Wilde at Heart (Wilde Security, #3)(6)

Eva waved a hand in front of her face. “Planet Earth to Shel, come in.”

Shelby shook her head, dislodging all thoughts of Reece. “Sorry. What?”

Eva frowned, concern etching lines around her eyes. “Are you okay? Maybe we should take you to the hospital.”

“No, you don’t need to do that. I’m exhausted and zoned out for a sec. No biggie. What were you saying?”

“Oh God. Shelby, you scared me, you know?” Eva stepped forward and wrapped her up in a hard hug. “You were here closing by yourself, and when I heard the call come across the scanner…”

Shelby held her just as tightly and breathed in the leathery scent of her sister’s jacket mixed with the clean scent of soap from a recent shower. It did wonders to calm her still-racing heart. “I’m so sorry, Evie. But I’m okay. Honest.”

“Whatever’s going on with you, you know you can tell me, right? I can’t promise I won’t get mad at first, but I’m always here for you, no matter what.”

“I’ve never doubted that.”

“So then what aren’t you telling me?”

Oh, so much. So very much that she didn’t even know where or how to begin.

She clung to her sister and watched the firemen douse the last of the flames. The front end of The Bean Gallery was nothing but a blackened shell now, and tears pricked her eyes. And for a heartbeat, warm and comfortable in her sister’s embrace, she considered spilling everything. All she had to do was open her mouth and start talking.

But then she caught sight of a familiar face in the crowd of bystanders that had begun to gather on the sidewalk, and her heart dropped to her toes.

Shitballs. And here she’d thought this night couldn’t possibly get any worse.





Chapter Three


“What are you doing here?”

Reece glanced up from the spreadsheets on his laptop to see his brother Vaughn lounging in the doorway of his office. It was a tiny room in the back of the Wilde Security building and Vaughn filled the doorframe with his body.

“I could ask the same of you,” Reece said, avoiding the question. “As best man, shouldn’t you be with the groom, making sure he gets to the plane on time tomorrow?”

“Cam’s so goofy in love with Eva, he’s not going to miss that plane for anything.” Vaughn lifted a shoulder. “And I wanted to check some things before we leave.”

“Lark.” Reece didn’t bother making it a question. He knew damn well Vaughn was like a starving pit bull with a bone when he latched on to something. And he’d latched on to Lark Warren’s disappearance with all his teeth, though nobody could figure out why. As far as Reece knew, Vaughn had only met Lark once at their youngest brother Jude’s wedding last fall, but he was bound and determined to find the woman now. Which was proving more difficult than any of them could have guessed since the real Lark Warren was a sixty-eight-year-old who had died of a heart attack three years ago, shortly before Vaughn’s “Lark” appeared in D.C.

Reece returned his attention to his computer, but the numbers on the screen were starting to blur together. Time to lose the contacts and break out the glasses, he decided, and opened the top drawer of his desk, found his contacts case, solution, and glasses. He stood. “You have to let her go, Vaughn. This obsession isn’t good for your health.”

“Jesus. I’m not a f*cking fragile china doll.”

“Never said that.” He stopped in front of Vaughn and waited for his brother to step back, out of the doorway, to let him pass.

Vaughn didn’t move. “You didn’t have to say it.”

At six feet tall, Reece wasn’t a small man by any stretch of the imagination, but he was the shortest in the Wilde family and had to look up to meet his younger brother’s gaze. “You were seriously injured less than two months ago. You shouldn’t even be thinking about coming back to work yet, not to mention chasing this woman’s trail across the country.”

“I’m fine.” But even as he said the words, he pushed away from the doorjamb, and his jaw tightened with a suppressed wince.

“Yeah, you look it.” Reece strode past him to the bathroom and started the preparations to remove his contacts at the vanity. Vaughn’s walking cast clomped across the floor, then a chair scraped back and a computer booted up.

“Did you hear about the shit Shelby got into the other night?” Vaughn asked.

He fumbled his contact and it landed somewhere on the floor. “Fuck!”

“What?”

“Nothing. Dropped my contact.” He groped around for his glasses and slid them on, but didn’t bother searching for the lost contact. He returned to the main room where Vaughn was sitting at his desk, typing.

“Should get corrective surgery like Cam did,” Vaughn said without looking up.

He’d considered it several times over the years, but what did it say about him that he hated the idea of losing even a day of work to get his vision fixed? Probably nothing good, so he shoved the idea aside.

“What did you say about Shelby?” Jesus, he hoped he’d managed to keep his voice casual, because his heart was pounding a hole in his ribcage.

Vaughn still didn’t look away from his screen. “Yeah, that girl is a walking disaster. The Bean Gallery burned to the ground during her shift on New Year’s Eve.”