Wilde Heart (Wilde Women Book 2) (18 page)

She sighed. “What exactly am I figuring out?”

Brynn smiled cynically and tut-tutted with a shake of her head. “Still not ready to get real? You surprise me, Rhi.”

Giving a one-shoulder shrug, Rhiann looked away from her sister’s knowing gaze and hung her head. Everything was just so frustratingly complicated—by her own doing—that she didn’t even know where to begin. But she knew it was past time to confide in someone and Brynn was the obvious choice. She was levelheaded enough to keep her cool and wouldn’t gloat or pull any of that
You should have known better
crap.

Jumping first and thinking about it later, Rhiann quickly blurted out, “Liam brought me.”

Brynn looked startled. “Brought you . . .
what?
”

“Brought me here,” Rhi explained with a wave of her hand. “We drove in together.”

Brynn grunted with impatience—a familiar response from her no-nonsense sister. “Don’t make me ask. If he drove you here, where in the hell is he? Explain and do it quickly.”

The Club Lounge at the Ritz-Carlton was blessedly quiet when Liam rolled out of his suite. Feeling restless and edgy after an impeccable room service meal that rivaled any Michelin rated restaurant’s Thanksgiving tribute, he needed some air. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d told Rhiann that he really didn’t care for the whole turkey and stuffing ritual.

Truth was, it made him irritable and crotchety as fuck. All of his childhood recollections of this day were bittersweet with a sickening aftertaste. Carolyn would bend over sideways to do a proper holiday only for it to at some point always end up the same way—her joyful enthusiasm would fracture to be replaced by regret, hurt, or despair. All courtesy of the pig she’d given her foolish heart to who disavowed their affair and turned his back on her and their unborn kid.

The happy family meal always disintegrated under the crushing weight of his mother’s sad melancholy. In the end, it was always about
him.
Adam Ward. No matter what Liam did—no matter how hard he tried to protect and please his only parent—her bottom line was always that other man. The one who broke her spirit.

He thought of Rhiann and the time she was spending with the Baron-Wildes. What was a Thanksgiving Day like with them? Would Darcy Wilde end the evening in tears, bemoaning a betrayal older than the towels in the bathroom? Hardly. And that was the issue.

It wasn’t a secret that Darcy Baron-Wilde had come into this life as an orphan, abandoned by her mother and an unknown father. Life had not been overly kind to her, and she’d struggled, probably more than he ever had.

But make a life, she had. Marrying into the Baron-Wilde family, raising three marvelous kids, having a long and successful marriage. She’d overcome the obstacles she’d been born to. And not just because she married well. The lady had balls and made pretty much anything she took on became her bitch. It wasn’t fair to compare the two women, but he did.

While Carolyn had come from a happy home with an older sister and loving parents, it was the shame and devastation she experienced, all of her own making—after all, no one forced her to sleep with a married man—that had acted as a crutch for the rest of her life. A crutch of misery and depression. More often than not, it seemed to Liam like she got off on being miserable. It was where she found her identity. Over time, Carolyn morphed into
that
woman. The one with the sad eyes and defeated body language—endlessly bemoaning the one guy who had done her wrong.

Should it come as a surprise that he didn’t care for holidays? Any of them? Swirling the ice floating in his drink—plain tonic water with a lemon wedge since he’d be driving later—Liam actually squirmed in his leather seat when the voice inside him jeered,
Just who exactly do you imagine gives a shit what you do and don’t care for?

The life he’d created was one big deflection after another. He didn’t socialize. Or have friends.

Suddenly he needed proof that he wasn’t the empty shell seen in his mind’s eye and started searching his recall for instances when gifts or a simple greeting had been exchanged. The only thing that came to mind occurred last year, for his birthday.

He’d just returned to the states after a long trip abroad, feeling drained and even more irascible than usual. After making everyone’s life hell for about a week, he came upon a small wrapped box on his desk one day. Inside was a note from Kim and a business card. The note told him he was in need of an attitude adjustment and ended with a snarky mention of his birthday.

Calling the number on the card led him to an executive concierge service that had his itinerary for a long weekend at Falling Water in western Pennsylvania. The Frank Lloyd Wright architectural masterpiece was a known passion of his and somehow Kim had hooked him up for an on-site personalized experience with the home’s curator. He’d had the time of his life.

Something shifted inside him.
Kim.
Surely she wasn’t the only one to ever have thought of him but try as he might, Liam only kept finding one example after another of how entrenched his CFO had become in his life and he wasn’t referring to his business life.

Damn. How had he not noticed before? There was that birthday thing although quite backhanded in its own way and once he thought about it, she always finagled a drink or two out of him to celebrate the end of year holidays before he jetted out of town.

A pleasant waiter, who was savvy enough to wait for a proper moment to approach him, disturbed Liam’s uncomfortable reverie.

“Excuse me, sir,” he announced quietly. A small tray on which sat a tall, elegant martini glass and a small dish with two picks stuck with three olives a piece appeared in Liam’s line of sight.

He paused and looked at the waiter’s charming smile. Liam didn’t recall ordering a cocktail. He was driving and a bit of a stickler about not getting behind the wheel if he consumed any alcohol.

“A woman at the bar downstairs sent this up for you, Mr. Ashforth.”

Who even knew he was here? It was not as if Philadelphia had ever been on his agenda. Fuck. He’d been trying to fly off radar, but someone obviously recognized him.

A frisson of unease slithered along his nerves as the drink was set before him. How many people were privy to his preference for an ice-cold vodka martini with extra olives set on the side? Something about this wasn’t right.

“Send it back,” he bit out curtly. Liam didn’t know what was going on, and he definitely wasn’t going to play along.

“I’m sorry?” the startled waiter murmured.

Knowing what he said, his body language and his demeanor was either on display or would be described on the other end, he slipped on his badass, fuck you, do you know who you’re dealing with persona and looked at the waiter with a glacial expression.

“Send it back. I’m not in the habit of accepting unsolicited drinks. Or attention,” he added with a sharp edge at the end.

The flustered waiter almost swallowed his tongue with dismay at Liam’s cold response. Quickly removing the glass and dish, he muttered an apologetic, “Please accept my apologies, sir. I’ll take care of everything.”

Before he could slide away, Liam stopped him with an imperious hand signal. “Describe this woman to me,” he demanded icily.

“Oh, uh . . . she’s well-dressed, tall. Blonde. Older but not too.”

“You said she sent the drink from the bar downstairs. How would a patron from downstairs know who was in the Club Lounge? Isn’t this a restricted access area?”

“Oh, yes sir. That’s correct. It is a restricted area, but the woman had been on the club floor, as a guest. I noticed her earlier. Perhaps she saw you in the elevator or in the hallways.”

Yeah, right. Or was stalking him, an uncomfortable thought that brought him up short. He didn’t know for a fact that the drink had come from Kim, but he was pretty damn sure. She would be one of the handful of perceptive individuals who would know to send him his signature drink with the extra olives. Plus, tall and blonde fit her to a T.

Okay. This was getting creepy now. First, remembering how she’d been insinuating herself into his personal life, then the bitch fest of attitude she had on reserve for Rhiann and the way she’d gotten in his face about it. Several small alarms went off inside him.
Jesus.
Was Kim a bunny boiler? Had he been so daft and wrapped up in his own crap that he missed signals where his finance director was concerned?

Oh fuck.
This had the potential to get messy.

Deciding he’d had enough air, Liam rose swiftly, slugged back what remained of the tonic water and headed back to his suite to wait for Rhiann to contact him. If it were Kim hovering in the shadows, he’d find out soon enough. Pulling out his phone, he tapped out a message to Roman, and then dismissed the woman who was fast moving into crazy bitch territory from his mind.

A
FTER TAKING A CAB FROM Nana’s townhome to the Ritz, Rhiann dragged herself into the lobby, feeling like she’d just gone ten rounds with a heavyweight. Brynn had been relentless once Rhi started the Liam confession, barking questions, making pithy comments, and generally riding roughshod over her emotions.

Having already confessed to the secret affair meant she got an earful of stern outrage from her sister. Calling Liam every name in the book had been the predictable part.

When Rhi added the ton of new details—about what was happening between them in the present tense—Brynn did a complete about-face. Even suggesting that Liam had true feelings for her and maybe regretted the way things had ended.

It was easy to see how having a bun in the oven and an adoring man at her side affected Brynn’s thought process.

The sisterly confessional had been so emotionally draining that she stopped there and didn’t go into the whole
hate my job and oh, by the way, I’m writing romance now
thing. She figured one shock at a time was enough for the pregnant lady.

Brynnie, with her spot-on ability to read her younger sisters, stopped Rhi cold with a single question. Was she still in love with Liam Ashforth or was she just trying to win an old battle that was no longer part of her life. “Thanks, sis,” she muttered out loud.
Now I’m going to have that damn question stuck in my head.

She made straight for reception, aware of her black suede pumps tapping a rhythm on the marble floor as she walked. In front of her, a man in a Brooks Brothers suit attending to the front desk looked dwarfed by the enormous soaring columns that dominated the massive hotel lobby.

He looked up at the sound of her approach and Rhi passively noted the way his eyes lit with appreciation as he subjected her to an uncomfortably audacious perusal.

Screwing her face into a tight, coolly dismissive façade, she presented herself with a forthrightness she wasn’t particularly feeling. Rhiann wasn’t going to let the smarmy fuck checking her out know that though.

“Please inform Mr. Ashforth that Miss Baron-Wilde has arrived.” The look she used was less than friendly.

When he glared back at her, picked up the phone, and tersely informed the person on the other end that, “A Miss Baron-Wilde is at the desk,” she knew from his snarky tone that he understood the message in her gaze.

She didn’t have to wait long wondering how quickly Liam would wipe the shithead’s smile off his face because it happened pretty damn quickly. All of a sudden, the Brooks Brothers suit found some backbone and stiffened to attention. Rhiann heard him mumble, “
Yes, sir,”
and then he replaced the phone with one hand while gesturing to the hovering bell staff with the other.

Looking at her but not really seeing her, he nodded in Rhi’s general direction and instructed the elaborately liveried bellman to escort Mr. Ashforth’s guest to his suite.

Oh my, my.
Looks like Brooks Brothers had his ass handed to him on the phone.

The ride in the elevator took only moments, and before she knew it, the friendly hotel bellman was tapping on a door that immediately swung open with Liam standing framed in the doorway. Had she gasped?
Probably.

After hurriedly dealing with the bellman, Liam moved her into the large living room and practically forced her to sit down.