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I’d met both of them, and her mother was brusque, intimidating as all hell and acted like she was a fucking queen. Her father was a teddy bear. To us, at least.
Wren had lived a gifted life with parents who loved her, albeit at a distance. She partied from age thirteen until ... well, she never stopped. She’d been all over the world, in all sorts of crazy and dangerous situations that she’d never really thought were dangerous because she’d always had an escape hatch. A hatch only the super-rich had access to, or even knew existed.
So the maybe murderer guy in front of her obviously hadn’t triggered her innate survival instinct because she didn’t exactly have one.
Karson stared at her in that empty, cold way of his, but his eyebrow moved ever so slightly, and I didn’t miss the way his gaze flickered down to Wren’s barely there short shorts and matching sports bra. She believed in showing off what she’d spent a lot of money on, so her tits were spilling out of it, and her short, chocolate brown hair was pulled off her face in a sleek, low bun making all of the angles of her face sharper and more beautiful.
Wren was one of the most stunning people I’d ever come across. People stared at her on the street daily, which was saying something since L.A. did not have a shortage of beautiful people. But Wren’s beauty was different. Her father was Greek, her mother South Asian. Both of their genes married perfectly to give her flawless olive skin, piercing hazel eyes, delicate features and a petite stature.
Despite the fact that she was shorter than me even when wearing her highest heels, Wren never seemed small. Everything about her was larger than life. Even now, when faced with this tall, menacing man. Especially now.
I guessed Karson was used to people being afraid of him, so Wren’s reaction had an effect on his granite expression.
“Honey, if I want to take her bodily, it will take less than a second to go through you. We’d be in the car before you even knew what happened. But I’m not in the habit of making women go anywhere they don’t want to go.” His eyes moved from Wren to me. “Does she speak for you?”
There was a challenge there. I didn’t know why, but I felt it. Was this some sort of test? Everything that involved Jay seemed like a test, a challenge. It was unnerving. I hated it. But something excited me too.
“I speak for myself,” I told Karson. “But Wren happens to know what I’m planning on saying. Tell Mr. Helmick that if he wishes to contact me, he can do it himself, on the telephone like a normal man.”
“Well, let’s not say normal man,” Wren interjected. “Since normal men—meaning assholes, because let’s face it, most men’s factory default is asshole—don’t like to use the telephone to call women in the day of text message. Beyond that, from what I know of Mr. Helmick, he is the furthest you can get from normal.” She grinned wickedly at Karson, winked and then linked her arm with mine.
“We’ll be going now. Just so you know, I’m not adverse to being whisked away in SUVs ... with the proper warning given, of course. I can have on the right clothing ... on the outside at least. Underneath, I’m always prepared.”
Wren chose that moment to whisk us both away, because that woman loved making an exit.
I sneaked a look back to see Karson staring at her ass in an intense, hungry way that spelled trouble for everyone involved.
My phone rang not long after I got home from Wren’s. I figured it was going to be that starlet I blew off and took a large sip of the wine I’d poured in order to get through the call. The number was private, which wasn’t unusual considering the kind of clients I had and the city I lived in.
I was tempted to ignore whoever was calling at almost eleven on a weeknight, but this job didn’t exactly have bank hours, and I had a credit card bill to pay.
So I answered.
“Stella.”
I froze with my wine glass halfway to my mouth, recognizing voice. I’d heard it in my dreams. After I fell back to sleep after I woke up from nightmares about a blade to my throat.
“You are whole. You are safe.”
His words had protected me even when I felt like I was falling apart. I worried about how much I clung to them, about what that meant. I’d worried even more about whether I’d hear from the man again. What I didn’t worry about was the fact that the man in question had had me fricking followed, a detail I’d left out when I’d told my girlfriends about what happened. I’d fudged things more than a little, saying that Karson had been driving Jay when they passed me, hence him beating the crap out of my attacker and Jay suggesting I spend the night at his place so I didn’t have to be alone.
