“I don’t know why you’re so surprised. You know how he is, Roman. Better than anyone.”
He brought her in closer by moving the arm she held fast to and maneuvered them through the crowds moving swiftly along the city sidewalk. Rhiann Baron-Wilde was his favorite person-of-the-moment. He marveled at her unflagging do-gooder spirit, and thanked his lucky stars for Liam Ashforth’s unrequited passion for the wickedly charming young woman.
She’d changed everything just by being Rhiann. Changed Liam’s life and Roman’s too.
Covering her gloved hand with his big paw, he pressed on her fingers and sighed. “Deliberating is one thing, Rhi,” he murmured.
She smiled at his use of the nickname reserved only for those she held closest. He was honored to be in that singular group.
“But the hemming and hawing is ridiculous. It isn’t what I expected at all.”
She dragged them to the edge of the walk and turned to examine a window display. In the reflection of the large glass panes, Roman saw a slight frown marring her lovely face.
“It’s complicated.” She hugged his arm tighter and laid her head on his shoulder.
He didn’t have to wonder what she meant. Liam Ashforth’s relationship with the concept of family was tenuous on his best day. Denied by his father, all he ever knew were protective urges for his betrayed mother. When Carolyn Ashforth died, he’d been driven to seek revenge against Adam Ward. Not for himself, but for his wronged mom.
And he’d succeeded without breaking a sweat. With barely any effort Liam anonymously broke apart and bought up parts of the man’s business empire until he owned him lock, stock and whiskey barrel. Everything that happened after that was karma and gave the old bastard a master class in getting what he deserved.
The shocking discovery not all that long ago about the possibility of a half-sibling rocked Liam’s well-ordered world and came during a time when life seemed stuck in crisis mode.
“He did okay at Thanksgiving. Don’t tell him I said this, but I was proud of how he handled the whole thing.” Roman wasn’t kidding either. Liam surprised the fuck out of him.
Being dragged along to the Baron-Wilde traditional Thanksgiving was a direct result of his part in saving Rhiann’s life earlier in the year. There was nothing like a crazy employee going off the rails when it came to heart-pounding excitement. Stalking the boss’s girlfriend like she wrote the manual had only been the beginning. It took him, Liam and an entire SWAT team to resolve the matter. It wasn’t just Rhi who was lucky to be alive.
Overnight, he and Liam became heroes to Rhi’s family, so he’d tagged along because Rhiann’s grandmother, the quirky matriarch of the clan Bryanna Charles, had insisted. And when a Broadway legend insists and does it with tremendous panache and flair, there isn’t enough wiggle room to decline.
Thanksgiving with the Baron-Wildes turned out to be not just a good time but an occasion when a smart guy like him could clearly see the life changes coming everyone’s way. He’d thought a lot about that night and everything he learned just by paying attention. It was his training as an interrogator.
Liam’s respect and admiration for Rhiann’s dad, the hilariously irreverent Professor Robert Wilde, was an eye-opener. In all the years he’d spent with Liam on a daily basis he’d never seen him defer to any other man. Ever. It was a trait Roman understood since he shared the same one. But when it came to the scholarly professor, his boss was almost on his knees like a drooling fanboy.
The good Professor’s robust acceptance of Liam and Rhiann’s romantic relationship sealed the deal.
Then there were the Baron-Wilde sisters and their men, and holy god what a crew they turned out to be. Not that he was terribly surprised. Rhiann was one-of-a-kind, so meeting her equally original siblings was like being introduced to a cast of characters as memorable as any book he’d ever read.
First was big sister Brynn and her husband, Jax. On the outside, they looked like any newlyweds who were also juggling a young baby. Devoted. Slightly gobsmacked by the whole being parents thing, and clearly in love. The baby, a little girl, named Bryanna Katherine Merrill was quite a beauty and had been passed endlessly from person to person in a never-ending cavalcade of love.
Discovering that Jax was a war veteran made him view the guy through different eyes. He remembered Rhi mentioning PTSD in his background. Watching him and Brynn with their baby tugged at Roman’s heart. If Jax Merrill could survive a ton of fucked up shit and find a normal life, then maybe all wasn’t lost.
Thoughts of his Justice Brother friends flashed in his head. He always figured they’d be like him with a bad case of lone wolf and the unspoken belief that family and shit like that was for other people. But he’d been wrong about them. All three were happily married and making babies.
It was just Roman doing the same old same old while treading water and holding fast in the same old spot.
Rhiann’s younger sister was an amusing piece of work who redefined the hippie chick vibe. Charlize, or Charlie as she preferred to be called, was a card-carrying fairy-child draped in crystal jewelry. She had a laugh capable of stopping a speeding train and an infectious sparkle to her personality that he found charming.
Her boyfriend Caleb turned out to be Jax Merrill’s brother, and because that wasn’t weird enough, after a random tip Roman passed along back in the spring, the brother took the lead on a construction project in the Justice compound. And from what he’d learned through his conversations with Cameron Justice when they met to go over the information on Liam’s sister, the Justice wives thought Charlie was an artistic genius.
In a surreal sort of way, Roman found different parts of his life morphing together. By chance or providence? Time would tell, but for now, the re-invigorated connection he kept with the Justice Brothers and their acclaimed security agency doing the tango with this unusual assemblage of people introduced into his life by Liam’s involvement with the Baron-Wildes was bizarre enough.
So Thanksgiving unfolded in strange, weird, eye-opening and unusual ways. Liam held his own, and that’s what mattered. Rhi’s loving influence was slowly chipping away at the man’s impenetrable reserve, and nothing could please him more. Having friends he could always turn to had saved Roman’s life when things were darker than dark. Liam deserved the same.
The tale of the romantic proposal Liam pulled off while he and Rhi were in Europe was pretty much a guaranteed coup de grace, after which he’d gotten sucked into to the brother-in-law dynamic with glee.
Roman wasn’t even a tiny bit surprised when Liam, Jax, Caleb and both their fathers—because the Merrills were also at the Thanksgiving table—ended the evening with the outline of a business project already being put in motion. He’d been impressed by the ease with which the group of men exchanged ideas and admitted their scheme of buying property to build clusters of mini cottages—slightly bigger than a tiny home—was fucking brilliant.
So what did all this mean in the bigger picture? Nothing less than a real, live, warm-blooded, family unit had taken Liam Ashforth in and given the driven loner a place bypassing. Saying it’s complicated was only part of it.
“The devil is in the details,” Rhiann murmured. “This was his first holiday with my family. He had to get it right.”
Roman’s cheek moved on Rhiann’s head when he nodded his understanding. Success and failure balanced on a razor’s edge in Liam’s mind. There wasn’t any middle ground. Maybe as time went on and Rhi loosened him up some more, but right now shit was still black and white.
“Dealing with everything you found out, right after we got back from London, well…he chose to invoke the Goddess Ignora as Charlie would say and push it all aside until after the holidays.”
The people moving by bumped against them. Instinct made him block Rhiann from further contact. His protective nature was more than reflex, more than training. If anything happened to her, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.
“Easy, Rambo,” she drawled. Her hand rubbed between his shoulder blades. “I’m pretty sure a sidewalk threat assessment is a bit much.”
“I’m starting to hate the city,” he grumbled. “Too goddamn many people.”
Turning his back on the teeming throng, he whirled around and checked to be sure Rhi was okay. When she pulled off her glove so she could fix her hair, Roman growled and snatched the glove from her hand.
“What did I tell you about flashing that ring?”
She made no effort to hide the fact that she was laughing at him as he struggled to push her hand back into the glove. Shivering from the biting cold, she gave him a cheeky grin and elbowed his side.
“You’ll lose your GTA privileges if I’m returned to your overlord with frostbite.”
Slinging an arm around her neck as she yowled her displeasure, he dragged her close in an overly protective big brother way and marched them straight to the edge of the sidewalk where he quickly flagged down a cab.
“Have I expressed to you how fucked up it is that you dragged his overachieving ass into the realm of video gaming? Not nice, Ms. Wilde. Not nice at all.”
She was cackling with laughter when he pushed her into the backseat of the shitty cab. Scooting out of his way when he claimed most of the seat with a bold man-spread, she smacked him on the arm in protest.
Barking their destination at the driver, he sat back and grabbed his assaulted arm. “Watch it, lady. You’re flirting with workman’s comp injury or maybe even a trip to BPG’s human resources for a good talking to about abusing the help.”
“Abusing the help!” she shrieked with hysterical glee. “Roman Bishop,” she taunted, “you are a fraud.”
“How so?” he asked, shocked by her words.
“I realize you get a paycheck from Black Phoenix Group. I did too once upon a fucked up time. But calling yourself the help is a joke.”
Boom. That one landed with neat precision straight in his heart. He knew what she was getting at and came back with some humor so she’d know he was just messing around.
“Hey. It’s not my fault. I’ve all but begged that uptight fuck stick to adopt me. Make our relationship official,” he snickered. “But he insists on pretending I’m his bodyguard instead of…”
“His butt buddy?”
“Jesus H Christ, Rhiann! Butt buddy? You know what that means, right?”
“Yes, I do,” she simpered with a goofy expression and a hair toss. “It means you’re my fiancée’s blood-brother. Sworn to protect me against all threats foreign and domestic.”
The driver chuckled and then coughed to hide the fact that he was listening.
“I’m cool with the blood-brother thing but seriously, Rhi. Ask someone to explain what butt buddy means and then please god, use the term sparingly.”
He could see by the glimmer in her eyes that she knew exactly what the words meant and was deliberately rattling his cage. This was a new wrinkle in his life. Having a female friend. A for real friend. Not someone he secretly wanted to shag. His affection and regard for Rhiann were the genuine article. In some convoluted way, she was a lot like the men he called comrades. Fiercely loyal, smart, and about the bravest badass female motherfucker he’d ever come across.
That’s right. Rhiann Baron-Wilde, soon to be Ashforth, earned ‘badass motherfucker’ status and did it with equally as much if not more panache and flair than her Broadway legend grandmother.
With a sharp tug the gloves keeping her hands warm came off, and she jammed them into her pocket. His and Liam’s edict that she not flash her ever increasing collection of expensive bling while in public was proving to be harder than anyone imagined. Rhi was one of the girliest girls he’d had the pleasure to encounter. Shoes and accessories were her not-so-secret guilty pleasures. It didn’t seem in any way unusual to find her in the kitchen on a sunrise coffee run wearing nothing but Liam’s shirt with a pair of outrageous bedroom slippers with Lucite heels and pink marabou feathers. The look was so Rhiann, as was the snarky humor because she named the slippers her bedroom hooker heels.
And nine times out of eleven she’d also be sporting something from the vast assortment of fabulous necklaces, earrings, bracelets and anklets that Liam was showering her with.
In Roman’s opinion, the engagement ring only made things worse. Liam’s knee-jerk default setting was to immediately go for whatever was the best. The most expensive. For him, details were irrelevant. Until Rhiann set him straight. As a result, he took a dog’s age to find the perfect ring. During the long process, a representative from every high-end jeweler from Bahrain to Los Angeles came and went from the executive suite of BPG’s offices in Manhattan.
Roman sat in on a few of these meetings and did his very best not to laugh in Liam’s face. Watching the coldly polite, cutthroat businessman with shark-like instincts and a shrewd eye for value struggling to get in touch with his inner romantic was funny as shit. He wondered at those times whether Rhi fully appreciated how her love had changed Liam’s life.
Pfft. Changed? Fuck. Try transformed.
In the end, Liam settled on a custom design. If the man could have mined the damn diamond himself he would have, but in the end he chose a classic three stone ring with pretty side-profile pavé-set diamonds set in platinum. It was a stunner and hard to miss. In today’s fucked-up world, having eyes in the back of your head was necessary if you planned to wear something like that out in public.
And since Rhi was blissfully unaware when it came to situational awareness, they’d lowered the boom and demanded she cover up or take it off. Not long after, an assortment of gloves appeared in her wardrobe because no fucking way was she taking that ring off now that Liam finally balled up and proposed.
“I can hear your brain churning.”
Raising his gaze to her expression hoping to find a clue, his brow shot up at her knowing smirk.
“Is this like a guy thing? You know,” she chided playfully. “Say three sentences and then drift away in silence? What’s going on inside that thick skull of yours?”
He chuckled and returned her smirk. “Sorry. Occupational hazard bolstered by a bad habit. My inner dialogue is strong.”
“Well, I get that Mr. Bishop. But maybe you try a little more of this,” she said in a soft voice as her fingers touched his heart, “and a little less of this?” Her gentle tap on his forehead felt like a shot straight to his heart.
Silence was his only defense against her keen observation. Convinced she had empathic powers, sometimes he meditated on Rhiann’s unusual ability to go straight to the heart of something—completely by-passing or ignoring barriers and warning signs. The quality gave her a quiet, sure wisdom he rarely found in others.
“It’s a new year Roman, full of chance and possibility, not just a date on a calendar.”
She scooted up against him and clutched his arm as she rested her head on his shoulder. After a long sigh, she hugged him tight for a moment and then relaxed.
“Charlie would profoundly declare that Liam and I found our happily ever after at the exact moment things seemed the bleakest. I’d like to think our destiny was a bit more certain than that.”
Her head moved on his shoulder, and she looked up at his profile. “I think we would have found our way back to each other eventually no matter what circumstance.”
He nodded and patted her hand. True. There were some things that were just meant to be. Liam and Rhiann was one of those things.
She let out a sigh that sounded concerned and settled against him once more.
“But you’ve got a different situation.”
Her voice was soft, almost a whisper. She was treading into the murky waters surrounding the foul swamp where fear and failure lived inside him.
“For you, there is no finding your way back. I get that. But there is a chance to let go of the past.”
When he bristled, she kept right on speaking, using a soft but firm tone. “And maybe if you can’t let it go there’s a way to move it to the side. Respectfully, of course,” she added.
Shit.
Fuck.
He didn’t want to think about Vanessa and the child that would never be. Didn’t want the glaring reminder of his failure to keep his loved ones safe. Rhi was exposing a raw nerve, and he wasn’t sure he could keep it together.
“Please don’t close the door, Roman. That’s all I’m saying, okay? A little more heart and a little less mental. Promise me, and I’ll shut up. Promise,” she growled with a firm tug on his arm.
Dammit. He didn’t have it in him to deny her, and he wasn’t the type who could lie just to shut her up.
Patting her hand once more, he dipped his head and rubbed his cheek on her hair. “Doorstop in place, you bossy wench.”
Her head popped up and very nearly clocked him in the jaw. The beaming smile evident in her eyes made him all sorts of twitchy.
“Really? How wide?”
Jesus fuck me Christ. Only Rhiann would have the balls to demand specifications.
“Inches. Less than a foot. And only because you asked nicely.”
“That’ll do,” she crowed happily, and then with all the cheeky mock smugness she could round up, she extended her hand like a royal princess and cooed, “You may kiss the ring.”
He dropped his best sardonic smirk onto his face and drawled, “Yeah, no.” When her eyes widened he snickered and added, “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll wait till there’s a wedding band.”
Her laughter ricocheted off the walls of the cab as they pulled up to the massive Manhattan tower holding the corporate offices for Liam’s Black Phoenix Group.
Swiftly paying the driver and leaving a hefty tip, he scurried after his wayward charge as she nonchalantly made her way through the lobby to the bank of elevators.
They’d left the apartment and gone out to window shop. Hopefully to clear their heads, too, but he was no more certain of how to move forward in the matter of Kelly Anne James than when they set out. Liam’s uncharacteristically extended deliberation was getting on his nerves. He wanted the matter settled and off his plate.
In the crowded elevator, his hand shot out and stabbed at the button for the executive floor. The guy next to him shrank back – a small reminder to Roman that he needed to dial back the take-no-shit-or-prisoners persona he’d been overly aggressively rocking lately. Rhiann’s telltale snicker-cough indicated she was thinking the same thing.
When the door opened to the main lobby of the BPG offices, he waved her on but followed closely behind, his eyes swinging corner to corner and up and down as Rhiann put on a little show for Liam’s adoring minions.
“Hi Tammy,” she cried with a friendly wave at someone milling around.
The tap-tap-tap of her shoes—a pair of suede pumps she called her ‘daytime Choo’s’—marked their progress. Everyone looked up. Liam had always been a good boss. He could certainly attest to that. But once Rhiann happened, he became a caring boss, and everyone knew how and why. For BPG, Rhiann Wilde was a fairy princess in real life come to break the spell of loneliness trapping the man-genius they worked for and transform him into the boss of the year.
“Ms. Wilde!”
Roman stayed back and watched as Liam’s longtime personal secretary, Marjorie Gardner, pulled Rhiann into a hug.
“You look wonderful as always, my dear.”
“Aww, thanks, Marjorie. Do you think this looks Duchess Catherine enough?”
He chuckled when Rhi pirouetted in front of Gardner’s desk like a high fashion model on the runway in Milan.
“Dear lord,” Gardner sniped. “Please tell me he didn’t ask you to…”
“Good heavens, no!” Rhiann chirped in an amused giggle. “Come on now. He wouldn’t know the difference between Stella McCartney and Stella D’Oro.”
Both ladies cracked up, and he had to hand it to Rhi because the snarky observation was really funny.
“Is he busy? Can I go right in or do you have to make an announcement?”
That was it. Roman didn’t have time for any of Liam’s high and mighty bullshit. “Fuck that,” he drawled and blew right past both of them, flinging wide the two massive doors guarding BPG’s inner sanctum against mere mortals.
Gardner tried scrambling in front of him, but he anticipated the move and quickly sidestepped the block, earning Rhiann’s amused cackle.
Framed by the enormous wall of glass that offered a spectacular view, Liam stood at one corner of a massive wood desk wearing an immaculately cut three-piece suit and his usual frown.
“Gardner,” Liam grumbled. “What have I told you about letting this shithead in without proper warning?”
Executing a courtly bow punctuated with a middle finger salutation, Roman did his very best to play the fool to Liam’s god-on-a-pedestal act. “I bring you the fair maiden, Lady Rhiann of Baron-Wilde.”
The instant Rhiann swept into the cavernous office the man’s face and mood lightened. So did his common sense. Lighten that is because for some insane reason he didn’t bother to lower his voice and asked, “Did you talk to her?”
“Ah, shit,” Roman grunted. He totally forgot.
“Talk to me about what?” Rhi asked.
Glaring at Liam for steering them into a ditch, he made a lame attempt to clam up, only to have Rhiann explode as Gardner stood by and snickered knowingly before scurrying away, closing the door behind her as she went.
“What part of his dirty work did he try to force on you, Roman?”
She’d stopped an arm’s length short of Liam and slapped her hands on her waist in that wide-legged stance a woman deployed when she wanted to scare the snot out of a man.
“Honey,” Liam stammered with his hands up in supplication.
“Zip it Ashforth. This is between me and your butt buddy.”
“What?” Liam’s icy stink eye was hella’ funny.
Roman groaned and put a hand on his forehead. Being in the middle of these two wasn’t all that different from dodging enemy incoming. He never knew where or when something potentially explosive would get tossed.
With a growl, he drawled, “She means blood brother, right Ms. Wilde? The look he shot her way bounced off the smug sneer that made him chuckle.
“If you say so, Mr. Bishop. Now tell me what nonsense he has formulating in that overactive mind. What exactly is he too much of a wuss to say to my face?”
“Jesus, Rhiann,” he pleaded. “You do realize he’s standing right there.”
“Then I guess you better talk fast,” she replied. When Liam took a step forward, her hand went up to keep him at a distance.
“Not even a hello kiss?” Liam asked sulkily.
“Only if you’re prepared to kiss my ass in front of Roman,” was her snippy reply.
Liam’s reaction to her deliberate taunt let Roman know he had seconds before all hell broke loose. Best to lay it out there. “He thinks you were too friendly with your London security. Braedon I think his name was. Some shit about tea and scones or maybe it was fish and chips, I don’t remember.” He shrugged. “The point being, he wants me to wag a finger in your face and remind you that security is no laughing matter. Oh,” he quickly added after catching his breath, “and he wants you to remember who you are.”
“For Christ’s sake, Bishop. Really?”
“Well, that is what you said, right? Don’t fraternize with the bodyguard—no matter how hunky he is.”
It was Liam’s turn to groan and cover his eyes.
“And take the security seriously. You’re the wife of a prominent man.”
Rhiann gasped and folded her arms with an indignant huff. “No, he did not!”
With a scathing sneer, Liam growled, “I fucking hate you.”
Roman was openly laughing now.
“Give him a raise,” she demanded in a tight-lipped, stern nanny voice.
Liam looked like his brain was short-circuiting. “Excuse me?”
“A raise. I want you to give Roman a raise. Ten percent.”
“He just got an annual raise.”
“Did this annual increase address the fact that you expect him to do your relationship dirty work?”
“Rhiann,” Liam begged. “Come on.”
“As the wife of a prominent man,” she said with a biting sneer, “I should get a say in his annual review. I want an additional ten percent on top of whatever he was already getting.”
It was evident she had no fucking idea just how much Liam shelled out for his services, extended and all-encompassing as they were, because tacking on ten percent to the already exorbitant remuneration felt like taking candy from a baby.
Cracking a joke seemed like a clever maneuver, so he tossed out a good one.
“Hey,” he told Liam with mock gravity. “It’s like I keep saying. Be a lot cheaper to adopt my ass. Put me in the will. You do that, and I’ll happily call you Daddy.”
Then he looked at Rhi with a shaking head. “But no fucking way am I calling you Mommy.”
Ten seconds of stone-cold silence dragged by and then all three of them exploded with gales of laughter and several exuberant high fives. Eventually, Rhiann pushed Liam into his penis-envy executive chair, the one so big it was visible from space, and climbed on his lap. Pulling a seat to the side of the desk, Roman ignored the all-too-familiar make-out session happening feet away and plopped down with an audible grunt.
“Ten more seconds and then I throw a glass of water onto you two.”
It wasn’t Liam who ended the kiss. Rhiann giggled and pushed him away as she sat up and wiped the corners of her mouth. Clapping her hands for their attention she eyed them both and said, “Gentlemen, no more fucking around. What’s the plan? I’ve got a wedding to plan and a niece to spoil rotten. It would be nice to know if I also have a sister-in-law.”
The expression on Liam’s face when she referred to Kelly Anne James as her sister-in-law was all he needed. Suddenly the long agonizing deliberation made sense. Liam was afraid. Afraid to want something. Afraid that one more thing associated with the scum who fathered him would be a disappointment.
He didn’t care at that moment what Liam’s decision was because he intended to do everything in his power to see to it that brother and sister were reunited in a positive way. He wanted that for his boss-friend.
Rhiann caressed the side of Liam’s face and smiled at him. “It’s time, love. Just say what’s in your heart, and we’ll figure out the rest.”
Roman swallowed a lump of emotion that sprang from nowhere and lodged painfully in his throat. Rhiann Wilde was an extraordinary woman.
Liam reached for her hand and kissed it, then closed his fingers around hers. When he swung his head and met Roman’s curious gaze, the eyes meeting his were clear and focused. His voice was strong and confident.
“I want you to handle this personally, Roman. No one else. And I want things old school. No emails, no digital trail. Go to Oklahoma and check things out. Find out everything there is to know about my sister…Kelly,” he said in a halting voice.
“Do you want her to be told or is this seek and find a general thing?”
Liam stared unblinking as he considered what Roman was really asking, then replied somewhat unsurely, “We’re assuming she knows nothing but you know what they say about assumptions. Until we’re sure, the connection should remain anonymous.”
Anonymous.
Hmm.
That meant blending into the scenery in a place where a stranger asking questions might set off alarms. He’d already done some research and had half a plan ready to go in just this instance.
“Instead of trying to play incognito games, I’ll just be someone passing through. Might take some time, though. Her being off grid from a traditional standpoint complicates things. No digital trail whatsoever—no email, bank accounts, credit cards, et cetera.”
“I hope she’s okay,” Rhi whispered.
Liam rubbed her back. He seemed about to say something but didn’t.
“What do you need Roman? Just tell Gardner, and she’ll take care of accounts. Anything at all.”
The sad hopefulness edging Liam’s voice doubled Roman’s resolve. Either Kelly Anne James was in for one hell of a surprise or his friend was going to get another painful life lesson.
He was sincerely pulling for the surprise scenario.