Wren couldn’t exactly deny Garrett’s claims. Letting Emery go this long on her journey of discovery about his identity may have been a miscalculation. Wren shot down rumors for a living. He evened the playing field. If a pharmaceutical company stumbled onto the formula for a deadly toxin, he made the material disappear with no way to recreate it. If someone in power sold secrets that promised to bring down the government, he extracted those secrets and removed the threat.
He had great leeway to handle cases as he saw fit, but all of that depended on him remaining under the radar. Nothing stopped him. No one intimidated him. The one time he’d let a woman get close enough to blur his judgment, he learned a harsh lesson and never repeated it.
But there was something about Emery that had his usual common sense misfiring. He’d known about her investigation of him from day one. Been intrigued by the woman staring back at him in the file he collected on her. The shoulder-length brown hair and girl-next-door fresh face, pretty without make-up and sunny as if she’d somehow been lit from within. And those eyes. Big and brown and brimming with life. She was everything he wasn’t and he couldn’t help but stare.
None of that explained why he’d broken office protocol. He never just ventured out. Rarely engaged in normal everyday activities. His life required privacy and he took his personal protection very seriously.
He also didn’t want Emery caught in the crossfire or put in danger. “I’ll take care of her. I’ve already started.”
“Just now?”
Wren sensed a verbal trap looming, but walked into it anyway. “This morning, yes.”
“Did you threaten her?”
That wasn’t his style and Garrett knew that. Never mind Emery had asked the same sort of question. “No.”
Garrett’s eyebrow lifted. “Were you creepy?”
The conversation had officially crossed over into annoyance. Wren forced his body to relax back into his leather chair. “What kind of question is that?”
“So . . . yes?”
“I’m capable of talking to women, you know.” Admittedly, his dating skills had gotten a bit rusty. That’s what happened when a guy decided it was easier not to date than to try to come up with fake information about his job, his existence and basically everything about himself.
“If you say so.”
For a second Wren wished he were as dangerous as everyone assumed. “I talked with her. It was all very civilized.”
Though he had to admit he’d questioned his word choices after he left her. Maybe he came off a bit heavy-handed. Not that she seemed even a little afraid of him. At one point he’d gotten the distinct impression she toyed with the idea of punching him, which he found incredibly hot. Her face, her quick responses, the way she didn’t seem even a little intimidated by him . . . so fucking hot.
But since she all but kicked the chair out from under him, maybe his women skills were even rustier than he wanted to believe.
Garrett kept staring. The judgy kind of staring. “Did you use your real name?”
“Do I ever?” He kept up his perfectly crafted image intact, like always. The image where all but a select few thought he was the assistant to some mysterious businessman named Wren. Never mind that he actually was Wren. He slept just fine letting people call him Brian Jacobs and view him as someone who answered to the boss. Being able to move around and stoke the whispers only added to his credibility and ability to demand top dollar, so he didn’t fight it.
“Well, you screwed up something, my friend.” Garrett looked like he was trying to swallow his smile and failing brilliantly at it. “Which I admit is a surprise.”
Friend or not, Garrett was enjoying this too much. That made one of them. “Get to your point.”
“She made another call to the senator ten minutes ago.” Garrett coughed into his hand in what had to be the worst fake cough ever performed. “Probably right after you got coffee this morning.”
Wren’s temper spiked. The woman refused to listen. He wasn’t sure whether to be furious or impressed. People did not ignore his warnings. He’d done her a favor and she’d pushed it aside, as if trying to put him on the defensive.
The hotness thing hit him again. With that attitude, she spiked right off the scale. Pulled his attention in different directions. Off work. On her.
Wren didn’t care for the sensation one bit . . . well, maybe a little. “Isn’t she enterprising?”
“Maybe her coffee date didn’t go well.” Garrett cleared his throat. “It appears a creepy man sat down and tried to scare her.”
That was just fucking great. “You followed me?”
“Her.” Garrett held up his hands. “Hey, you’re the one who told me to watch her ‘just in case’ and all that. It’s not my fault that you walked into the middle of my perfect surveillance.”
Wren balanced his elbows on the edge of his desk and rubbed his forehead. He tried to close his eyes and think this through, figure out a way to handle the woman without compromising himself. Appealing to her logical side hadn’t worked. No question about that.
He looked up at Garrett again. “I thought I could talk some sense into her.”
Garrett rested his hands on the back of the chair in front of him. “And how did that go exactly?”