A Dangerously Sexy Secret

His large form was so appealing laid out that way, a dessert for her eyes. All that sculpted muscle and sexual magnetism made her body thrum. And here he was, on her floor right in front of her. A gift for the taking.

Debs’s words floated around in her head: You won’t regret it. Sex is a very natural and healthy part of life.

She’d tried to enjoy sex with Christian, but it had been very repetitive. Her ex had only ever wanted to be on top and had complained when Wren had suggested they try other things. It was something he’d thrown back in her face when he’d discovered her secret paintings.

But something deep down told her that Rhys would be different. That being with Rhys would be different.

“You’re looking at me very intently, Wren.” His lips wrapped around her name in the most delicious way.

“I am.” Tension built inside her, filling her chest and stealing her breath. “Is that a problem?”

“No problem. I was only wondering if you’re planning on making a move.”

Was she? Shit. She’d told herself she had time to get to know him before she acted on her attraction, and then she’d cut herself. Now they were here. And she desperately wanted to find out if her theories about him were true.

“If you’re not...” His brown eyes were lit with fire. “I will.”

Please. Please, please, please.

She opened her mouth to respond when a crash shattered the quiet, halting her words. The stack of paintings behind Rhys had slipped, put out of balance by her removing the heavier ones that had been holding them in place.

“I’ll get them.” She scrambled to her feet in an attempt to prevent him from getting there first, but she accidentally leaned on her injured hand.

“It’s fine, I’ve got it.” He reached for the paintings, his frame stilling suddenly.

Wren’s face filled with heat. She didn’t need to guess which painting he’d discovered.

“Wow.” The word was so filled with shock that it made her stomach twist into a knot. “This is...”

“I wasn’t going to show you that one.” She walked over to the pile and started replacing them against the wall, flames licking her cheeks.

He held the painting in his hand—the one that had been the cause of her troubles back home and, most ironically, the one she secretly thought of as her best. It was of a woman, her legs open and her head thrown back in ecstasy. Eyes closed. Lips slack.

The shades of pink and red and brown blended together, raw and earthy. It was intensely sexual, so much so that Wren wasn’t sure how she’d painted it. At the time her brush had moved as if of its own accord. The painting wasn’t hers; it belonged to someone else. To something else.

“Please give it to me.” She held out her hand, hating the way her voice trembled when it should have sounded cool and unaffected. But those were two things that her tender heart had never been able to master.

She was always affected by what other people thought.

“Please,” she demanded, this time louder.

Rhys handed her the painting, a strange look on his face. It wasn’t outright disgust, as had been Christian’s expression. But she couldn’t handle even the mildest form of judgment right now. Not about this.

The only reason she’d even brought the damn thing with her was because Kylie had mentioned that Sean Ainslie had a thing for nude portraits.

Now the damn thing was humiliating her again.

“I think you should go,” she said, fighting back the wave of shame as memories assaulted her.

You’re depraved, Christian had said when he’d discovered this painting along with the twelve others in the collection. All nudes, all women. You’re a sexual deviant and you’re using me as a cover.

It wasn’t true. She had simply been fascinated by the idea of female sexuality. Enamored by it from an artistic standpoint...not that anyone in her damned hometown would understand that. All they had seen were things that should be hidden away.

“Wren,” he started. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I’m not ashamed,” she lied. “I would just prefer it if you left now. Please.”

He hovered for a moment, his eyes, which had darkened to almost black, flicking between her and the canvas that she held tight to her chest. Protecting herself or the painting, she wasn’t sure.

“For what it’s worth, I think your paintings are incredible,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Thanks again for dinner.”

“You’re welcome.” Her voice was a whisper as he walked out of the room, leaving her alone to ponder why the fates had decided yet again to use her art to humiliate her.

“Maybe you should take a hint,” she muttered to herself as she placed the remaining paintings back where they belonged. “Listen to your parents and get a real job.”

She would. Just as soon as she figured out what had happened to Kylie, she would head home and enter the real world.

3

WREN SAT BEHIND the sleek chrome-and-marble desk that crowned the entrance to the Ainslie Ave gallery. Her boss was expecting a potential client for a private viewing, so he was locked away in his studio preparing, which left her with a few precious moments of solitude to do some digging.

Hopefully, the chance to snoop would not only yield some valuable information but also help her to keep her mind off Rhys. And how he probably thought she was a nut job after the way she’d ordered him out of her apartment last night.

She cringed. The whole evening had been going so well. They’d had a great rapport and she’d gotten definite vibes of interest from him. Heated glances, an invitation to make a move. Then she’d blown it.

“Rookie move, Livingston,” she muttered to herself as she clicked out of Sean’s calendar. “You don’t think before you act.”

It was a criticism that had been handed to her over and over by her parents. Most of the time it followed, “Why can’t you be more responsible, like your sister?” Wren had never been too good at plotting out her moves before she made them. Often guided by impulse, she’d landed herself in hot water on a few occasions and had earned herself a bit of a reputation—unfairly, in her opinion—for being a wild girl.

She wasn’t wild. Irresponsible, perhaps. Spontaneous, definitely. But certainly not wild in the sense that they meant it back home.

Not that anyone believed her.

Shaking off the well-worn thoughts, she forced herself to focus on the task at hand. Her self-loathing could wait. She’d been working here for exactly three weeks now and all her preliminary searches had turned up zilch. Well, unless you counted a snarky online review of an exhibition Sean had run two years ago...which she didn’t.

Sliding down from her stool, she padded quietly across the showroom floor. The place was silent save for the swish of her skirt against the polished boards. The other two interns, with whom she shared reception duties and a cramped studio space, were painting today. She’d gotten to know them quite well in the last few weeks—thanks to the assistance of her amazing chocolate brownies—although she could tell both girls believed Sean Ainslie was a god among men.

The paintings in the showroom had been switched around this morning after Sean’s conversation with the client. He’d since selected a shortlist of works that he thought would suit the client’s needs. The rest of the paintings were locked away in some specially designed climate-controlled room to which Wren had not yet gained access.

Sean Ainslie came from money; she knew that for sure. His wealth wasn’t due to his art, although he’d had moderate success with a collection of paintings depicting the burned-out carcass of the iconic New York yellow cab. Yet the paintings he had ready for viewing were entirely different in feel and style.

Wren studied a smaller canvas, which showed an ice-cream cone melting in the sun. The painting had a slight cubism feel to it, the shapes on the waffle cone exaggerated and angular. Sharp. The vibrant colors seemed at odds with Sean’s darker, grittier pieces.

“Why were you drawn to that one?” Sean’s voice echoed against the high ceilings and bounced around, causing Wren to jump.

“It’s different from your other works.” Wren pressed a hand to her chest and felt her heart beat wildly beneath her skin. Sean unnerved her, especially his ability to sneak up on her out of nowhere. “I was wondering what inspired it.”

“I used to visit Coney Island with my grandfather when I was a kid.” He came up behind her and stood close. Too close. “Everything about that place was so...plastic. It felt unreal to me, even back then. Like it was something I’d made up in my head instead of being a real place.”

The scent of stale cigarette on his breath made Wren’s stomach churn. She tried to subtly put some distance between them by pretending to look more closely at the painting. “I’ve never been there.”

“Don’t bother. It’s a cesspool.”

“Right.” She nodded.

“Have you got the coffee on?”

“Yes.” Taking the opportunity, she stepped away from him and returned to her post at the front of the showroom. “I’ve also put out the croissants. Mr. Wagner should be here in five minutes. Would you like me to stay in the room in case you need anything?”

Please say no, please say no, please say no.

Sean’s thin lips pressed into a line as he considered her question. The scar on his left cheek seemed to twitch as the muscle behind it moved. “No, leave Mr. Wagner to me. The last thing I want is him getting distracted by a beautiful young woman.”

Wren forced her expression to stay neutral, despite her lip wanting to curl at the sleazy way he was looking at her. “Very well.”

“Feel free to get some work done in the studio, but don’t go home. I’ll need you to clean up once Mr. Wagner has gone.”

“Of course.”

She retreated before Sean could make any more requests...or comments about her appearance. He seemed to do that on a daily basis. Wren certainly wasn’t averse to compliments, but her skin always seemed to crawl whenever he was around.

The other interns—a blonde named Aimee and a girl with a Southern accent named Lola—were painting in relative silence in the studio. Their stations were crowded with paints and tools, like chaotic rainbows of creativity. Her section, in stark comparison, was spotlessly clean.

If only her mother could see that for once she had the cleanest workstation in the room.

Sadly, this wasn’t due to a newfound love of tidiness...but more because her Muse had refused to show up. She’d taken on more reception duties to avoid her creative block, but Sean would expect her to produce something eventually. After all, she should be having the time of her life with an opportunity so many other artists would kill for.

Supposedly, anyway.

“Looks like it’s just you and me, old friend.” Wren stood in front of the canvas, which was mostly blank except for an angry-looking smudge in one corner. She laughed to herself in the quiet room, the sound rough and insincere. “And with friends like these, who needs enemies?”

Neither Aimee nor Lola glanced in her direction. But before Wren had a chance to pick up a brush, the sound of talking floated down from the showroom. Sean’s client had arrived, which meant he would be occupied for some time. That gave her a window of opportunity to check out the storage room and some of the other rooms at the back of the gallery where she didn’t normally go.

Tiptoeing out into the corridor, she listened to make sure that no one was coming her way. The storage room was at the very end of the building—which had once been a mechanic’s workshop that had lain abandoned for several years until Sean had purchased it. The storage room had been tacked on to the structure and fitted with a keypad to limit entry. Wren hadn’t yet been able to come up with an excuse that would allow her to request access from Sean.

She stared helplessly at the blinking keypad. It seemed strange to lock up a storage room so tightly. Even if it housed valuable paintings, why were the interns kept out? It didn’t make sense. Wren had worked in a small gallery a few towns over from Charity Springs. Sure, small towns were different from the Big Smoke, but she’d always had access to the gallery’s stock.

What had she been thinking turning up here without a plan? For the first time in three weeks, Wren felt the stupidity of her decision weigh on her. A naive part of her had assumed it would be easy to show up here, figure out what had happened and run back home, evidence in hand. Ready to reassure her friend that she would have justice, after all.

“That’s because you don’t think before you act,” she muttered to herself. Again.

“Wren?” A female voice caught her attention. “Are you free? I have a question.”

Wren spun to find Aimee peering out of the studio, her fair brows wrinkled. “What’s wrong, Aimee?”

“I need to put a note into the shared calendar about my day off this week and I couldn’t get in. Then I tried to reset the password and now I’ve locked us all out.” She threw her hands up in the air. “I don’t know why computers hate me so much.”

Wren tried not to roll her eyes. In the three weeks she’d been working at Ainslie Ave, Aimee had managed to lock herself out of the computer system at least four times. Clumsy fingers, she’d claimed, but Wren found that hard to believe considering the delicate and intricate portraits she painted.

“Can you help me?” the other woman pleaded. “I don’t want to disturb Sean again. He got very frustrated last time.”

“Sure.” Wren headed back into the studio and took a seat on the stool in front of the old laptop that served as their shared work computer.

Within minutes she’d located the problem—Aimee had made a spelling error when she’d created her new password, which explained why she hadn’t been able to use it to log in after the reset.

“Okay, that should do it.” Wren clicked over to their email program. “I’ve reset it again and tested that it works. I’ll leave a note on the desktop with the password this time so you don’t forget it.”

“Thanks.” Aimee had the decency to look mildly sheepish.

Wren was about to move away from the computer when she noticed something strange about the email inbox. A ton of unread emails had banked up from contacts she’d never seen before. Normally, the inbox the three women shared was filled with general requests from the website’s contact form. There might be the occasional email requesting information or dates of shows, but otherwise they didn’t get many direct emails from clients.

“Are you logged in to Sean’s email account?” Wren asked, looking up suddenly.

Aimee cringed. “Yes, but please don’t tell him. I needed to, uh...delete an email.” She fiddled with the end of her paint-splattered tank top, the chipped pink nail polish on her fingers glinting like shards of broken glass in the afternoon sun that streamed in from a large window beside them.

“How did you get into his account?” Wren could hardly believe Aimee was the password-cracking type.

“He keeps it written down.” She averted her gaze and spoke softly so that Lola couldn’t hear them. “Please don’t say anything.”

Wren knew for a fact that his passwords weren’t written down anywhere in the studio...after all, she’d looked. Which meant that Aimee had been places that Wren hadn’t, and from the expression on her face she wasn’t too comfortable sharing that information.

“I won’t, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to be logging in to his email account from our shared computer. You might get someone in trouble,” she admonished, feeling immediately hypocritical because she knew exactly how she was going to exploit this opportunity.

“You’re right,” Aimee said, knotting her hands in front of her. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”

“I won’t say anything.” Wren turned the laptop back to herself. “And I’ll log out so I can check on the shared inbox and make sure we haven’t missed anything. You’d better get back to your painting in case he comes in.”

“Thank you.”

Perhaps it made Wren a horrible person to be admonishing Aimee while planning to use her lapse in judgment to scan through Sean’s emails. But Wren had learned a thing or two about morals in the last six months—they were not as black-and-white as she’d been led to believe. For example, in Christian’s mind it had been perfectly okay for him to make up stories about her because he felt she was a bad person for hiding her “depravity.”

Besides, she wasn’t hurting Aimee. She was simply making use of a happy accident to help her friend.

There was nothing suspicious in his emails. Time for plan B. Her nails clicked quietly against the keys of the laptop as she searched for the passcode to the storage room. Nothing. But she did manage to find his birthday, address and home phone number, which gave her something to work with. Wren wasn’t a master spy by any stretch, but she had sat in on an internet security session at the community center back home during one of her volunteering stints. At the time she’d thought it was boring as hell, but some of the stats had stuck with her.

Like how the majority of people use their birthdays as pin codes for ATMs and online banking. Perhaps that extended to locked rooms, as well.

Taking a second to check that no one was watching her, she logged out of Sean’s email and pocketed the note she’d scribbled with his details. Tonight, after everyone had left, she’d “accidentally” forget to set the alarm so she could come back and have a crack at the storage room lock without leaving a trail.

* * *

RHYS WASN’T THE kind of guy who ever had trouble sleeping. He pushed his body hard at the gym and he pushed his mind hard at work each day. Those things combined meant he was usually out the moment his head hit the pillow.

But not for the last three nights.

Stifling a yawn, he rubbed at his eyes and reached for the coffee on his desk. The nighttime hours had been ticking past slowly while Rhys’s eyes remained open in the darkness. All he could picture were flashes of Wren and her painting. Of the sexual energy mixed with her embarrassment.

He hadn’t seen hide nor hair of her since that night...but that didn’t dull the vivid memory.

The painting had taken him aback. Not because he thought there was anything wrong with it—far from it. But he’d been shocked by how strongly his body had reacted to the desire and curiosity and abandonment in her work. Art was not his thing—numbers and data were. But she’d invoked a kind of visceral reaction that was totally foreign.

And then she’d kicked him out.

He wasn’t sure what to make of it. But one thing he did know for certain was that he wanted to see her again, despite understanding that she wasn’t planning to stay.

“Boss?” Quinn Dellinger poked her head into his office, her mass of dyed pink hair almost blindingly bright under the office lighting. “You got a sec?”

“Sure, sure.” He motioned for her to take a seat as he shoved thoughts of Wren from his mind. Work was his priority right now, not women. Not one woman, no matter how tempting. “What’s going on?”

Quinn’s chunky combat boots clomped on the floor. For a woman so petite she made a lot of noise. “I’ve been assigned a case but I need to do a site visit and none of the other guys are free to come with me.”

As a newly appointed junior security consultant, Quinn wasn’t yet cleared to do site visits on her own. She had another few months of shadowing the more experienced consultants before that could happen.

“I’m ready,” she added. “I can do it. I just need you to sign off.”

“You’re familiar with the policy, Quinn. Three months of supervision before you can fly solo.”

Her button nose wrinkled, causing the clear stud there to glint in the afternoon sunlight. “And it’s worth upsetting the client for some stupid policy?”

“It’s not a stupid policy. We have it for a reason.”

He didn’t need to repeat the story; everyone at Cobalt & Dane Security was well aware of what had happened when they’d sent a rookie in alone. One bad incident was all it took to make sure that new security consultants had the proper training and supervision so that they didn’t lose anyone else.

“I know how capable you are, Quinn. I wouldn’t have promoted you if I didn’t believe in your skills.” Rhys reached for his coffee and swigged, praying the caffeine would soon work its magic. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to bend the rules for you.”

She rolled her eyes but a smile twitched on her lips. “You never bend the rules. For anything.”

“Tough but fair, you know the drill,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah.” She folded her arms across the front of her black skull-and-crossbones T-shirt. “So what should we do about the client, then? He said he wants us there today but everyone else is busy.”

“I thought Owen was in the office today.”

She shook her head. “He got an emergency call out to that private client we signed—the crazy stockbroker guy. He’s paranoid. I told Owen as much.”

“It comes with the territory. Doesn’t mean we can ignore the client’s needs.” Rhys tapped his fingers against the surface of his desk. “And Jin is still out sick?”

“Yep. Aiden’s around but he’s scheduled to do a visit to the data warehouse with Logan.” Quinn’s cheeks colored slightly despite the neutral expression on her face. She and Aiden had only told the team they were dating a few weeks back, and every time his name came up in conversation she blushed like a schoolgirl.

Rhys thought it was cute, but Quinn would probably throw something at him for saying so. “Okay, well, I guess it’ll have to be me, then.”

Perhaps a trip away from the office would do him good. He’d been staring at the same email for the last ten minutes and his lack of progress was starting to grate on his nerves. Fresh air and something to focus on might help him to get into the zone again.

“You never do site visits.” Quinn cocked her head. “Ever.”

“You seem to think I never do a lot of things.”

God, did everyone really believe he was that dull? Sure, he liked to follow the rules. He was a “by the book” kind of guy. What was so bad about that?

She shrugged, seemingly unaware of the questions her words had stirred. “Whatever works. I’d rather get out there today and keep this guy onside. He sounds like a bit of a control freak.”

“Let’s keep our insults about the client to a minimum, shall we?” Rhys pushed up from his chair and stuck his phone into his back pocket.

“Sure thing, boss. Whatever you say.” Quinn grinned at him as they fell into step.

After a quick pause at her desk so she could collect her things and confirm with the client that they would now be coming to complete the site visit, they were off.

“This will be fun. We haven’t had an excursion together in ages.” Quinn had a spring in her step as they walked through the office.

“That’s because you’re annoying.”

He didn’t mean it, but he and Quinn had that kind of relationship. There were no filters, no walking on eggshells. She was one of the first people he’d hired when he’d started as IT manager four years ago. They’d developed a deep mutual respect. She was whip smart and loyal to the bone, two qualities that were sorely lacking in the world.

“I’m annoying?” She pressed her hand to her chest and he noticed a small, heart-shaped ring on her finger. “Those are mighty words coming from Mr. Spreadsheet himself.”

He ignored the dig. “What’s with the ring? I’ve never seen you wear anything that didn’t have a skull on it.”

Her cheeks turned hot pink. “It was a gift.”

“Are you engaged?”

“No.” She laughed as if that were a ridiculous notion, but her voice sounded tight and a little strange. “It’s just a ring.”

“A ring from your boyfriend.” He nudged her with his elbow and she immediately swatted him. “Hey, I’m not judging. I’m happy you’ve found someone who puts up with you.”