Wilde Heart (Wilde Women Book 2) (28 page)

Seeing it out of the bag, she knew instantly that this was no Christmas present. Nope—it was a wedding gift in tasteful paper with a white organza bow. A ribbon affixed with a small card read
To Brynn and Jackson.

He sent a wedding present.

And then he got on a plane and flew who knew where.

It took Rhiann another hour to work up the balls to call his office. Even if he wasn’t around, his watchdog gatekeeper would be on the job, so she worked up a plausible excuse for calling, took a deep breath, and punched in the digits that would connect her to BPG.

It came as a bit of a surprise to learn that one simply didn’t pick up the phone and call Liam Ashforth. Not if you actually wanted to talk to him. That was what his private number was for and from what she gathered, only a few select individuals earned the privilege of direct contact.

She had that number, of course. In fact, he’d insisted they communicate without intermediaries, saying it was essential that they have privacy while navigating their new relationship. Making an end run around his secretary also meant no one was any the wiser when they did speak. More secrets and lies.
Fucker.

After a bit of a runaround, she connected to Liam’s private secretary who didn’t bother with niceties.

“Mr. Ashforth’s office,” she croaked.

Rhi thought she could hear a pen tapping on the desk.
Oh, great.
She hadn’t had much luck with Liam’s dragon-secretary before now and judging by the woman’s harsh tone—she wasn’t going to be making headway anytime soon.

Swallowing the tension building in her throat before she spoke, Rhi closed her eyes and concentrated.

“Good afternoon. Is Mr. Ashforth available? It’s Miss Wilde from
Passion
calling.”

Silence followed.
Shit.
Rhi pulled the phone away from her ear and glanced quickly at the screen to make sure the call was still connected.

“Miss Wilde.”

The way the dragon stated her name made a chill run through her. She panicked for a second and wondered,
Friend or Foe?
After all, this woman would have her own dealings with Frosty the Ice Bitch. Maybe they were BFFs. That would certainly suck.

“I’m sorry but Mr. Ashforth isn’t here.”

Was it Rhi’s imagination or had the woman’s tone softened just a bit?

Making sure to sound surprised, she mumbled, “Oh. . . . um,” and left the rest hanging while she pretended to digest that tidbit of information.

“Don’t you have his private number, dear?”

Dear? Had Dragonatrix just called her
dear?
Maybe she’d dialed an alternate universe, ‘cause that was how she felt. And what was with asking about the private number? Did this lady know about her involvement with Liam?

Not entirely sure what she walked into, Rhiann aimed for subdued ditzy. “Um, yeah I do. But it’s on my phone and I’m calling from a landline. Sorry to bother you. I was just hoping to catch him, before . . .”

“He’s been in the air for some time, Miss Wilde. I’m sorry you missed him. Would you like me to pass along a message? He’ll check in after he lands at Heathrow.”

A message? Aw, crap. Rhi kicked herself for not thinking the call through. Of course, his secretary would update him with messages. At the very least, even if she didn’t indicate a specific message, the Dragon Lady would tell him Rhiann had called.
God, she was a dope.

Stammering with a pained wince when the consequences of her impulsive action lit up her thoughts, Rhi tried to wrap up the call as quickly as possible.

“Um . . . no message, thanks.”

She hadn’t counted on Liam’s secretary having an actual conversation with her. Maybe Rhi had best find out what her name was since she was running out of things to call her.

“Did you receive a delivery earlier? A package? Mr. Ashforth was especially worked up that it be delivered
today.
Is that why you’re calling? Please don’t tell me there was a problem.”

“Yes, um . . . the package. Got it. No problems.”

“Oh, well that’s a relief! He’d be something of a nightmare to deal with if you left the city before the delivery. I hope your sister’s wedding is lovely, Ms. Wilde.”

Oh. My. God.
This lady knew a lot. A lot, a lot. Rhi was stunned into silence. What about the part where no one was supposed to know about their . . . uh, connection?

It had been her who insisted on the
nobody can know
rule—he’d just gone along. Had he told his secretary? Of course, he had or the woman wouldn’t be making an effort to be nice.

Oh, Liam. What the hell?
Still smarting from the reveal of his disgusting betrayal, Rhi couldn’t find her footing. It almost sounded like his gatekeeper knew way more than she was letting on but what exactly did that mean?

“Oh, well . . . a Christmas wedding, you know? Thanks for the best wishes. Speaking of which, I have to run and catch a train. I’m sorry I missed Li . . . oops, I mean Mr. Ashforth. No need to tell him I called. We’ll cross paths at some point.”

After a bit more back and forth, she finally ended the call and sat there, stunned.

Liam had gone to England. She wondered for how long but hadn’t had the nerve to ask when the woman she was poking for information assumed Rhi had the inside track.

So, he really was gone. And his secretary didn’t seem in the least bit surprised that Rhiann was calling. Plus, she knew about the wedding and even that a gift for Brynn had been delivered.

Lord. She was going to have a lot to write about tonight. She was still mad at him. And hurt. But the fact that his gatekeeper just treated her with what sounded like deference muddied the waters and diluted some of her distress.

I
T HAD TAKEN UNTIL HE was cruising at thirty-five thousand feet and had knocked back several glasses of champagne before Liam fully realized he was on an airplane. Virgin Airways made it so easy to show up at the airport brain dead and still have a top-notch flying experience. They thought of everything. Catering to the passengers in the luxury suites was what they did best.

In the dark shadows of his thoughts, Liam acknowledged that he would have liked a vodka martini instead of the bubbly. About ten of them, in fact, lined up one after the other. But arriving in London shitfaced wasn’t a good idea no matter how badly he wanted to block out the last few hours.

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.