I spent my morning working on the permit Jack had requested, and Bo and I never got around to talking. I was supposed to be doing research for Ms. Mitchell’s new client, but I had that done in hours. I simply hadn’t turned it in yet because it was never a good idea to show up the people you have to work with, even if they spent their days trying to find ways to show you up. Besides, I didn’t see myself in this job forever. I didn’t want a partnership—either junior or senior. I wanted to get the experience I needed, then I wanted to take over the legal department at Stone Security.

I’d already be the head of legal at Stone Security if Jack wasn’t such an ass!

You’re the only kid sister we have, Remy. We can’t ask you to work at a place that could potentially put you in danger. It would be irresponsible of us.

Yeah, but it was okay to ask me to do free legal work whenever their incompetent legal department screwed up?

Jack was an ass. I hoped this Rae knew what she was getting into. At least Stacey came from a family full of asses. She knew how to deal with him.

Stacey Greene grew up with privilege. Her father owned one of those real estate development companies that always seems to make tons of money and have their thumbs in everything around town. Stone Security provided basic services to the business, protecting the properties and doing whatever off the books sort of thing her father needed. She had two older brothers and was constantly surrounded by her parents’ snooty friends and their kids. She knew how to handle a huge ego. And she knew what it meant to put the right face forward. Those were things Jack needed.

This Rae…she sounded like someone who’d be lost at a charity gala. She wouldn’t be the kind who’d walk into a party with the right attitude after Jack said something ignorant—as he was wont to do quite often—about her dress or her hair. She could be trouble for Stone Security if Jack continued to insist on being the face of the company.

They didn’t see that all I cared about was the future of the company. All five of us sank a lot of our personal fortunes into this business. We should all have a say as to how it was run.

Jack needed to get over himself and see that.

I stared at the screen, realizing I’d come to the end of all the things I could do on this permit application until I talked to someone who had the specifics on the information I needed. Bo said he had the blueprints and he’d left them at my place, but I stupidly forgot them there. I was so flustered last night when he walked out…I still was, to a certain extent. Bo was my soulmate. If last night had proven anything, that was it. But he ran out of there like the place was on fire. And then I woke up last night to the radio informing me that my brothers—and probably Bo—were involved in some sort of raid on a motorcycle club downtown.

At least he hadn’t been lying when he said it was a work thing.

I sighed, slapping the lid of my laptop down. I could be working on a million other things. I might have my research done, but there were other things, mundane paperwork, that needed to be done. But I needed a cup of tea first.

I got up and wandered through the busy office, listening to one-sided phone conversations and arguments unfolding quietly in cubicles like my own. I liked the buzz of a working law firm, and I’d miss it if I ever convinced Jack to take me on at Stone Security. But running my own legal department—and seeing Bo every day—would make it worth it.

The break room was empty. I grabbed a tea bag and poured some water into a mug, shoving the whole thing into the microwave. I leaned against the counter to wait and thought I heard a sound behind me. I shifted because there was nothing behind me but the counter and the cupboard doors underneath it. If there was something there, it was probably a mouse and I really didn’t want to know about that. But then I heard the sound again.

I stepped back and opened the first cabinet door, leaning forward so that the majority of my body was as far back as possible.

Nothing.

I kind of laughed at myself, thinking it was just my imagination. But then there was another noise and I jumped, a little scream slipping from between my lips.

What the hell?

I opened the second cabinet, expecting a rat to jump out at me. Instead, it was Ms. Mitchell, curled up like a child, sobbing in the dark cabinet.

She drew her legs tighter up against her chest, her eyes wild as she stared out at me through tear-stained eyes. I retreated, closing the door to the break room and wedging a chair under the handle so no one could come in. Then I went back to her, squatting in front of the cabinet so that we could see eye to eye.

“Ms. Mitchell…Violet, what’s going on? Are you okay?”

She shivered, turning her head away so that I could see the fresh stream of tears rushing down her cheeks.

“What happened? Did someone hurt you?”

“He was here. He said…awful things…”

She was speaking between sobs, deep sobs that reminded me of Josie when she was recovering from a tantrum. I grabbed a couple of napkins from the countertop and handed them to her. She didn’t seem to know what to do with them at first, so I took one back and carefully wiped at the tears on her face.

“Let me get you out of here.”

She shook her head. “I can’t let anyone see me this way!”

“I’ll clean you up and take you down the back stairs. No one will be the wiser.”

She focused on me for a moment, the strong, confident woman I worked for making an appearance. But then she turned away, shivering so hard that her entire body seemed to vibrate. I touched her shoulder and she jerked away.

“Don’t touch me!”

“Okay. I won’t. But you can’t hide in there all day.”

She closed her eyes, clearly struggling with whatever was going on inside her head.

I knew a girl in college who lived down the hall from me in the dorms. She had a breakdown one afternoon, barricading herself in her room and throwing all the furniture out the window, convinced there was a listening device in her room, someone trying to figure out how she managed to get near-perfect grades on all her school work—which she didn’t actually do; she was an average student if anything—trying to steal all her secrets. When security finally got her out of there, she’d pulled her hair out in chunks and she accused everyone watching of being spies. We later learned that she was schizophrenic and had been hearing voices for months before her breakdown.

Was that what this was? Was Violet Mitchell—the most celebrated female attorney in all of Memphis—having a mental breakdown?

I couldn’t imagine that, but the evidence seemed to be right there in front of me.

“Violet, we need to get you out of here. Someone could come in at any moment.” Even as I said the words, someone rattled the doorknob, causing the chair to vibrate a little. “You don’t want someone to see you like this.”

She focused on me again. “I don’t even know if I can trust you. I don’t know if I can trust anyone.”

“You can trust me. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you or put my job in jeopardy.”

She smiled a little wryly. “There is some advantage to being the dragon lady.”

She was coming back. I touched her arm again and this time she didn’t pull away. She even lifted her hand to wipe at her face again. It seemed like she was going to be okay.

I took her hand and carefully helped her unfold her body from inside the cabinet. I don’t know how she got in there in the first place. She was taller than me—which was something since I stood a little over five-foot-seven—and fuller in the hips. She’d seemed like a giant when I first came to work here, but was beginning to take on more of a human appearance, especially now.

The bell on the microwave rang just then, reminding me that only a few minutes had passed. Violet jumped, the crazy coming back into her eyes as she glanced around, searching for the source of the sound.

“It’s okay. It’s just my tea.”

She didn’t respond, but there was relief in her eyes.

I moved the chair from the door and snuck a peek out in the hall. There was no one there. I gestured for her to follow me, but she hesitated, clearly not sure this was a good idea. But she finally came to me, sliding her hand into mine. The stairs were just a couple yards down from where we were. I led the way, tugging her down the steps one at a time. We started on the seventh floor, but we managed to make it to the basement in just a few minutes, making our way along the aisles of the massive underground parking structure until we came to my car. Violet hesitated again when she saw it.

“We pay our first years way too much,” she said.

“I’m actually a second year. And I bought that with family money.”

I clicked the button on my key fob and the BMW’s lights flashed, the horn letting loose two quick beeps. Violet jumped again, but she got control of herself a lot faster this time.

“I need my laptop. And the Winston file.”

My eyebrows rose. “Anything else?”

She looked me over for a long second. “You should grab your research files. We might as well get some work done if we’re going to be stuck in one another’s company for the rest of the day.”

That idea set my nerves on edge just a little. I hadn’t really been planning on spending the entire day with her. I was just going to drop her off at her place and come back to work, maybe do something productive for a while. But I guessed she had other ideas.

I managed to sneak into Violet’s office and take her computer without her secretary calling security, and then I joined her back at the car. She was sitting in the passenger seat, staring out the window at nothing, that touch of crazy back in her eyes.

“You heard that, right?”

“Heard what?”

She was quiet for a long moment. I set both our bags in the backseat and climbed behind the wheel, ignoring the buzz of my phone’s vibration. Susie in accounting had been trying to get ahold of me all morning about a lunch I claimed as a business expense a week ago. I knew it was on the edge when I submitted, but I was hoping it would slide through. It had before, but—

“That! Do you hear that?”

I glanced at Violet. She was looking wildly at my hip like she thought she heard a bomb ticking a countdown or something.

“My phone?” I tugged it out of my hip pocket and held it up just as the call ended. “It was just a call. The phone is on vibrate.”

She stared at it a long time, her eyes wild again. But then she nodded, dismissing the whole thing. “Of course, it is.” She gestured toward the windshield. “Can we get out of here, please?”

I sighed, sliding my phone back in my pocket and starting the car. We got as far as the garage entrance before I turned to her. “Where to?”

“We can’t go to my place or anywhere I might frequent. He’d find me.”

“Then…?”

She shook her head. “I don’t care. Anywhere but here.”

I sighed as I eased the car into gear, moving into the heavy downtown traffic. I didn’t want to take her to my place, so it seemed like there was only one choice: the guesthouse at Jack’s. It was technically the family estate, so I didn’t see why I couldn’t take her there. As far as I knew there was no one else there right now. And it was safe—Stone Security took the safety of their CEO pretty seriously—so if there really was some guy harassing her, he couldn’t get to her there.

Violet stared out the window the entire ride, whispering under her breath from time to time, something that had a rhythm like a mantra. I couldn’t understand the words, but I don’t think I was meant to.

When we turned onto the estate, she sat up a little straighter. “You weren’t kidding about the family money, were you, second year?”

“This is my brother’s estate.”

“Your brother?”

“Well, it was the family estate, but he inherited it when our parents died.”

She glanced at me. “How many siblings? Just the two of you?”

“No. There’s five all together.”

She nodded slowly. “Should have gotten yourself a good lawyer, kid. I could have gotten you a fifth of this place without blinking. Maybe even half.”

I shook my head. “We were all well cared for in the will. I think Daddy left this to Jack because he was always sort of the dominant one even though he’s the second oldest.”

“What about the oldest?”

“Brent? He’s a little less intense than Jack.”

She nodded again, twisting a little in her chair to watch the main house pass by as I followed the lane to the guesthouse. I pulled to a stop at the front of the two-story house, glancing up at its familiar façade. It had always been a guesthouse. My dad once joked that he had it built for our maternal grandparents to stay in when they came to visit because he could only take so much of them. But we all knew that he and Mom snuck down here when we kids got to be too intrusive up at the main house. They liked to have a private love nest they could escape to whenever the mood struck.

And it served as a pretty awesome hangout when we were teens and wanted to have a few friends over.

“This is the guest house? It’s bigger than the house I grew up in.”

I’d heard that before, too. Mostly from friends I made at the public school Dad insisted we all attend.

I led the way to the door, both our bags over one shoulder, and let us in. The place had recently been cleaned, the living room neat as a pin and smelling like pine cleaner. Violet looked around, her eyes a little wary as she considered the few nooks and crannies where someone could hide.

“It’s safe,” I said. “My brother has a pretty impressive security system set up here.”

“Is it on?”

I glanced back at the panel on the wall beside the door, noting the red light. “Not right now, but I can turn it on.”

Violet backed up, crossing her arms tight over her chest. “Would you mind doing a quick walkthrough, make sure no one’s hiding in here?”

“Of course not.”

I began with the living room, walking in a wide circle and making a show of looking behind the heavy curtains.

“Could you look in the cupboards, too?”

I glanced at the huge wardrobe that stood in a corner of the room. It was divided into six cupboards, each much too small for anyone taller than four feet to climb into. I knew because I used to play Hide-and-seek in it when I was a kid.

But I looked just to make her feel better.

She followed me through the entire house, making me look in the most impossible places. The dryer, the washer, the kitchen cabinets, the laundry chute upstairs, the hot water closet. Even drawers where it was impossible to hide a knife, let alone a person.

When she was finally satisfied, she turned back into the old confident Violet Mitchell I’d known over the last fifteen months that I’d worked for Grant and Frederick.

“I think I’ll take a shower, if you don’t mind.”

I shrugged. “You’re welcome to it. There are towels in the closet and extra clothes—”

“I think I can handle it,” she said, pushing me toward the door.

I left her there in the spare bedroom and headed back downstairs. I was in over my head and I knew it. But now she had me a little paranoid. I punched in the code to arm the security system and tugged my cell out of my pocket, pushing the speed dial button that would connect me almost instantly with Bo.

“My boss has flipped her lid, or something. Could you come to the guesthouse?”

That’s all I had to say.

Bo arrived fifteen minutes later. Violet was still in the shower and I was pacing in the kitchen, wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself caught up in. He let himself in, inputting his unique code into the security system before rearming it. Then he charged into the kitchen looking incredibly handsome in his tan suit, the light blue of his shirt making his eyes pop like they were jewels created just for him.

I bit my bottom lip, trying to remind myself that I was in a bit of a mess here and shouldn’t be thinking about how hot Bo was or how incredible his kisses had been last night. But how could I not have those thoughts when he came charging into a room like that?

“What the hell have you done?” Anger snapped from his eyes, dripped from the tone of his voice. That sobered me up a little.

“She was hiding in a cabinet in the break room at the office. On the seventh floor. Her office is a floor up.”

“Why?”

“She said something about a man saying mean things to her.”

Bo frowned as he moved close to me, laying his hands on my shoulders. He searched me for a moment, his eyes moving over me before resting on my face again.

“Why didn’t you call the police? Or the hospital? It sounds like the woman needs a psychiatric assessment.”

“That’s what I thought, at first. But then she came out of it.”

“Remy—”

“I don’t think she’s crazy. I saw a psychotic break when I was in college and this wasn’t quite that bad.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not a psychotic break.”

“I know that. But I think…” I found myself struggling for words, something I rarely did with Bo. “I just think there’s something else going on here.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe someone really is after her.”

Bo sighed, backing away from me in favor of leaning against the kitchen counter. “So what’s the plan?”

“I think she should stay here for tonight. After that…I guess it depends on what she has to say about everything.”

Bo shook his head, his eyes grazing over me again. “I won’t leave you out here alone with someone who might be mentally unstable.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“You called me for a reason, Remy.”

“Probably because you’re gorgeous and she can’t take her eyes off you.”

We both turned, Bo pushing away from the counter to cross his arms over his chest in that bodyguard sort of stance that I loved. Violet, her blond hair wet and stringy around her face, stood in the doorway wearing a pair of yoga pants I’d never seen before. She crossed her arms over her chest, too, mimicking Bo with a wry little smile on her lips.

“Violet Mitchell, this is Bo Villemont, a family friend.”

“Bo? How very southern! Is it short for Beauregard?”

Bo inclined his head slightly. “It is.”

She laughed. “How delightful!” She waved her hand as she turned to leave the room. “Finish up whatever lover’s discussion you’re having and come join me, Remy. We should get some work done while we’re stuck here together.”

She disappeared, leaving us both staring after her.

“See what I mean?”

“Do you know who she is?”

I glanced at him, wondering if he’d heard anything I’d said the entire time we were standing there. “She’s my boss, senior partner at Grant and Frederick. Probably going to be named partner someday.”

He shot me a look that said I was absolutely ignorant. “She’s the girlfriend of Vincent West.”

“As in Chief of Police West?”

“Yeah.”

It was my turn to lean back against the counter. This could mean trouble for Stone Security. They’d already run up against the chief of police a few times. He didn’t like an independent security agency functioning outside his jurisdiction, especially when Jack didn’t stop to get permission to act in his city. State law didn’t require Stone Security to act with the local police’s permission in most cases and Jack took advantage of that quite often. More often than West preferred. For example, I was pretty sure West was all over Jack for the raid on the motorcycle club last night.

And now we had his girlfriend hiding on our property. I couldn’t imagine this would end well.

“I’m going to call a couple of guys to come out and keep an eye on the two of you.”

“That’s not necessary, Bo. This place is secure. If someone’s after her—”

“I’m not worried about someone on the outside. I’m worried about her having some sort of break and hurting you.”

My eyebrows rose. I turned my hips toward him, trying to look coy. “You care about me?”

He frowned. “Of course, I do. You’re my best friend’s little sister!”

So much for a great seduction!

He came toward me, his hands resting on my shoulders again. “Listen to me, Remy. What happened last night—”

“You can’t take that back.”

“No. But it can’t happen again.”

“Why not? You can’t stand there and tell me you didn’t feel anything.” I snagged his shirt with a finger slipped between the buttons. I felt a ripple go through his abdominal muscles when I did. “I know I’m not the only one who felt it.”

He wrapped his big hand around my wrist and pulled my hand from him. “Your brother is my best friend.”

“Gentry doesn’t dictate who either of us is allowed to be involved with. The boy can’t even handle his own love life!”

“But it would be wrong, Remy. Don’t you see that? Your family…they’ve been good to me all these years. This is not how I want to pay them back.”

“Maybe they’d like it if you took me off their hands.” I touched him again, running my hand slowly up the length of his chest. “You know I’ve had a crush on you forever and last night proved that it’s not entirely one-sided.”

“Remy,” he groaned, taking hold of my wrist again, “you are a beautiful woman. But that doesn’t change who your brother is.”

“You think I’m beautiful?”

He groaned, stepping into me instead of pulling away. His grip on my wrist loosened a little. I pulled my hand down, slipping my fingers between his and he wrapped his hand around mine.

“What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

I raised myself up on my toes, brushing my lips against his. He sighed, his free hand coming around my waist as he responded to me, his lips, his tongue, urging my mouth open. And open to him, I did, unable to help myself. I wanted him in ways I had never wanted anything or anyone else. I slipped my hand along his jaw, feeling his muscles work as he kissed me. It was one of the most erotic things I’d ever felt.

But then he was pulling away.

“Gentry’s back in a few months. Maybe…”

“Bo!”

But he was gone, slamming the front door on his way out. But he didn’t leave right away. A peek out the window confirmed that his truck stayed parked behind my BMW until the guys from Stone showed up.

He cared. And he thought I was beautiful. That would have to be enough for now.