We never ended up going to the DA’s office that day. Instead, after we’d both managed to catch our breath, Shawn convinced me to join him in the shower, and then convinced me we needed to eat dinner. He ordered a meal from one of the most expensive restaurants in town, and I was shocked to hear them happily agree to send a waiter in his car to deliver it to us, since they obviously didn’t do delivery normally. Salmon risotto, perfectly medium rare steak, a bottle of champagne, fried squash blossoms, a perfectly dressed salad, and the best chocolate gelato I’d ever eaten in my life, came right to Shawn’s door, and we shared every bit of it. Then, we were going at it again like horny teenagers, until I was so exhausted, and so relaxed, that I drifted off to sleep in his bed with him.
The next morning hit me like falling through the ice on a lake in January, and I woke up tangled in Shawn’s bedsheets, my heart pounding with the realization of what I’d done. I sat up in bed and covered my face with my hands. “Oh shit.”
“Good morning,” Shawn said, next to me.
“No, it is not a good morning,” I said.
“Did something happen while we were asleep?” I felt the bed shift and took my hands away from my face in time to see Shawn sit up, looking at me curiously.
“No, something happened before we went to sleep,” I said. “We had sex.”
“You didn’t seem to have a problem with it then,” Shawn pointed out, sounding amused. “Based on how you were going last night, you had the furthest thing from a problem with it last night.”
“That’s the problem,” I said. “I didn’t have a problem with it last night and this...this is something that could get me fired.”
“Oh, come on,” Shawn said, shaking his head. “You’re not going to get fired for sleeping with me.”
“You’re a client,” I said. “Sleeping with clients is against ethics.”
“No, my father is a client,” Shawn countered.
“Still,” I insisted. “You’re paying me. We should have kept things professional. I should have been able to keep things professional.” I climbed out of the bed. How had I not noticed, the night before, that it was so big? I looked around, until I remembered my clothes were still in the kitchen where we’d left them. I could feel Shawn’s gaze on me, trailing over every curve of my body. “Stop.”
“What?”
“Stop looking at me like that,” I told him, turning around to meet his gaze. He was smiling, and for a moment, I was furious. Then, just as quickly, I felt depressed.
“You’re good to look at,” Shawn said, simply.
“You shouldn’t know that,” I said, firmly. “You shouldn’t even be thinking about that.”
“Even if we hadn’t had sex, I would think about it,” Shawn countered. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a good half of your male clients, probably some of your female clients, have thought about it.”
“But I’ve never slept with any of them,” I pointed out.
“Why are you getting so up in arms about this?”
I took a deep breath, trying to settle my nerves.
“Please--please,” I said. “Please just...ask for anyone else at the office to cover the case. I don’t care what you bribed Harrison. Pick him, pay him my rate and he’ll be thrilled.”
“I don’t want him,” Shawn said. “I want you.”
“Just promise me you’ll think about it?” I started towards the door, trying to figure out if I had enough time to get a shower at my apartment before I went into the office. The issue of speaking to the DA had totally taken the back burner after what I had done the night before. Besides which, I reminded myself that it didn’t seem all that likely that they were going to move forward with the attempt to frame Shawn, now that they’d moved onto attacking him.
I didn’t wait for Shawn to answer. Instead, I hurried out of his room, down the stairs, and into the kitchen as quickly as I could. I heard him above me, getting out of bed, and then calling my name. But I found my skirt, blouse and bra and managed to get them all on faster than I’d managed to get them off the night before. I couldn’t find my panties anywhere. I grabbed my shoes and my purse.
“Cynthia, would you please stop for a second and talk to me about this?”
“No,” I said. “I have to get to work. Just--just think about who you want on the case instead of me.” I pulled away when Shawn grabbed my wrist and hustled my way out the door before he could come up with anything else to argue on.
I drove to my place, still shaken from what I had done, trying to work my head around how I’d let myself get talked into sleeping with Shawn. I played the events through my mind step by step; the attack, going into his townhouse for a beer, talking about how things had been between us in high school, arguing about the breakup. How had we even ended up talking about sex? Why hadn’t I had the presence of mind to shut it down right away? Whatever temporary madness had come over me, I couldn’t trust myself to believe it wouldn’t happen again.
I pulled onto the street my building was on and mentally started composing the memo I would send to Harrison that day after I got into the office. I would explain that I couldn’t maintain a professional relationship with Shawn, and that I had referred him as one of the senior partners. So we wouldn’t lose the money Shawn and his father represented. I parked the car and got out, still tweaking the details of what I would say in my mind as I hurried up the walkway towards the building.
I had completely forgotten the attack the day before, and the threats that had spurred me to hire Jack to keep track of me in the first place, right up until I got to my floor and smelled the smoke. I discovered, a matter of a minute later, that it was coming from my apartment, just before the smoke detector in my apartment was drowned out by the alarm in the hall. My phone buzzed as I hurried down the stairs with the rest of the people on my floor, hurrying out to the parking lot where we were all supposed to go. Had I left something on when I left the day before? How could it have taken that long to start a fire?
Immediately, I felt my suspicions rise up. There was no way it was random chance that my apartment was on fire just as I was getting to it. When I remembered my phone, and checked the text message I’d gotten while running away, my suspicions were confirmed. Take yourself off the Peterson case. It was from a blocked number.
It took fifteen minutes for the firefighters to arrive, and my neighbors and I watched as the smoke began flowing out of the building, telling us, without any need for confirmation from the officials, that the fire had expanded, throwing its reach beyond my apartment. The sons of bitches had probably made at least a few other people homeless, temporarily, and had destroyed everything I owned that wasn’t on my back, in my car, or at the office. They were willing to risk killing other people to get me to stop. By the time the firefighters went in to put the blaze out, I’d come to a decision; if they wanted me off the case that badly, it was the best reason I could think of to stay on it. Not only was I going to get Shawn Peterson Senior cleared, but I was also going to do my damnedest to take out the people who were behind this, too.
Chapter Eight
“What the hell are you doing here?” I had gone to Cynthia’s office as soon as I’d heard the news, so it was probably a bit stupid of me to ask what she was doing there since I hadn’t been able to think of anywhere else I could find her.
As soon as I’d heard about what had happened, I was out the door almost before I knew what I was doing. By the time I climbed into my Tesla, parked a bit away from my townhouse, I’d started to form an idea of what I wanted to do; I had to make sure that Cynthia was safe. The rest of what I wanted to accomplish had come to me on the drive across town to the law office. But my first order of business had been to make sure that the woman I’d gone through so much trouble to reconnect with wasn’t harmed. No one had been able to tell me anything about that aspect of it. Of course, I’d assumed that since the fire seemed to have started before she’d even left my house, though my contact hadn’t known that, she was pr
obably safe.
But then, as I’d started driving towards her apartment, I’d thought of a dozen other scenarios. What if she’d been snatched up by more kidnappers or attackers while confusion reigned at her building? What if something else had happened to her, and I hadn’t heard about it? I’d stopped on my way to her apartment building, realizing that I didn’t think she would be there--her home was destroyed, after all. From the lack of any other ideas of where she might have been, I’d decided to go to the law offices, figuring that someone there should know her location.
“Working,” she said, without looking up. Somehow, since the fire, she’d managed to change her clothes, though I had no idea how. I’d have to ask her later.
“Your apartment just went up in smoke an hour ago,” I pointed out.
“And standing in the parking lot and crying about it is going to undo that?” She looked up then, and I could see that in spite of how sarcastic she was being, she was shaken. Her eyes were wider than normal, and she was pale. But there was that set to her jaw that I recognized from arguing with her when we’d been together as kids, the one that had always told me that there was no point trying to reason with her.
“Bravo,” I said, sitting down. “I take it you’re not going to keep going on about how I need to convince Harrison to take over?”
Cynthia stared for a moment and then shook her head. “I am going to get those bastards,” she said bitterly. I couldn’t blame her.
“We are going to get those bastards,” I said, correcting her. “Good to have you fully onboard, finally.”
“Well, it’s not like I have much choice at this point,” Cynthia said. She took a deep breath and sat back in her chair.
“You need to come and stay with me.” That was the real point of why I’d come, and since I wasn’t about to argue about her staying on the case, or even about her continuing to work, clearly she was determined to work straight through feeling afraid and depressed. I thought I might as well get to the main idea.
“We just got attacked at your place yesterday,” Cynthia countered.
“I don’t mean there,” I said. “I have another place. It’s listed under a different name, owned by a shell company, no direct connection to me.”
Cynthia raised an eyebrow. “I almost want to ask why you have a place like that,” she said slowly. “But it occurs to me that there aren’t a whole lot of legal or ethical reasons for a hideaway like that.”
“I like having property that isn’t official,” I said, simply. “We can both stay there. Nobody needs to know. There’s no trail they can follow to find us there. But you would have to stay put with me, at least for a day or two.” Cynthia crossed her arms over her chest.
“That sounds convenient, for you,” she said.
“If you come and go, there’s a chance they’ll trail you,” I said. “If you don’t want to have sex with me again, I won’t say anything about it. But you need to stay there and work remotely. You can do that anywhere, can’t you?”
“Except for court stuff,” Cynthia admitted. “Yes.”
“So until we can figure out other ways to keep you safe, and me too, we’ll both go into hiding while you work on the case,” I suggested. I didn’t want to go into hiding, myself. I wanted to get in touch with a guy I knew, who I thought would be more than capable of tracking down the specific people who’d torched Cynthia’s apartment, and get them to talk. But that might only backfire. I was pissed enough to rush over to the lawyer’s offices, but I wasn’t so impulsive that I’d do something that might screw things up for both of us even more. Not yet, anyway.
“How long do you think that will be?”
I shrugged.
“You must have private investigators you know,” I pointed out. “And you have Nathan. Once you have some good dirt on whoever’s behind this, we can come out and get them caught.” Cynthia thought about that for a moment and I let her. I knew better than to try the hard sell at that point.
“So indefinitely, then,” Cynthia said. I shrugged again.
“You aren’t safe here,” I said. “You could go to a hotel, but you wouldn’t be safe there, either. People can be paid to reveal who’s staying at a hotel.” I knew that much from experience; I’d been the one paying to find out information, once upon a time.
“You promise me that you’re not going to try and put the moves on me just because I’m there?” Cynthia stared me down, and no matter how I had joked with her earlier that day, about her clientele thinking about her naked, I had to admit she had that penetrating stare down pat. It was the kind of lawyerly look that I was sure won trials.
“I promise that I am not going to try anything on you,” I replied. Cynthia stared me down for a moment longer and then sighed.
“Fine,” she said. “I was going to go shopping for necessities that went in the fire this afternoon.”
“Keep Jack at your side the whole time,” I told her. “And let me know when you’re going to come by. I’ll give you the address. Does Jack have a car they might not know about?” Dad and I had standing plans for when something like this came up, but it had never been as serious as this; mostly just scandals when one of us needed to drop out of the public eye for a while.
“Oh, you want him to get me there under cover,” Cynthia surmised. I nodded.
“If he’s got a vehicle without registration, they wouldn’t be able to trace him. That would be one more layer of misdirection,” I pointed out. “If he doesn’t, then I do, and I can send you the information to go to it.” Back when I’d first started getting interested in cars sometime after my twentieth birthday, and I mean really interested, I’d discovered that it made good sense to keep a few of my cars under different names, or to buy them via third parties. It meant that if my assets were ever seized, I could always, at least, have the cars as collateral for money.
We talked about the logistics of moving her in. I’d already stashed necessities there, even down to groceries; they had been kept and maintained for a while, so I was ready to enact my own part of the illusion. We agreed that Cynthia would try and finish up by two, and then she and Jack would take a car registered under another name on the most wandering route possible to the apartment, and she’d move in for the next few days, at least.
I didn’t like to think about how worried I’d been about her when I heard about the fire, but when I left Cynthia’s office, that was where my mind immediately went to. Clearly, whoever it was after Dad, and now me and Cynthia, was more than just serious. That had helped eliminate some of the people on the list that Cynthia had me and Dad come up with of people who might have framed him. But it opened up more questions like why were they that serious about putting Dad away that they’d risk killing other people? In the years I’d been working under my Dad, starting from the summer before I’d gone to college, I hadn’t been involved in anything so bad that I could imagine someone taking things this far to get back at him.
I changed cars twice, using the cover of parking garages and structures to conceal my movements as much as possible on the way to the apartment. If someone was tailing me, I was determined to make it as difficult as possible for them. Then all I had to do, or all I could do, was wait. Something I’ve never been good at.
Fortunately for me, Cynthia arrived right on time, Jack following her into the apartment to make sure no one attacked her on the way in. I took in the sight of a brand-new suitcase, presumably loaded up with necessities, along with a Nordstrom garment bag. “Good thing you’re risking your life on a project that’s paying you so well,” I said with a smile.
“That’s the only reason I’m risking my life,” Cynthia countered. I watched as her bodyguard went around the apartment, checking everything out.
“I’ll be staying not too far from here,” Jack said. “And of course if you need to go anywhere…”
“I’ll give you an hour’s notice, unless there’s an emergency,” Cynthia told him. Jack gave me a quick look that I couldn’t read and
then left, and Cynthia and I were alone once again.
“You know good and damned well that the pay isn’t the only reason you took this job,” I said, sitting down in the living room. Cynthia rolled her eyes.
“Oh, right, I forgot. I’m also doing this job because you bribed my boss into making me take it,” she said.
“And because they’re after you now, too,” I pointed out. Cynthia sighed and sat down in the chair farthest away from me.
“Is there at least a guest room here?” Cynthia nudged her suitcase. “I’m not sleeping in the same room as you.”
“I can take the couch,” I said. “It’s plenty comfortable.”
“What do you even use this apartment for when you’re not being pursued by people who want you dead or in jail?” Cynthia crossed her arms over her chest and stared me in the eyes. “I know I said before I didn’t want to know, but I’m curious.”
“Scandals, mostly,” I said with a shrug. “Sometimes it’s good to be off the radar for a week or two, let things cool off.”
“Mostly?” Cynthia raised an eyebrow.
“Sometimes you meet a woman you want to go home with, but you know it’s a bad idea to let her know your real address,” I explained. Cynthia’s cheeks lit up with color and I couldn’t help but chuckle.
“You’re disgusting,” she said, shifting in her chair.
“As if you’ve never picked up a one-night stand,” I countered.
“I have never owned an entire apartment through two or three intermediaries for the sake of booty calls,” Cynthia pointed out.
Redeemed: A Billionaire Second Chance Romance (Lost Love Book 1) Page 5