Wilde at Heart (Wilde Security, #3)(44)

“What are those?”

He rubbed at the back of his neck. “Just…something I’ve been meaning to pick up.”

Okay, he didn’t want her to know. She could live with that. He was already sharing so much more with her than she ever thought he would.

She turned in a slow circle, then walked to the other side of the attic, where his bed sat between two dormer windows.

“So this is it,” she said and sat down on the bed. He should have looked silly standing there in his expensive suit, but he appeared more at home here than he ever had in his upscale apartment. She patted the mattress next to her. “This is what you wanted to show me?”

He set his notebooks by the staircase and crossed to her in several long strides. The mattress sank with his weight, and she slid toward him. Their thighs touched, but he didn’t draw away from her, and she wasn’t about to draw his attention to it.

“I’ve always been different from my brothers,” he said. “They’ve never understood me. Dad…” He sighed heavily. “He didn’t understand me, either. He tried, but we had nothing in common, and he didn’t know what to make of me. I can’t throw a ball to save my life, and even though I’m great on ice skates, I hurt myself every time I pick up a hockey stick.”

She smiled at the mental image—could totally picture that—and leaned her head on his shoulder, lacing their fingers together. “Did your dad ostracize you for it?”

“No. Not on purpose at least. He’d take my brothers out to hockey games, football, baseball. I just wasn’t ever interested, so I never went. He tried taking me to science fairs and things like that, but he was always bored out of his mind. Finally, when I was about ten, Mom was exasperated enough with the two of us circling each other that she signed us both up for karate lessons. And that was it. Our common ground. It was the perfect blend of physical for him and mental for me. I even continued studying after he died. I wanted to make at least second level black belt, so it’d kind of be like getting two. One for me and one for him.” His voice cracked a little on the last word, and he glanced away.

God, what would it feel like to love a parent so much that twenty years after they were gone, you still grieved?

Bittersweet, Shelby imagined, but she’d never know for sure. She’d never feel for her mother what Reece felt for his parents. If Katrina died tomorrow, the shock of it would hurt, yeah, but the loss of the possibility of a good relationship with her mother would hurt worse. And in her heart, she knew she’d be mostly…relieved.

“I wish I could have met your parents, Reece. They sound like good people.”

“They were.” He gave a small smile, a sexy uptick at the corner of his mouth. “Mom would have loved you. Dad…he wouldn’t have known what to make of you, either.”

She nudged him with her shoulder. “We’re two peas in a pod.”

He laughed. “Hardly.”

“You should laugh more often.”

“Yeah?” He glanced over at her, a mischievous glint in his eyes as he lowered his head, closing the distance between their mouths. “Does it turn you on?”

“Oh yeah,” she breathed, in the moment before his lips touched hers.

Reece took his time with the kiss, a slow caress with no sense of urgency. Just like that last kiss in the closet before Dylan interrupted them. She trembled at the sweetness behind it and fisted her hands in his jacket, intending to push him away, but instead drawing him in closer. She didn’t want this tenderness from him, though. Hard, dirty, lust-slaking sex? Yes, absolutely. But anything more than that, no matter how much she secretly yearned for it, would only end in broken hearts. It was too much.

For once, she broke the kiss first.

He drew away slightly, confusion in his eyes. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah.” She didn’t sound very convincing, even to her own ears, so she made herself smile despite her heartbeat thundering nervously. “Yeah, everything’s fine. But we should go. It’s getting late, and I’m supposed to meet with the arson investigators tomorrow to talk about The Bean Gallery.”

The confusion morphed into concern. “Did you tell them you’re the owner?”

“Yes. They weren’t happy with me for withholding the information.”

And the concern nosedived into alarm. He stood. “They don’t think—are you a suspect?”

“No. No,” she added more firmly when he started to pace.

He stopped in front of her. “I’m going with you tomorrow. I want to tell them I was there.”

“That’s up to you, but I don’t think it’s necessary.”

“I do.” He held out a hand to help her up. “Let’s go home.”





Chapter Seventeen


On the way downstairs, Shelby paused and studied the framed photos hanging in the stairway. She hadn’t noticed them earlier, but now that she knew more about his family, she had to stop and look. Some candid shots, some posed, some obviously from school. She studied those first because school photos were always a riot. They appeared to have been taken the school year before their parents died—Reece was about twelve in his.

“Oh, man. You were a nerd!” An adorable nerd, yes, with his unruly dark hair and clunky glasses.