He also respected the fact that she’d bypassed his system. He’d have to shore up whatever loophole she’d found to get into his place. Maybe Max had been on to something when he’d hired her after all. Once he exacted revenge on whoever had ruined his life, he might have to see if AJ wanted a job at Soteria.
Wes got to his feet. In deference to his visitor, he dragged an abandoned black T-shirt over his head before joining her in the kitchen area of his swanky loft. “You want a victory beer?”
Her smile faded. “Sure. But you might want to change your order to a beer of the ‘drown your sorrows’ variety. You’re not going to like the reason I’m here.”
Unease prickled along his spine as she followed him at a distance. “What am I not going to like?”
“The reason you’re off the hook.”
Well, shit.
Grabbing two longnecks from the fridge, he twisted off each of the caps with a satisfying hiss and lobbed them into the sink. Then he slid one of the beers across the butcher-block island to her, and his own personal harbinger of doom caught it with ease.
The brown-glass bottle in his hand had already begun to sweat when he tipped it against his lips and indulged in a long swallow. A little fortification couldn’t hurt. “Talk.”
AJ picked at the edge of the label, as she erased a drop of beer from her cupid’s bow with her tongue.
The fact that she was stalling made his shoulder blades itch.
“You know how when Whitfield Industries got hacked, the surveillance footage was missing?”
Wes nodded. While he’d been hauled into Whitfield’s office to give a preliminary damage report, Jesse had worked tirelessly to try to unscramble the feed. To no avail. And thank the gods for that, because otherwise Vivienne would be rotting in jail.
“Well, when I was looking into it on the down low for Max, I found that it had been clipped.”
Wes set his beer on the counter with a loud thunk. “What?”
“The section that would have revealed our perp wasn’t scrambled. It was missing. Poof.”
A litany of swear words rolled through his brain, even as a hit of adrenaline jacked up his senses.
“I haven’t poked too deeply, but chatter is that the G-men have gotten their hands on the footage and—”
“Shut up.”
AJ’s brows dove low over brown eyes glittering with venom. “Listen up, dickwad. In case you’ve forgotten, you came to me. I didn’t ask to help you ou—”
“I’m serious. Stop talking, AJ.” Wes stalked over to his desk.
“What the hell is your problem?”
He rooted through the jacket he’d slung on the back of his chair, liberating his wallet and keys. “My problem is that if you say what I think you’re going to say, then you’re taking away the only possible course of action I have to protect the woman I lo—” He cut himself off. “Someone who matters a lot to me.”
He shoved his phone in the pocket of his jeans as he met her eyes. “So don’t say what you came here to say. Once I take care of things, then we can finish this conversation.” He could almost see the pieces of his plan clicking together in her brain, and AJ’s mutinous expression cleared when they did. “Tell Vivienne I said congratulations.”
Wes nodded curtly, hoping it conveyed even a fraction of the gratitude coursing through him right then.
No one understood how to work around the law like a former thief...except maybe a kick-ass lawyer. He hoped the future Mrs. Brennan would accept the necessity of his plan as easily as AJ just had. But Wes would worry about that hurdle when he came to it. First, he had to get her to open the door.
Vivienne was at loose ends, dressed casually in jeans, a white T-shirt and bare feet. In her kitchen. In the middle of the afternoon. On a weekday.
Unemployment didn’t suit her, and now that she didn’t have Wes’s case to distract her...
And she could definitely use some distraction, because as soon as her brain was left to its own devices, it kept turning doggedly back to the same subject.
He’d been gone a week, but the sexual specter of him lingered.
In her bed. On the couch. On her dining room table. But worst of all, in her head.
Vivienne took a deep breath, staring at the sink where the Le Creuset pan still sat at the same awkward angle that he’d left it in.
She should have cleaned it up, but something kept stopping her. Vestiges of the sentimentality he used to tease her about.
Maybe today was the day she’d be able to erase the last evidence of their time together.
A loud rap at the door saved her from having to follow through.
She hurried over to answer the summons, though she wasn’t expecting anyone. But even with no expectations, her visitor shocked her.
“Wes?”
Her synapses stuttered at the sight of him, and for a moment, she couldn’t be sure if he was really there, or she’d just conjured him with her single-minded preoccupation.
Then he pushed past her, barging into her place and sanity returned like a punch in the face. As did her snark.
“No, please. Come in.” Vivienne shut the door behind him.
“Put this on.”
She caught the small box he’d lobbed in her direction against her chest. Tiffany blue with an iconic white ribbon.
Unease slithered between her vertebrae.
“What is this?”
“Absolute perfection. At least according to the sales associate who assured me she had ‘just the thing’ before putting a sizable dent in my credit limit.”
Her hands shook at that announcement. She wasn’t sure what felt worse—the way her heart kept throwing itself against her ribcage or the fact that her lungs refused to fully inflate. Her gaze
