Wes looked good.
Vivienne sent a covert glance at her passenger as they zipped over the suspension bridge that led to the 110 and back into LA proper.
In fact, he looked better than good, considering.
She had to strangle a macabre laugh. Considering. A bland euphemism for being arrested, having your assets seized and losing your cybersecurity business and your reputation in one fell swoop.
She’d worried that he’d look different, that prison might have irreparably changed him. It was the one thing he’d vowed would never happen—ending up in jail, like his deadbeat father. But now it had.
And yet, as far as she could see, the only outward evidence of his ordeal was ten days’ worth of facial hair and a slightly wrinkled suit that fit him to perfection—an ode to both the breadth of his shoulders and the skill of his tailor.
Wes had come face-to-face with his greatest fear and emerged sexily disheveled.
An unwelcome heat prickled across her skin, some kind of carnal nostalgia, and she shifted against the black leather bucket seat like it was a lightning rod that could dissipate the sudden charge of attraction inside the Aston Martin.
She was desperate to pop the bubble of awareness that had so easily consumed her, but her haste made her careless and the conversational pin she chose was a mistake.
“How is...everyone?”
Bland pleasantries with anyone else, but between them, the question felt shockingly personal.
Wes’s shoulders stiffened. He obviously hadn’t expected her to go there either.
The fact that Vivienne found she cared about the answer—after so many years of purposefully not thinking about his mother, his sister, him—stung more than she’d expected. Like she’d accidentally ripped a scab off her heart.
“What are you doing?”
She didn’t know. She’d returned from her annual three-day pilgrimage to the Phoenix Inn, a little B&B in Connecticut, to the news that her boss had put Wesley in the FBI crosshairs. She’d quit her dream job and spent the last week pouring everything she had into getting him out of jail. She’d called in every favor, pushed her legal acumen to the brink, wheedled, cajoled, outsmarted and insomnia-ed in anticipation of this moment. And now that it was here, now that he was free...ish...she had no answer to his question, no explanation that wouldn’t reveal more than she wanted to give. He was a weakness she couldn’t afford. He always had been.
“It’s called small talk. It’s a form of politeness that acquaintances use to fill the silence.”
Wes’s sudden grin dominated her peripheral vision and tightened Vivienne’s hands on the steering wheel. She remembered a time it wasn’t quite so mocking.
A time when a flash of it was all it took for her to surrender her panties in the unisex bathroom at Señor Taco’s a mere two hours and three tequilas after her roommate had dragged her across campus to the lamest of frat parties. Then they’d headed back to her dorm room for orgasms two, three and four, and woken up the next morning wrapped around each other and well on their mutual way to orgasm number five.
Wes hadn’t been wearing a suit then. Just a white T-shirt that seemed to glow against the tan he’d acquired doing manual labor in the California sun, a pair of faded jeans that were soft from washing, the worn fabric hugging thighs thick with muscle, and that smile. The one that gave her the kind of XXX butterflies that skipped her abdomen altogether and headed straight for her—
“Oh, is that what we are? Acquaintances?” He sneered the word.
Viv forced air into her lungs and kept her glance dismissive. “Would you prefer something more colorful?” After a quick shoulder check, she maneuvered the sports car into the far left lane. “Former paramours? Scorned exes?” Her voice broke, and she had to clear her throat to finish her list. “Star-crossed lovers?”
Wes blew out an audible breath, tinged with defeat. “Acquaintances it is,” he conceded. “You going to tell me where we’re going?”
The moment of truth.
“My place.”
For the first time since he’d gotten in the car, she was in his sights. She could feel the burn of his stare on her profile. “I don’t think so.”
Vivienne’s spine hardened with resolve. She wasn’t that idealistic, lovestruck girl anymore, and he was no longer the object of her affection. No amount of reminiscing—sentimental or erotic—was going to change that fact. She was a lawyer. He needed a lawyer. And that was that.
“As a computer wizard and a flight risk, there were a couple of provisos I had to agree to in order to get you out on bail.”
He resettled his big frame against the passenger seat, a whisper of fabric on leather, but the flex of his fist against his muscled thigh belied his calm exterior. “No tech. No internet. No travel beyond the range of my ankle monitor. I got the speech, Vivienne. Stop stalling”
The sound of her full name on his lips was a bullet to the heart. Taciturn and austere, with no flicker of the heat that used to burn strong and insatiable between them.
Tangible proof the past was gone.
And the present was a cold, hard bitch.
Just like me, she reminded herself, buoying her resolve.
“In addition to those stipulations, you’ve also been remanded into my care until the trial.”
“Fuck that.”
There was no particular emphasis in his words, but that didn’t make his shock less palpable. It was a living thing in the confines of the luxury car. The air around them crackled with the restless energy of it.
“Should I turn around then? I can call ahead to make sure your cell is ready by the time we arrive.”
She felt him bristle at the constraints of his current situation, as though his essence was pacing the car like a caged lion, testing the bars for weaknesses. It didn’t take him long to realize there was no escape. Wes had always been a staunch realist.
The charged silence of his acceptance oozed over her skin, thick and uncomfortable, unbroken aside from the soft rush of the air-conditioning
