Kane let her speak and then continued, “Now you can delete that article and everything associated with it and keep your job snooping into exciting events like pie eating contests and other nonsense worthy of your time, or you can claim some kind of journalistic ethics and I can go in there and get you fired. Your choice.”
I’d never heard Kane say so much at one time. Ciara stared up at him with a stunned look, like she’d just been slapped across the face. Everything seemed to stop for a moment, and then she turned in her seat to face her laptop. “Fine. You win.”
She typed a few words and before our eyes the article disappeared from the site. When she claimed it was all gone, Kane walked behind her and leaned over her to type his own words onto a screen I’d never seen on my computer. A few keystrokes later, he stood up to his full height and returned to my side.
“And now you’re going to tell us who your source was,” Kane said in a flat voice.
“It’s not enough that I deleted everything?” Ciara whined, all her charm and flirtatiousness gone now.
“No. Tell Olivia who your source was, or I’m heading into your boss’s office.”
Ciara hesitated, and Kane turned to walk away. “Okay! His name was Jake. I met him outside the club the other night when he was denied entrance, even though he’s a member. I heard him bitching about the owners, and I figured he was ripe for the picking. He told me everything.”
Hearing her confirm what I already suspected didn’t make the betrayal any easier. Kane threatened Ciara with revealing her past one more time before we left, and then we headed back to his car. Closing the car door, I turned to face him, dying to know what she’d done to get arrested.
“You have to tell me. What did the lovely Ciara do to get in trouble?”
Kane started the engine and shifted the car into gear. With a slight smile, he said, “Our little Ciara has a penchant for the five-finger discount. And her real name isn’t Ciara Danson. It’s Cheryl.”
“Shoplifting? And a new, sexy name? How did you find out?”
“That’s my job, Olivia. I handle all the dirty work for Club X—the sex, the fantasies, and finding out things about the people who want to come to the club.” He turned his head and smiled at me. “And yes, I know all about you. That’s why I was pretty sure you didn’t do this.”
“There’s not much to know, I guess. Investigating me must have taken all of five minutes.”
His smile grew bigger, and he chuckled. “You’re one of the rare people I’ve met in this business. You have no real vices, no problems with the law, and from all reports, you’re honest.”
“Pretty boring, huh?”
“Not so much. Seems to me those are the perfect qualities for an executive assistant.”
Kane’s allusion to my working for Cash again buoyed my spirits. We pulled up to the front of the club, but it was obvious that Kane had other places to go rather than return to work. I would have felt better if he was with me when I walked back into the club, but I had a feeling I knew where he was going.
“You aren’t coming in?”
Shaking his head, he narrowed his eyes to slits. “No. I’m going to pay Jake Richfield a visit.”
“Oh. Okay. I’d say be careful, but I think he’s the one who needs to worry about that.”
Kane chuckled low and looked over at Club X. “I think you have a box to take care of. Tell Stefan I’ll be back later.”
“Okay.” I got out of the car and leaned back in through the window. “And thanks for believing in me, Kane. I appreciate it.”
“Any time, Olivia. Don’t worry about Cash. Things have a way of working out.”
“Yeah. But hey, if this is the last time I see you because I don’t have a job anymore, it was nice meeting you. You turned out to be way different than I thought you were. Even if what you do isn’t exactly legal.”
That rare, genuine Kane smile brightened up his face and went all the way to his blue eyes. “The club is the club. I let Cash worry about the legality of it. As for me, don’t tell anyone how I really am. I won’t be able to do my job if people think I’m a nice guy. Let that be our little secret.”
“Got it.”
As he drove away, I looked at the front door of Club X with a lump in my throat. Whatever lay behind that door, I had to face it, even if it meant the end of my time there.
Chapter Twenty-One
Cassian
Staring down at the papers in front of me, I breathed a sigh of relief. All I had to do was sign on the bottom line and my marriage to Rachel would be over. No muss. No fuss. No dragging my brothers and me through hell so she could peel off a piece of the club for herself. She’d given me everything I’d hoped for.
Before she’d left, I asked her the natural question, knowing I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth but needing to ask anyway. I had to know. Why now? Why, after years apart, was she willing to walk away amicably now?
Her answer? Uncharacteristically philosophical for a woman who cared more about the outside of people than the inside. “This is a chance for us to be happy, Cassian. Take it and don’t look back.”
Looking back was what I’d done for so long I wasn’t sure I knew how to look ahead anymore. My life since that night I caught her and my brother together had been one long look back wishing what I’d believed was real. Every woman I’d slept with since then had been an effort to avoid looking forward to a future I didn’t want to admit.
In some way, never divorcing Rachel meant never having to move on. As wrong as that was, it was also comforting. A meaningless marriage, it still gave me an excuse not to get serious about anyone. Somewhere deep inside I’d always known it was a cop out, but it was safe.
Then Olivia came along and safe went out the window.
I had a choice to make. I could either spend my life alone, sleeping with women for what they gave me physically, or I could listen to that voice inside me that had been whispering that same refrain since nearly the minute I’d met her.
She could be the one.
Kane sat in his office doing whatever the hell he did during the day. I tapped on the door, unable to contain my curiosity anymore. He looked up from his laptop and shot me a casual glance as he closed it.
“Stefan told me what Ciara Danson said.”
“Yeah, it turned out pretty much how I thought it would. I think the only reason she didn’t offer to fuck me right there in her cubicle was because Olivia was with me, though. That woman’s got desperate written all over her.”