Wilde Heart (Wilde Women Book 2) (29 page)

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 for 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.

S
TRUGGLING 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. B
ell 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.

Toeing off her Uggs, she did an exaggerated jig when her feet touched the ice-cold floor.

Hurrying to the wall thermostat so she could get some damn heat pumping, she hesitated a second when seeing the lever was pushed to OFF. Really? Had she done that before she skipped town? Seemed a bit odd seeing how it was the end of December and snow was on the ground. Well, after all, she
had
been distracted before she left. Shrugging, Rhi pushed the dial to a reasonable temperature, kept her coat buttoned up, and went in search of some socks.

Half an hour and some sweet heat relief later, she was on the sofa with her hands wrapped around a ginormous coffee cup. Ignoring the stack of crap still cluttered by the door was easy enough. She’d get to it when she got to it.

Swinging her head side-to-side and back-to-front, Rhi closed her eyes and chased the tension from her upper body. If not for the fact that she had to go to work tomorrow, she would have seriously contemplated taking a nap.

After an extra-long week of family togetherness, all the hoopla surrounding Brynn’s wedding, and spending Christmas day at home with her folks, she was well and truly knackered.

Bet Mr. Three-Piece would love that word. . . . knackered.

Aw, shit. Delete—delete—delete. All thoughts of her globe-hopping boss were officially off-limits. She didn’t have time for such nonsense with so much on her plate. Just like her bags, she’d deal with him when she dealt with him.
Period.
And since he was gallivanting around merry old England until who knew when, it didn’t seem like she’d be dealing anytime soon.

Reaching for the TV remote, Rhi clicked on a news channel for background noise. She’d watched
A Christmas Story,
It’s a Wonderful Life,
and
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
so many times in the last week that her brain eventually melted.