Desperate Girls (Wolfe Security #1)(30)

Trent followed Brynn to her apartment without conversation, and she wondered if she might be getting the cold shoulder.

“I’m going to change and work out upstairs.” She tossed her attaché case onto the sofa. “I’ll just be a sec.”

He nodded and stood silently beside the bar.

Brynn went into her bedroom. She kicked off her heels and sank onto the bed to massage her sore feet. It had been a good first day, better than she’d expected. Jack Conlon wasn’t happy with the jury, which made Brynn happy.

She changed into a black Speedo swimsuit and threw on some sweatpants before grabbing a towel and heading up to the fitness center with Trent at her side. All the treadmills were full. She pushed through the glass doors and stepped onto the blessedly empty patio.

Brynn closed her eyes and stood there, letting the sun warm her shoulders. She tuned out the traffic noise at street level, the distant clamor of a construction site, her hovering attendant. She dropped her sweatpants and towel onto a lounge chair and stepped to the pool. The concrete apron felt hot beneath her feet, and she gripped the edge with her toes as she gazed at the shimmery blue. She pulled her arms back and drew a deep breath of chlorine-scented air. Then she plunged.

The first silent moment was her favorite—the cool glide, the nothingness. She broke the surface with a smooth stroke, reaching and pulling as she set a rhythm. She timed her breaths, then curled tight for the turn, pushing hard off the wall with the balls of her feet. She torpedoed through the water and broke the surface again.

She thought of Erik. She hadn’t seen him all day. She hadn’t really been looking, but she’d thought she might catch a glimpse of him, maybe on her lunch break. Could be he was mad at her.

Brynn wasn’t sure what he thought of her. There was the buzz of attraction, yes, but beyond that. What did he think of her as a person? She sensed an underlying disapproval that seemed to go hand in hand with the attraction thing, and she couldn’t figure it out. Not that she wanted to. She was slammed with work and had plenty of things that needed her attention more than he did.

Which explained why her love life had been nonexistent since her breakup with Adam. She’d been buried with work. All the time. Every weekend. She’d made sure to be so she wouldn’t have to think about her woefully empty personal life.

It wasn’t that she wanted Adam back. But their breakup had shattered her illusion that she could have normal things. Lasting things. A regular relationship, like her sister had with Mike. Sure, it had been a bit . . . flat. But it had been stable. As stable as a relationship between two self-absorbed workaholic lawyers could be, which wasn’t stable at all, as it turned out.

So maybe Brynn wasn’t meant for normal or lasting. Even when she had a boyfriend and a steady paycheck and a nice car in the driveway, she was still a pretender.

She did another flip turn, and a pair of shiny black shoes caught her eye. Trent? As she surfaced, the shoes followed her. It wasn’t Trent but Erik, keeping pace with her along the side of the pool. He looked like 007 today in a black suit.

Brynn reached the side and stopped. “Hi,” she said, gasping for breath.

Erik glared down at her, arms crossed, blocking out the sun with his big shoulders. “I need to talk to you.”

“Four more laps.”

“Now.”

She dipped under, pushing off the wall. When she reached the other end, the shoes were waiting.

“Now, Brynn.”

“In a minute.”

She ducked down. Two big hands like shovels scooped under her arms and lifted her from the water. Erik plunked her down in front of him, dripping and sputtering and blinking water from her eyes.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Can’t it wait a damn minute?”

“No.”

She squeezed the ends of her hair, drizzling water all over his shoes. “What?”

“You know damn well what.”

She crossed her arms, refusing to feel self-conscious about standing there in front of him in a swimsuit.

“I spent half my day on damage control because of your little publicity stunt this morning.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your press conference in front of the courthouse,” he said. “Not only did I get my ass chewed out by my boss, but I also had to deal with a pissed-off security chief who staffed an extra man at the prisoner bay this morning, at my request, to deal with your arrival.”

“I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“You didn’t have to. We’re professionals. That means we plan these things without being asked, because we know what constitutes good security.”

“Well, I never agreed to all this.”

“Doesn’t matter. Your boss agreed when he hired us and tasked us with the job of keeping you safe.”

“Um, wrong.” She fisted a hand on her hip. “It absolutely does matter. It’s called consent, and I didn’t consent for you to interfere with my job.”

“You’re interfering with my job. You think fifteen seconds of publicity for your law firm is worth some nutcase taking a shot at you?”

“Maybe.”

His eyebrows arched. “Are you freaking insane?”

“No.”

Erik looked around and seemed to notice that they were attracting attention from the treadmill hamsters. He took her by the elbow and steered her away from the windows.