Chapter Twenty
“I need more information from you,” Reed told his client the following Monday.
“What kind of information?”
“You want to discredit Wentworth.”
“If you say it a little louder, the whole world will hear you.”
Reed put his phone to his other ear and stared at his wall while he spoke. “One politician slinging mud at another isn’t news. It’s expected. Besides, my line is secure.”
“Yes, Reed. I’ve told you this.”
“And you’re looking at his ex-wife to find something.”
“Most ex-wives are pissed enough to let something out.”
Except Shannon wasn’t pissed . . . she was hurt. “If she’s ticked, she’s not showing it.”
“Wentworth is way too clean. The state was charmed enough by his whirlwind wedding and delightful bride to elect him. Even their divorce barely put a dent in his armor. No one is that spotless.”
Reed agreed, but he didn’t see a victim here. The public at large wasn’t unhappy with the current governor, nor had they been overly distraught when the man divorced. In fact, there seemed to be plenty of women lining up to be the next Mrs. Wentworth.
He paused. “Whirlwind?”
“What?”
“Whirlwind? What do you mean by that?”
“Jesus, Reed, don’t you watch the news?”
Not if he didn’t have to. Depressing hour on TV, if you asked him. “No.”
“We all knew Paul was going to run, but he hadn’t announced his candidacy yet. Right before he did, he met Shannon at some fundraiser, and within a month, they were married. There was some gossip that they’d met before, but they’d never been seen in the same place. The chances of him winning the seat in Sacramento were slim until he settled down.”
“How does a man who is running for office have time to woo a wife?”
“Good question. Convenient, don’t you think?”
“Who planned the wedding?” The pictures Reed had come across looked as if the plans were in place for some time. Quick weddings . . . divorces that were all neat and tidy. It was all too perfect.
“How the hell do I know? Who cares . . . are you getting married?”
No, but he knew who to go to for the divorce. His eyes landed on Lori’s picture again.
“Trina and I are going to Texas,” Avery announced later in the week over Skype.
Lori looked at both women on her screen. “Both of you?”
“Alice’s sisters want to meet with me as well as the other members of the board.”
“I told this one that we needed to tell you.” Avery waved her thumb at Trina.
“Tell me, I need to be there. Give me twenty-four hours to clear my schedule, and I’ll join you.” Lori couldn’t let Trina go alone. Who knew what she was walking into?
“I told you,” Avery said to Trina.
“I can take care of it. I don’t think anyone will be hostile there.”
Lori leaned closer to the screen. “How well do you know Alice’s sisters?”
“I met them at the wedding.”
Lori attempted to look menacing on-screen to have Trina take the meeting more seriously. She was fairly certain it didn’t work. “And the board, have you met them?”
“No.”
“Any of them stand to lose something since you are stepping into Alice’s shoes?”
“I don’t know.”
“Anyone there ready to discredit you just on principle?”
“What principle?”
“The fact you know nothing about this business, know nothing about the company, yet you have a third share in something worth over a billion dollars.”
Trina went silent.
Avery spoke up. “I told you she needed to come.”
After hanging up, Lori made a few calls, shuffled a client, and thanked her luck that she wasn’t due in court until the following Monday.
It was after six when Cooper poked his head into her office. “Just letting you know I’m here whenever you’re ready to leave.”
Lori pulled a stack of papers for her Monday case and piled them on her desk. “Might as well make yourself some coffee. I have a couple more hours to kill here.”
“Will do.”
He walked off as she tucked behind the desk and opened the file.
Cooper . . . how did he fit in with going to Texas?
Chances were someone would shadow Trina and Avery.
Lori set aside her case and called Sam.
“Okay, Mrs. Royalty. I’m not used to this bodyguard and attempting to live my life and conduct my business thing.”
“What are you complaining about?” Sam teased.
Lori smiled. “I’m meeting Trina and Avery in Texas. Do I buy a ticket for Cooper or just meet with whoever is with Trina and Avery at the airport? Keep in mind, nothing has happened since New York.”
“Let me call Neil. I’ll call you right back.”
“Fine. I’m at the office.”
Sam hung up and Lori dived into her case and didn’t look up until her phone rang. She waited two rings before she remembered that everyone had left for the day.
“Lori Cumberland’s office.”
“It’s Sam. So here’s the deal. Neil already told Trina’s detail that he was sending the plane to them. We can charter another one for you, no problem.”
“That’s stupid. Using a jet you have just lying around is one thing,” she joked. There was no such thing as a jet just sitting around. Between fuel and the pilots, it wasn’t a cheap trip no matter how you spun that bottle. “I’ll take a commercial flight.”
“I can see if Eliza and Carter’s plane is available.”
“You do realize we aren’t talking about borrowing a Volvo.”
“At the risk of sounding horrible, it is to us.”
“Well, it isn’t to me. I’ll fly commercial. Can Cooper fly armed?”
“No.”
“Then there is no point in him going. I’ll just wait until I land and meet up with the others. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
“Cooper is just as lethal unarmed.”
Lori grunted.
“Neil’s words, not mine.”
“I hate this.”
“So take Danny.”
“I love my brother, but he’s a lover, not a fighter.”
“Then take Reed. Cooper seems to like the guy, says he could probably hold his own if he needed to. He only has to fill in until you land.”
“I don’t know.”
“Or we book two rooms with adjoining doors, or Cooper sleeps on the couch in your hotel room.”
“This is absurd.”
“Hey, we both did the research; we know how nasty Ruslan can be. Now that he has nothing to lose, he’s that much more dangerous.”
“Okay, okay . . . let me call Reed, see if he likes big hats and barbeque.” She disconnected the call more than a little frustrated that she needed to call in a favor from Reed, yet excited at the possibility of spending time with him.
“I appreciate you coming with me,” Lori told Reed as they moved through the TSA precheck line. “If I thought I would win the argument with Sam about flying alone, I wouldn’t have drug you along.”
Reed removed his cell phone, tucked it into one of the bowls provided, and waited to walk through the metal detector.
“You make it sound like Sam is your boss.” Which was true, and his way of nudging more information than Lori might want to give.
“Nothing like that. We sometimes work together.”
“She’s not an attorney.”
“No. It’s a . . . it’s complicated.” And Lori started to stutter.
“It’s a three-hour flight.”
Lori walked through the detector first before they waved her past and him in.
“The bottom line is in her life, she’s had her share of . . .” Lori’s voice trailed off.
“Share of what?”
Lori placed her hand in the air, closed up, and removed her laptop case from the X-ray machine.
Reed followed up by collecting his wallet and tucking it into his back pocket. Once they were away from the airport gatekeepers, she continued, “Sam’s had her share of security issues.”
“Like?”
“Let’s see . . . first, her father was the original Bernie Madoff.”
“Really?” He had looked that up just the night before.
“Yep. It’s public knowledge. And, of course, she’s married to an incredibly wealthy man.”
“Which has put her in danger?”
Lori moved around a family who had stopped in the middle of the walk lane to discipline a child.
“Yes. But Blake has always had an exceptional security team.”
“The same guys that are at your place?”
“Yep. Neil, that’s the name of the man who runs the whole thing, he’s quite the roadblock. He served in the Marines.”
“Like Cooper.”
“Right. He recruits a lot of guys from the service. Men who didn’t want to make a career out of the service but still like the adrenaline of the job.”
“I would imagine babysitting adults would still get boring after a while,” Reed said.
They stepped onto a people mover and stopped walking. “Except Neil’s team has an impressive list of clients.”
Reed stepped aside as two people rushed by.
“How impressive?” Reed waited for the name-dropping.
“Movie stars, politicians. Eliza Billings is Sam’s best friend.”
“Billings . . . why does that sound familiar?”
“Carter Billings is Eliza’s husband.”
The skin on his arms prickled. “The former governor.”
“That would be him.”
All his time in front of the computer in the past week couldn’t trump the information he’d managed to obtain while walking through an airport.
They stepped off the people mover and continued toward their gate.
“I guess you can say Sam has witnessed enough crazy to assume that crazy always happens. And since Petrov is a wealthy man scorned and looking for a scapegoat, I’m saddled with bodyguards and alarm systems.”
Reed placed a hand on the small of her back and ushered her through the first-class lounge of the airline they were using. “It’s better to be safe than sorry, as they say.”
Lori found a table for two that looked out over the tarmac. “For what it’s worth. But look . . . here we are in an airport, and no one is trying to take me out.”
She made light of it, but Reed felt the weight of her words.
“Can you get me a glass of champagne?” she asked. “I need to make a quick call.”
He didn’t bother sitting, instead moved to the full-service bar free for members. “Two glasses of champagne, please.”
The bartender turned to fill the glasses.
Reed sensed eyes watching him.
He turned his head slowly, toward the heat.
Dark hair, dark skin, massive sunglasses, and red lips.
Sasha.
Lori didn’t expect Reed to take his position of stand-in bodyguard so seriously. But apparently he liked channeling his inner superhero. He looked over his shoulder more than Cooper had when he’d gone with her to the supermarket. Only Cooper had suggested she shop online and have her bread and milk delivered. Which she promptly refused to do.
She took the window seat in the first-class cabin, and still Reed scanned the crowd as they boarded the plane.
“If you ever get bored with that data processing thing, maybe Neil can use you,” Lori teased.
He lowered his voice, put his lips to her ear. “I have one job right now.”
She grinned. He sounded so serious. “There isn’t enough privacy on a commercial flight for that.”
There was his smile. “Careful . . . that sounds like a challenge.”
“Outside of my wheelhouse, Reed.”
“That sounds like a fun wheelhouse.”
Her body warmed at the thought of him doing anything intimate while on a crowded plane.
She crossed her legs, ignored the heat pooling in her belly. She leaned in, whispered in his ear, “I think sex on an airplane is a little more distracting than a glass of wine.”
“You on an airplane wiggling your tiny ass in that chair is distraction enough,” he told her.
She suddenly had a strong desire to request a blanket and see just how distracted she could make him.
Reed stared, eyes wide, as if reading her mind.
He leaned close to her ear, but instead of whispering, he bit the tender lobe.
Not meaning to, she crossed her legs a second time. Lori made a mental note to take Sam up on the use of her private jet at her earliest convenience. The man had a way of turning her hormones into overdrive.
She liked this part . . . when a man was still playful and easily turned on. Where the conversation flowed and discovering each other met with genuine concern.
The flight attendant returned with her wine, which she happily tipped back.
The relationship with Reed was working out well. Almost too well. At the risk of jinxing anything, she wondered how long things could last. Would he get tired of her lifestyle or playing bodyguard? Not that she’d need one for long.
“See, I didn’t need a bodyguard.”
Reed looked over his shoulder.
She followed his gaze but only saw the tops of passengers’ heads.
“You never know who is watching you,” he told her.
“Ruslan’s men are hard to miss.”
“He could have sent a woman after you,” he muttered.
Lori laughed, looked around again. She noticed a middle-aged housewifeish woman, another one in her seventies, and two women who looked like they were in college. That was the extent of the first-class passengers. Beyond the curtain that separated the cabins, Lori couldn’t see. “I think I’m safe.”
Reed’s expression shifted for a second. “I think your friends are right about keeping your guard up.”
“Oh? Why do you think that?”
“Because I looked up your dear friend Mr. Petrov, remember?”
“Ah, you do care.”
He leaned back, the line in his jaw hardened. “Did you think I didn’t?”
Oh, wow . . . she’d hurt him. “I was just teasing.”
“Of course I care, Lori.”
She reached over and clasped his palm in hers. “I kinda like you a little bit, too.”
He squeezed her hand, the expression on his face softened.