her accusation hit home.
Kim leaned forward and peered out the window as the car pulled to a slow stop at the far end of the curb. Turning on him with an exaggerated case of resting bitch face, she went f
or the gold.
“As I’ve said, Liam . . . you making decisions with your pecker is so like father, like son. Only, in Ward’s case, when he was finished with his oh-so-accommodating secretary, he walked away for good. Even knowing he had a kid, the guy walked away. But you? You have to go back for seconds and fuck everything up. All my plans. Everything. I told you that you’d regret choosing some little coed piece of ass over BPG. Believe me, yet?”
He was going to kill her. No, seriously.
“What do you hope to achieve with this stunt, Kim?”
Her gotcha expression was pissing him off more and more with every passing second.
“Simple. I want the little brunette’s ass gone. She’s a distraction. Keep the stupid magazine if you must . . . but the girl? No.”
“And if I tell you to blow me?”
“Well,” she laughed. “We can negotiate terms, I suppose.” The sneer let him know she’d swallow his cock whole to make her point. “Bottom line—BPG or the brunette. It’s your choice. If she stays, the Sony hack will look like chump change when little tidbits about your connection to Ward Industries going under leaks out. I wonder how bright eyes will feel when she finds out that you destroyed your father’s company and walked away laughing. And what will Adam Ward say to the press when it all goes public? Bet he’ll have all kinds of lovely things to divulge about your mom. The secretary he used and threw away.”
He almost grabbed her. Thought about it for half a nanosecond but remained absolutely still and in total control of himself. She was seriously mistaken if she thought he could be intimidated. His only real concern was for Rhiann. The rest of it? He couldn’t fucking care less.
Liam glanced in the rearview mirror and found Roman staring at him. A second’s worth of silent communication passed between them before Roman slid into bodyguard mode and left the car, coming around to the passenger side and immediately opening the door. Watching a completely unprepared Kim almost tumble backward and out onto the pavement restored his cool. Fuck her.
With his nemesis standing by on the pavement and Roman unloading his bags to a waiting valet, Liam calmly exited the car—smoothing his tie and shirt and adjusting his cuffs as he impassively eyed the frigid blonde.
“Enjoy your getaway,” she said with a saccharine sweet smile that was as fake and phony as her lips and tits.
She knew damn well that he wasn’t off on some getaway. The deal he was brokering with a huge firm that had massive ties throughout the British Empire was a once in a lifetime opportunity to make a difference instead of just making money.
With the need for civility gone, he pushed a pair of sunglasses on and curtly informed her, “Roman will be watching.”
She let out a laugh as brittle as she was. “Oh, I’m counting on it.”
With a haughty flash of triumph, she leaned in for a faux good-bye while a couple of hovering paparazzi watched. Liam saw them from the corner of his eye and grimaced. Before he knew it, the crazy bitch glued herself to his front with a good-bye hug that he’d needed to wrestle free from.
Roman interrupted with a heavy glare at Kim, who he told rather brusquely to wait in the car while he finished seeing to the luggage.
Ignoring him, she focused solely on Liam. “Don’t look so glum, darling.” Kim chuckled. “You’re furious with me now, but you’ll see that I’m right. You can have it all, Liam. Everything you’ve ever dreamed of for the company is coming true. We’re almost there. BPG is bigger than all of us. Don’t fuck things up because you want to get laid.”
“Motherfucker,” he groaned to Roman as she slid into the backseat and shut the car door.
“How dangerous is what she has?”
Liam took two steps closer to the rear of the car where she wouldn’t have a clear view of them and gestured for Roman to come closer.
“How dangerous? It’s the skeleton in the closet.”
“And Miss Wilde?”
Shit. “It’s not the way she made it sound.”
Roman’s eyes narrowed, and he nodded slightly.
“I want her protected, Bishop. That icy nut-jacker,” he growled with a quick slant of his head toward the passenger in the car, “has it out for Rhiann. And . . . um . . .”
Damn. He was at a loss for words. Sharing wasn’t his strong suit, but Liam needed Roman to be all over this situation while he was in Europe. A grimace that began in his heart spread to his face, locking his fearsome scowl in place.
“Well, uh . . . technically—she’s not speaking to me at the moment.”
Roman threw up his hands in disgust and turned his back, grousing, “Well, isn’t that just fucking perfect?”
It all went even further downhill from there as they made what plans they could in the time they had.
The champagne started as soon as he got to the V.I.P. Lounge. Reeling from the turmoil loosed inside from what Kim threw at him, Liam struggled to keep it together.
Hearing her accuse him of being just like his father had blown his world apart. The way she put it. Fuuucck. Having someone unexpectedly hold up a mirror and compare his involvement with Rhiann when she was younger, how it ended, and his behavior in general—against what his mother had gone through as a young girl at the hands of his ambitious father. Well, it sickened him. The similarities dug a hole in his stomach.
The need to avenge the wrongs and indignities done to his mother had fueled Liam’s relentless drive to power. His hatred for Adam Ward had been a powerful tool in his arsenal. No matter what, he had vowed, he was going to make the man pay for what he’d done.
And yet, he hadn’t seen that he was behaving much as that hated man had. Indulging in a clandestine affair with a someone still surrounded by the blush of girlhood, letting it go on for months knowing full well he was playing with her emotions, and then casting her aside with brutish cruelty.
STRUGGLING TO SHOVE EVERYTHING IN her arms through the door to her apartment, Rhiann groaned and muttered a pithy, “Fuuuck,” when a bag stuffed with jingle bells decided to rip, sending dozens of the gold and silver bells tumbling through the hallway.
The sound of metal hitting the wood floor was nothing compared to the symphony of chimes that rang out as the different sized bells rolled and scattered before her weary eyes.
Unceremoniously dropping her burdens just inside the door, she turned back to start gathering the moving jinglers when the door across the hall opened a crack then flung wide.
Oh, balls. It was her neighbor, Dave. He was a nice dude and everything, but he tried too damn hard with Rhi, and she just wasn’t in the mood. Something about his brand of New York urban shtick rubbed her the wrong way. Maybe that was because she found the whole hipster thing, on Dave’s part anyway, to be an affectation at best. Hipster today . . . Ninja Turtle tomorrow—if that was the latest trend.
“Ree-punzel,” he drawled, his eyes lighting up when he saw her. “S’that you being a bell babe out here in the hallway?”
Ugh. She liked creating words just as much as the next person, but Dave’s penchant for making up names for anyone and everyone grated on her nerves. Bell babe? Aw, come on! And Ree-punzel? Was hard not to curl her lip in a sneer.
Instead she mumbled, “Sorry ‘bout that,” while scrambling around the hallway trying to corral the wayward jingles which seemed to have minds of their own. Felt a bit like shooing rowdy puppies into a pen.
Hearing the distinctive sound of a cell phone camera in use, she looked to Dave and found the hipster snapping a shot of her efforts. Letting some deserved side-shade fly, she went back to grabbing her balls and tried not to snicker laugh at her internal dialogue. Grab her balls? Sheesh!
“A little assistance here would be nice,” she mumbled.
“Ah, sorry. Just watering my Instagram stream with some fresh content.”
With all the errant bells scooped up, Rhi tried to make a mad dash for her apartment knowing full well that her neighbor was not going to just wave and go back to minding his own business.
>
“We missed you at Christmas,” he told her with a crooked grin. “Candy Apple from downstairs baked sugar cookies, and we gathered in the courtyard to join the bands of roving carolers. Where were you? Holidays in St. Bart’s with a bunch of your model gal pals? We were all devo that you weren’t around.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Gal pals? St. Bart’s? She was sooooo not up for one of Dave’s coolness conversations. Nobody was devo that she was MIA, except maybe him. And then, of course, there was the expression devo.
And poor first-floor east corner Penny—nice lady with an unusual sense of style—who was in no way a Candy Apple. Dave had coined the term a full year and a half ago her when hair had been dyed a vibrant red. The color lasted ten hot minutes before it changed to something else, and she hadn’t been a redhead since.
Thing was, when he found a term or an expression that he liked, Hipster Dave pretty much chewed that shit up but refused to spit it out . . . like forever. Dude needed to get more material if he hoped to stay current.
“Sorry to disappoint, but no St. Bart’s for me. Family time and a bit of snow fun but now it’s back to the real world.”
She was standing in her doorway now. With her hand on the knob ready to close it in his face, she kicked the bags she’d dropped away from where she stood.
Eyeing the vintage men’s vest he wore, no doubt from a suitably hip thrift store, she was reminded of another man who favored the same garment, and just like that, she’d had enough.
“Look, I gotta go. Unpack, guzzle some coffee . . . you know. Thanks for being a . . . bellhop,” she nearly cringed at the words, “and a belated Merry, Merry to you, Dave. See ya around,” she told him with a frozen smile as she calmly shut the door on his startled expression.
“Oh, yes! At last,” she murmured into the silence. It was good to be home again. After a long week of holiday and wedding overindulgence, she was fried. The quiet solitude of her little apartment was a welcome change of pace.
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