“Yeah. I guess I’ve grown as a person since we were together.”
The wry answer brought her head up, but Wes had already moved to the control panel so Vivienne couldn’t gauge his expression. Within seconds, everything was back in place, and the elevator had resumed its course. The bell dinged as the car drew to a smooth stop on the thirty-seventh floor.
CHAPTER THREE
HAD SHE ALWAYS lived this damn far from the elevator?
The tastefully bland hallway felt never-ending with Wes following along behind her. Especially when they both smelled like sex. Amazing, animalistic sex. It was almost enough to make her forget that they’d broken up years ago. Or that she’d just picked him up from his unjust stint in prison.
Almost, but not quite.
Her pace slowed as they approached the last door on the left, just as it always did since that day, a little over two months ago, when she’d walked down this hallway, blissfully unaware that her life was about to change. That her security panel had been overridden, and a nondescript envelope was waiting for her on the other side of the door her mysterious visitor had left slightly ajar.
She’d had a brand-new door installed the next day, complete with a dead bolt and a chain lock, as well as a state-of-the-art security camera in the foyer, in case anyone managed to bypass her upgrades. Too little, too late, of course. Her life had already been irreparably thrown off course when she’d curiously ripped into the manila packet.
No, not then.
A moment after that, when she’d decided to follow the neatly typed instructions that accompanied a thumb drive with the Whitfield Industries logo emblazoned on the side of it and a copy of the medical records detailing the lifesaving surgery she’d underwent in the dangerous wake of her ectopic pregnancy that would be made available to interested parties if she failed to comply.
The realization that she was being blackmailed turned quickly to panic in an instant, and she’d doubled down on the same decision she’d made years earlier, when she was a scared, pregnant twenty-two-year-old bound for law school. Installing the program on one of Whitfield Industries’ computers had seemed so much easier than letting Wes back in her life in any capacity.
And now she had to deal with the consequences of her cowardice—forced proximity with the man she’d been trying so hard to avoid—ironic though they might be.
Vivienne stopped in front of her condo and glanced over her shoulder at her court-appointed houseguest.
Whatever he saw on her face made Wes haul up short. He lifted his hands in surrender, hanging back to give her more space, unaware that inside, she was crying out for the comfort of his arms around her, for just a moment where she could set down her burden and rely on his strength to hold her up.
But that was solace she didn’t deserve.
Viv let the misinterpretation stand, accepting the extra distance between them as her due as she stepped up to her access keypad.
She automatically angled her torso to block the numbers from his view—a move he’d taught her—but she realized the pointlessness of it a moment later. After all, he’d built his fortune on testing for weaknesses.
“What did I tell you about using your mom’s birthday as your passcode?”
Her shoulders drew tight at the rebuke. “That I might as well not lock the door at all.” There was a liberal amount of snark in her voice as she parroted back part of the lecture he’d given her when they’d first started dating.
Which pissed him off, just as she’d intended. “It’s a—”
“—top ten guess,” she finished, shoving her key in the lock with way more force than was necessary.
“Top five if the thief did the barest amount of research on me,” she added, just to goad him. “I remember, okay?” Then the heat left her voice and the dead bolt disengaged with a twist of her wrist. “I just miss her.”
The words stole all his righteousness, and she heard him sigh. “Habit,” he said, by way of nonapology.
She stole another glance over her shoulder, watching him drag a hand down his beard.
“It’s none of my business.”
“No. It’s not.” Vivienne pushed the door out of her way, dropping her keys into her purse so they wouldn’t give away the tremor in her hand. This had all seemed so simple when she’d embarked on her plan to get him out of jail. Now that he was here, there was nothing simple about it. “Are you coming in?”
He started, as though he hadn’t realized he still hadn’t crossed the threshold, as though maybe he was having second thoughts about doing so. Which was fair enough. Because when he finally stepped into the foyer, closing the door behind them, it felt like the whole world had shifted.
Wes was here.
He reset the dead bolt with a thunk.
Slid the chain into place with a rattle.
Ominous sounds that sealed their fate inside these four walls. It hadn’t turned out well for them the last time they’d cohabitated. And as she’d proven moments ago, being alone in confined spaces with this particular man had never resulted in her most brilliant decision making.
“You’ll have to sleep on the couch.” The words fell out of her mouth like a challenge, blunt and abrupt. “I turned the spare room into an office.”
Wes just nodded.
His subdued acceptance made her feel churlish, and she did her best to sound conciliatory. “Make yourself at home. I’m just going to freshen up.”
“Sure. Yeah.” Wes’s gaze had migrated up to the pinhole in the crown molding, where she’d had the camera installed post-envelope. Figured that’s where his attention would go. Work had always been the first thing on his mind.
“Motion sensor, or constant feed?”
“Both. Motion alerts come straight to my phone.”
When his blue eyes met hers, she could feel his silent approval at that particular security upgrade, and the fact that it warmed her, even now, set off a different kind of alarm in her brain.
How in the hell,
