The sound of Roman’s “Macho Man” ringtone echoed through the room when his phone went off, triggering an exaggerated eye roll from Rhiann. Every time she heard it, she couldn’t help but snicker. The Village People. “Macho Man.” Sheesh. Men.
She liked that he knew how funny it was and to her complete delight never failed to flex his muscles as he answered.
“Sorry. Excuse me,” he said. Grabbing the phone, he answered and walked to the other side of the open great room.
Straightening up the Monopoly board, Rhi counted her play money and silently mused over the events of the past couple of days.
Roman Bishop had proven to be an amiable housemate. Well on his way to being a neat freak, he’d snickered with good humor when she teased him about it, telling her old habits die hard. She hadn’t been particularly surprised to learn he was old school Marine. Of course, he was. Made perfect sense.
Right away, the two established a rhythm that helped ease her continuing anxiety. Every morning he ran with her along the beach and even matched his gait to hers so she didn’t drop in the first ten minutes trying to keep up with him. This morning, she noticed that a couple walking their dog on the long stretch of sand appeared at pretty much the same time they did. Were they the people he had watching her? Seemed likely that they were.
After the morning run, each of them disappeared to shower and dress, with Roman reappearing at some point to whip up a disgusting looking concoction in the blender that he swore was delicious. Some protein shake that looked an awful lot like baby poop to her.
He left her alone after that as she fired up her laptop and let the words come. Just for shits and grins, Rhi was logging her daily word count but beyond that, her writer’s journey stalled. She avoided her social media, refused to ride her book sale data, and absolutely refused to read any reviews. She had enough stress in her life at the moment. All she really wanted to do was write and cocoon. The quiet isolation was good for her soul.
And what did he do while she played Jane Austen? She had no clue, but she was sure it involved work. And talking to Liam. She knew this for a fact because every day without fail he came to her just before lunchtime with his phone extended in his hand and a hopeful expression on his face. And every time he did, she pursed her lips and refused.
Lunch was generally a quick and easy throw together after which they ran errands or went sightseeing. He seemed especially taken with the Wright Brothers Memorial, even going on and on about the mission of the National Park Service and what a bang up job they did of preserving the nation’s natural treasures.
In drill sergeant mode, he’d dragged her ass up the humungous dune at Jockey’s Ridge twice, leading her to declare it the best butt workout she’d ever had.
Every night, they went out to eat, sampling local favorites like true tourists. They acted like a couple, and it seemed as though he was trying to be seen in public with her. They certainly put on quite a show, especially considering he was certain someone was watching them.
They spent evenings in front of the TV or making good use of the awesome theater room. There was nothing quite like surround sound and a giant-ass TV.
“Dammit,” she overheard him mutter. “I don’t like where this is going. You’re totally right, of course. Thanks, Cam. You’ve been a huge help. Hey, how’s your boy doing? He’s what? Like six months old now?”
Rhiann made a run to the kitchen for a drink, passing close by Roman as he laughed into the phone.
“Can’t believe your moldy special feces ass is married and has a kid. Shit. What’s the world coming to?”
Special feces? Well that expression certainly had the ring of an inside joke to it. Married and a kid? Relieved he wasn’t talking to Liam, she relaxed. More than one refusal to speak to Liam in a day was quite enough thank you.
After ending the call, he did this odd shuffle in a circle that let her know he was in deep thought and distracted.
“What’s wrong, Roman?”
When he glanced at her, his expression revealed worry, twisting her insides into a tight ball of stress. Now what?
Eyes, dark and stormy clashed with hers. “Sorry, Princess. Game over. Something’s come up.”
Rhiann felt the lump of nervous tension in her stomach clench. How much worse could things possibly get? She shuddered knowing that, in truth, she had no idea.
In a nanosecond the polite, charming man she’d come to know disappeared and was replaced by a no-nonsense badass with a menacing frown.
“Is Liam okay?” she whispered.
The look he gave her wasn’t meant to reassure. Oh, my god. She needed to stay calm.
Roman shook his head—maybe he realized that his sudden change of attitude was scaring her. His expression didn’t actually change and when he finally got around to speaking, he said something that made her wide eyes even wider.
“Tell me something. Even though it’s you in the eye of the hurricane, how is it that your only real concern seems to be for a man you refuse to talk to?”
“I WANT TO HAVE A conversation with both of you. At the same time. No more bullshit, Boss. Things are happening that you each need to know about.”
Liam didn’t pretend to misunderstand. Shit was bound to come to a head sooner or later. Looked like that time had arrived.
“She won’t talk to me,” he groused.
“Not my problem,” Roman snapped.
Liam raised an eyebrow at the terseness in his tone. For a couple of heart-stopping moments, he worried that something terrible had happened. Anger and rage broke free inside him. He’d had enough of this shit.
“Do it,” he murmured.
The next sounds he heard were of Roman’s heavy shoes thudding on a wood floor followed by knocking. Liam held his breath and listened intently.
“Princess,” he heard the man say. “You, me, and Mr. Ashforth need to have a talk. Now.”
Princess? Roman called Rhiann Princess? Instant jealousy flared to life. Had playacting turned personal for them? He’d kill Roman if he stepped over the line. The girl was his.
And then he heard her voice and there was no doubt in his mind that she was very much his. She sounded worried and scared, which pissed him off, but knowing she wasn’t all giggly and flirty with his bodyguard reset his attitude.
“Please don’t make me do this,” she mumbled as he strained to listen. “You know I’m barely holding it together as it is, Roman. Talking to him, hearing his voice. I just don’t know. Never ends well for me, y’know?”
Roman’s reply was softer than the demand he issued. “You can’t run from him forever.”
Silence fell. Fuck. Liam wished he could see her face. Try to read what was going on in her mind. She must have given in, though, because a minute later he heard the signs of the two of them walking followed by some quiet murmuring.
“You good?” Roman said.
Without any further dithering, he launched into an update with a directness that worried Liam.
“Okay. So, before we begin this briefing, I want to make sure everyone can hear and comment. Boss?”
“I’m here.” He paused to swallow and added, “Good afternoon, Rhiann.”
Being unable to see her expression was frustrating as hell, but she answered and right now, that was enough.
“Hi,” she replied in a tiny voice that ripped through his soul. It sounded like all the courage that made her so unique was gone. He wanted to be there to hold her. Somewhere along the way, he’d become so focused on the problem that he forgot what this was doing to Rhiann. His ruthless inner bastard was focused entirely on crushing the forces that aimed to harm them both.
Roman cut off his next thought with a pithy, “You two need a workshop on warm fuzzies.”
He silently groaned. The man was right. Sometimes he and Rhiann were so busy verbally sparring that the bigger picture became blurry.
“Let’s get to it then. I’m going to lay out what we know. There’s a whole team of people wo
rking this, and in the last forty-eight hours, some things have come to light that change the dynamic.”
There was a long silent pause and then Roman started talking again.
“Kim Walsh is not who she seems. My guy in Arizona dug deep and found the following. Her birth name is Jane Kimberly Allen. Until she went to college, she went by Jane Allen. Her name didn’t undergo a change until sometime after she got her degree and before she married Richard Walsh. While none of that raises a flag, what does is the fact that Jane Allen logged at least two stays at an inpatient mental health facility in Des Moines.”
Motherfucker. How had his legal folks missed that when they’d vetted her for the CFO position at BPG?
Rhiann gasped then groaned at this pronouncement. Yeah. He felt the same way.
“Were the stays voluntary?” Liam asked.
“Good question, Boss, and the answer is no, not exactly. Not the first stay. That was court-ordered after she pled no contest to a stalking and assault charge. On a family member, no less. Crazy bitch,” Roman mumbled at the end.
“The second time was during her final year at university. From what Cameron uncovered, she was fucking a professor for better grades. When he tried to end the arrangement, she went postal on his ass and trashed his office. After she vandalized his car—a rock through the windshield, according to the campus police report—he tried to talk her down off the ledge but she was having none of it. Long story short, she pulled a weapon and . . .”
“What?” he heard Rhiann yelp. “A weapon? You told me he was safe, Roman! What the fuck?”
Told her who was safe? Him? Holy shitballz. Was she worried about him?
Struggling to hear what was happening on the other end of the call, Liam held his breath and overheard Roman trying to calm her down.
“Shh, Princess. He’s fine. And I would never let anything happen to him, okay? I’ve got people on him twenty-four seven.”
Her anguished moan was like a painful kick in the gut.
As if none of that had just happened, Roman picked up where he left off and kept on.
“Since it was a university issue, they let her lawyer bargain a way out probably just to make the whole thing go away. She took the psych ward over an assault charge and that as they say was all she wrote.”
In a deceptively even voice, Liam asked, “Why hasn’t any of this come to light until now?” The urge to act out violently was leaning heavily on him.
“Because the whole thing never went beyond campus police. After her release, she went to ground, got her degree, and then re-emerged—calling herself Kim. At that point, she bolts the Midwest and heads East for the MBA program at Wharton. That’s where she meets and marries Richard Walsh. Of course, didn’t take long for her to divorce the husband’s ass. She used him to help create a new person—and that’s how she becomes Kim Walsh. So, in a nutshell, she leaves the scene of her scenes,” he chuckled, “and does a complete makeover. New location. New school. New man. New name.”
That was a lot of information to take on. None of it good.
“In addition to the mole in BPG’s legal department . . .”
“Aw, come on!” Rhiann groaned. Liam agreed. At least they were in sync about this.
“She has a wannabe gangbanger in her bed with an interesting rap sheet. We think that’s who’s been breaking into your apartment, Princess.”
What the hell? Roaring furiously Liam snapped, “Breaking into? As opposed to broke into?”
“Everyone, calm down,” Roman bit out, “but yes.”
Directing the following statement at Rhiann that was more comment than a question, he asked, “You kept a key for your place at the office, didn’t you?”
Liam’s stomach was performing slow somersaults. This was worse than anything he imagined. Trying to one-up a scorned woman was child’s play compared to staying a step ahead of a certifiable nut job. This was some serious shit.
“I . . . yes,” Rhiann choked out. “Does she have it?”
“That’s the assumption at this point.”
Roman cleared his throat—a signal to Liam that something heavy was about to come out.
“At some point in the past two days, the apartment was well and truly torn apart. Since Walsh has already shown that this sort of behavior is part of her modus operandi, there’s no doubt it was her. Most likely with the help of her side dick.”
That tidbit was the straw that broke his self-command. “I want charges brought against her immediately.”
“One step ahead, Boss, but here’s the fly in the ointment. She’s gone off the radar as of last night. Oh, and, by the way . . . your new Tesla? The one parked in the garage at BPG? It has a fresh coat of paint. Think a four-year-old’s art project and you have the picture. Guess she didn’t like the idea of electric cars.”
“Was it caught on the surveillance cameras?”
“No. The camera took the first hit.”
Liam’s mind was careening all over the place. “And Marjorie? Shayne? Are they . . . I don’t know—” He felt a searing torment steal his words.
“I’ve got them—don’t worry. Marjorie sent Shayne home just to be cautious.”
In a jerky, panicked voice, Rhiann asked, “Shayne? My intern, Shayne? Sent home? Why? And who the hell is Marjorie?”
There was a heavy silence and then he heard her wail. “I can’t do this. Can not do this.”
“Milaya,” he pleaded, but he was helpless. This whole thing sucked.
“I want my life back, Ashforth!” she screamed. “My life before you. Before you ripped my heart out. Before you played me like a game piece on a chess board.”
The unmistakable thud of footsteps sounded—hers—and they got fainter with each step. Meaning, he supposed, that she left the room.
“That went well,” Roman drawled. In the background, a door slammed.
Rhiann flung herself on the bed and curled inward—knees drawn up toward her chest, hands crossed under her chin.
Finding the constriction of the arm brace uncomfortable, she tore it off and flung it across the room with an angry growl.
If she could just get up and walk away from all this bullshit, she thought sullenly, she would.
Oh, who the hell was she kidding? Her fate was sealed a long time ago on a hot summer day. Running away wasn’t going to change how her heart raced at even the slightest thought of the man she couldn’t get over. Didn’t want to get over, she allowed sulkily.
Just thinking about Liam’s muscular body pressed to hers was enough to shut her down. Pretending that she wasn’t plagued by dreams so deliciously erotic that she awoke from them bathed in sweat and throbbing with need was useless.
He’d been her everything. Why else would she have let him close to her again? She believed herself to be in love with him—that was why. Plain and simple truth. And nothing he’d done had changed that.
Hmmph. She wasn’t going anywhere. Just hearing his voice on the phone had been enough to fan flames of desire so heated that she wondered why her skin wasn’t charred.
Roman had made quite the point of assuring her that Liam’s feelings ran along the lines of need rather than want. That had to count for something, right? Sure, he’d obviously gotten a bit too close to Kim, and though the very thought set her nerves on edge, it wasn’t his fault the woman was a head case.
Having it pointed out that she was more worried about Liam’s safety than her own only underscored the truth of her feelings. She was mad and hurt—yes. But, he wasn’t a kid. No—he was an adult and her petulance because he hadn’t been celibate and yearning for her all this time was just plain stupid. Just because she was a one-man woman didn’t make her better than him. Or more in the right.
Willing the tension from her body, Rhiann closed her eyes and drifted. Her last clear thought before sleep overtook her was that with them, or at least with her, what was going on was so much more than sex. Even now, separated as they were, she couldn’t help the feeling that she was
part of him. Absorbed. Devoured. Enveloped. Resistance was oh, so very useless. She was his.
“Tell her everything. All of it. The picture circulating Passion. Shayne’s involvement. How she came to be injured. Kim’s threats to me. She deserves to know, Roman.”
“Boss, you sure? I know you like this girl but . . .”
“Oh, for god’s sake, Bishop. Stop trying to play a player. Like left the building when Elvis did.”
He heard a rumbling chuckle and gritted his teeth. “Are you laughing at me?”
“Oh, most definitely. Want me to pave the way, hmm? Jesus. The shit I do for you.”
“Not too late to gag on my dick, you asshole,” Liam murmured. Roman’s burst of laughter brought a smile. An actual goddamn smile.
“Well, this is certainly an interesting turn of events.” He heard his bodyguard chuckle. “Why, I do believe I’m the one holding all the cards at the moment. Interesting.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Just that you want me to tell her all your nasty secrets and her, well . . . she doesn’t realize it yet, but I know where all of her bones are buried, too. Okay, maybe not all the bones but certainly more than you are aware of.”
“Are you fucking with me?”
“Yep. Gotta get my jollies somehow.”
Liam considered all the ramifications of Rhiann actually having skeletons and didn’t like the implication.
“What sorts of things are you referring to? Anything that can get her into real trouble?”
Roman laughed again. “You’ve met her, right? And yet you ask if Princess Snarks-a-Lot flirts with trouble. Dude. Think about what you just asked. The girl ‘fesses up at the checkout stand if she nibbles on a strawberry before they’re weighed.”
Humph. No surprise there. “Princess Snarks-a-Lot?”
“Yeah. Fits—don’t you think? Your lady gives good snarkasm.”
“Bishop,” he snarled in warning.
“Cool your jets, Boss. Just yanking your chain because you guys make it so easy. Watching you two try to outmaneuver each other is an ass-ton of fun. Especially since she has the upper hand. But as far as those skeletons go—I figure you’ll be confronted with them soon enough. Confession time is looming for both of you so I sure as shit hope you’re ready.”
Wilde Heart (Wilde Women Book 2) Page 28