Dirty Wild Series

WILD REBELOneI paced the length of Donovan’s office, then checked my watch for the third time in as many minutes. She wasn’t late yet, but there was a boulder of doubt in my stomach that had me sure she wouldn’t come at all. It was a natural assumption after last time. How long had I waited that night? At what point had I known for sure that she was going to ghost?I’d been more optimistic then. I’d waited hours. Now I relied on experience. If she were planning to show at all, the Jolie I’d known would have been early.But I hadn’t known her for a long, long time.And the name was Julianna, not Jolie. No one called her Jolie but me, and I refused to call her that now. She didn’t deserve it. In the week since I’d gotten her email, I’d practiced it over and over. Julianna, Julianna, Julianna. She wasn’t Jolie anymore. Jolie disappeared the night I waited for her in a run-down pickup in the parking lot of a CTown Supermarket. Jolie was gone.Again, I checked my watch. Not even thirty

I wondered if she’d quit as well or if she had a pack buried in that oversized purse of hers. It was tempting to ask just to have her dig it out and hand it over, just to feel my lips on something that she’d touched.“We were celebrating,” I said, trying to rein in my wandering mind.“Celebrating what?”“The opening of this office.”“Was this the first location you opened? You said you were in Tokyo.”I found the words spilling out before I could stop them. “We planned to have three locations from the beginning. New York opened first, then Tokyo three months later, and London a few months after that.”“A global phenomenon.” She sounded proud, and I liked that.I hated it at the same time. She had no right to be proud of me. She had no right to care how I’d turned out. She had no right to smell the way she did—familiar and new all at once, a scent that made my head cloud and my pulse race and my chest feel like it was breaking in two.She turned her head toward me, and we were so close

“And when you realized you needed help, you thought, ‘Who do I know who is capable of murder?’ And then you thought, ‘Oh, I bet Cade Warren would be up for that. He always did have that rebellious streak.’ Should I be flattered?”Really, I was surprised. Because I might have been trouble, but I hadn’t been a guy who could kill back then. I’d come pretty close a couple of times, when the low-life job I’d had before Donovan “rescued” me had found me in some pretty shady circumstances, but that had been after Jolie. There wasn’t any way she knew about that.“I didn’t reach out to you because I thought you’d be…” She let out a frustrated sigh. “That’s not why.”“Then why? Why me, Julianna?”She flinched at the name. “I thought two heads were better than one, and like I said before, you had reason enough to hate him.”“Reason to hate him? Yes. Reason to kill him?” I left that question unanswered because it shouldn’t need voicing. Sure, I’d imagined it enough times over my life. I’d imagine

I considered bailing on the festivities altogether. Weston and I were both partners in the firm, but we weren’t that buddy-buddy, and it was a fake wedding at that, some marriage-of-convenience scheme Donovan had concocted to help expand Reach in Europe. Honestly, business and money were probably the smartest reasons I could think of to get married, and in many ways I was more supportive of this union than most because of that. But since the parties involved considered it all for show, it wasn’t like anyone would care if I ditched.When I walked into the hotel lobby, though, I realized that if I didn’t go to the reception, I’d end up at the bar. And ending up at the bar would be a sign that I wasn’t okay, and I needed very much to be okay.Another benefit of the reception? The booze was free.Despite suggesting to Julianna that I’d dressed in my suit for the wedding, I’d actually rented a tux—or rather, Donovan had rented me a tuxedo. I’d found it waiting in my room when I’d checked i

Reading between the lines was Donovan’s superpower. Normally, it was something I admired. Today, his perception made me want to snap. “I don’t care about her,” I reiterated with finality.“Whatever you say.”Hearing myself, I wouldn’t buy it either. “Just cancel the PI, okay? And don’t tell anyone about me seeing her. Not Weston, not Nate—no one. I mean it.”“Okay.” He studied me for several seconds. “Something big happened, didn’t it?”Even without her insane—not to mention illegal—request, “big” was an understatement. I hadn’t had time to process it yet, hadn’t let myself begin. The numbness had completely worn off, though, and in its place was a tar pit of emotion. As soon as I started walking through it, I knew I was going to be stuck.Stuck was where I’d been for years. Was I really just right back where I started?“I’ll tell you about it tomorrow,” I assured him. “All of it.”“Stop by my place in the afternoon.”“Fine.” Without a goodbye, I spun away from him. I’d spent as much