Stefanie London - A Dangerously Sexy Secret

Wren tried not to roll her eyes. In the three weeks she’d been working at Ainslie Ave, Aimee had managed to lock herself out of the computer system at least four times. Clumsy fingers, she’d claimed, but Wren found that hard to believe considering the delicate and intricate portraits she painted.

“Can you help me?” the other woman pleaded. “I don’t want to disturb Sean again. He got very frustrated last time.”

“Sure.” Wren headed back into the studio and took a seat on the stool in front of the old laptop that served as their shared work computer.

Within minutes she’d located the problem—Aimee had made a spelling error when she’d created her new password, which explained why she hadn’t been able to use it to log in after the reset.

“Okay, that should do it.” Wren clicked over to their email program. “I’ve reset it again and tested that it works. I’ll leave a note on the desktop with the password this time so you don’t forget it.”

“Thanks.” Aimee had the decency to look mildly sheepish.

Wren was about to move away from the computer when she noticed something strange about the email inbox. A ton of unread emails had banked up from contacts she’d never seen before. Normally, the inbox the three women shared was filled with general requests from the website’s contact form. There might be the occasional email requesting information or dates of shows, but otherwise they didn’t get many direct emails from clients.

“Are you logged in to Sean’s email account?” Wren asked, looking up suddenly.

Aimee cringed. “Yes, but please don’t tell him. I needed to, uh...delete an email.” She fiddled with the end of her paint-splattered tank top, the chipped pink nail polish on her fingers glinting like shards of broken glass in the afternoon sun that streamed in from a large window beside them.

“How did you get into his account?” Wren could hardly believe Aimee was the password-cracking type.

“He keeps it written down.” She averted her gaze and spoke softly so that Lola couldn’t hear them. “Please don’t say anything.”

Wren knew for a fact that his passwords weren’t written down anywhere in the studio...after all, she’d looked. Which meant that Aimee had been places that Wren hadn’t, and from the expression on her face she wasn’t too comfortable sharing that information.

“I won’t, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to be logging in to his email account from our shared computer. You might get someone in trouble,” she admonished, feeling immediately hypocritical because she knew exactly how she was going to exploit this opportunity.

“You’re right,” Aimee said, knotting her hands in front of her. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”

“I won’t say anything.” Wren turned the laptop back to herself. “And I’ll log out so I can check on the shared inbox and make sure we haven’t missed anything. You’d better get back to your painting in case he comes in.”

“Thank you.”

Perhaps it made Wren a horrible person to be admonishing Aimee while planning to use her lapse in judgment to scan through Sean’s emails. But Wren had learned a thing or two about morals in the last six months—they were not as black-and-white as she’d been led to believe. For example, in Christian’s mind it had been perfectly okay for him to make up stories about her because he felt she was a bad person for hiding her “depravity.”

Besides, she wasn’t hurting Aimee. She was simply making use of a happy accident to help her friend.

There was nothing suspicious in his emails. Time for plan B. Her nails clicked quietly against the keys of the laptop as she searched for the passcode to the storage room. Nothing. But she did manage to find his birthday, address and home phone number, which gave her something to work with. Wren wasn’t a master spy by any stretch, but she had sat in on an internet security session at the community center back home during one of her volunteering stints. At the time she’d thought it was boring as hell, but some of the stats had stuck with her.

Like how the majority of people use their birthdays as pin codes for ATMs and online banking. Perhaps that extended to locked rooms, as well.

Taking a second to check that no one was watching her, she logged out of Sean’s email and pocketed the note she’d scribbled with his details. Tonight, after everyone had left, she’d “accidentally” forget to set the alarm so she could come back and have a crack at the storage room lock without leaving a trail.

* * *

RHYS WASN’T THE kind of guy who ever had trouble sleeping. He pushed his body hard at the gym and he pushed his mind hard at work each day. Those things combined meant he was usually out the moment his head hit the pillow.

But not for the last three nights.

Stifling a yawn, he rubbed at his eyes and reached for the coffee on his desk. The nighttime hours had been ticking past slowly while Rhys’s eyes remained open in the darkness. All he could picture were flashes of Wren and her painting. Of the sexual energy mixed with her embarrassment.

He hadn’t seen hide nor hair of her since that night...but that didn’t dull the vivid memory.

The painting had taken him aback. Not because he thought there was anything wrong with it—far from it. But he’d been shocked by how strongly his body had reacted to the desire and curiosity and abandonment in her work. Art was not his thing—numbers and data were. But she’d invoked a kind of visceral reaction that was totally foreign.

And then she’d kicked him out.

He wasn’t sure what to make of it. But one thing he did know for certain was that he wanted to see her again, despite understanding that she wasn’t planning to stay.

“Boss?” Quinn Dellinger poked her head into his office, her mass of dyed pink hair almost blindingly bright under the office lighting. “You got a sec?”

“Sure, sure.” He motioned for her to take a seat as he shoved thoughts of Wren from his mind. Work was his priority right now, not women. Not one woman, no matter how tempting. “What’s going on?”

Quinn’s chunky combat boots clomped on the floor. For a woman so petite she made a lot of noise. “I’ve been assigned a case but I need to do a site visit and none of the other guys are free to come with me.”

As a newly appointed junior security consultant, Quinn wasn’t yet cleared to do site visits on her own. She had another few months of shadowing the more experienced consultants before that could happen.

“I’m ready,” she added. “I can do it. I just need you to sign off.”

“You’re familiar with the policy, Quinn. Three months of supervision before you can fly solo.”

Her button nose wrinkled, causing the clear stud there to glint in the afternoon sunlight. “And it’s worth upsetting the client for some stupid policy?”

“It’s not a stupid policy. We have it for a reason.”

He didn’t need to repeat the story; everyone at Cobalt & Dane Security was well aware of what had happened when they’d sent a rookie in alone. One bad incident was all it took to make sure that new security consultants had the proper training and supervision so that they didn’t lose anyone else.

“I know how capable you are, Quinn. I wouldn’t have promoted you if I didn’t believe in your skills.” Rhys reached for his coffee and swigged, praying the caffeine would soon work its magic. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to bend the rules for you.”

She rolled her eyes but a smile twitched on her lips. “You never bend the rules. For anything.”

“Tough but fair, you know the drill,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah.” She folded her arms across the front of her black skull-and-crossbones T-shirt. “So what should we do about the client, then? He said he wants us there today but everyone else is busy.”