Either way, with a sleepy smile, she laid her head back down on his chest. “Yes.”
Thirty
RYLANN SPENT MOST of the following day reviewing the ATF investigation reports in a new case she’d just picked up—eleven guys in a suburb selling illegal firearms out of a warehouse, yes, yes, very bad stuff—while secretly trying not to wonder where Kyle planned to take her that evening. He’d been very mysterious about his plans, which seemed to be his modus operandi, the only hint being when he’d asked if she could leave work at four thirty.
“Ooh…I bet he’s whisking you off on a private jet, taking you somewhere exotic and romantic,” Rae said over the phone early that afternoon.
Rylann was in her office, talking with the door shut while eating lunch. Naturally, she’d told Rae all about her big date.
For a brief moment, it struck Rylann how surreal it was that a private jet was even a possibility. Sure, she’d seen the penthouse and the two-thousand-dollar suits, but for the most part she didn’t think about Kyle’s money. Frankly, since they’d spent the majority of their time as a couple inside her apartment, the fact that he had millions of dollars, and would one day inherit a half-billion more, hadn’t mattered all that much.
But now that she was thinking about it…
Wow, that was a shitload of money.
“I’m guessing no on the private jet,” she told Rae. “Airplane travel requires security clearances and passenger lists. We’re going incognito on this.”
“Lists, schmists,” Rae said dismissively. “Rich guys do these things on the sly all the time. You think they fly coach on United with their mistresses?”
“Hey. Am I the mistress in this situation?”
“No, just the lucky bitch who has a hot billionaire heir whisking her off someplace secret tonight. Oh, wait—did I say that out loud again?” Rae chuckled. “So what are you wearing?”
That had been a particular challenge, seeing how a certain somebody had given her zero hints about where they were going. Rylann had decided to keep it simple. “A black wraparound dress and heels. If he takes me white-water rafting or cow wrangling, I’m screwed.”
Rae laughed. “Oh, please let it be the cow wrangling! I can just see you, riding horseback in your heels and twirling a rope over your head, while on your cell phone threatening to subpoena somebody.”
“If it’s the cow wrangling, this will be my first—and last—date with Kyle Rhodes.”
“Please. One flash of those dimples and I bet that man could talk you into just about anything.”
And the scary thing was, Rylann was beginning to suspect that might actually be true.
PER THE “INSTRUCTIONS” Rylann had received via text message earlier, at four thirty she walked out the revolving door of the Federal Building, briefcase over her shoulder, and began heading north.
Her cell phone rang just as she hit the first intersection. “Okay, Dimples,” she answered. “Now what?”
Kyle’s voice was whiskey-rich in her ear. “Walk two blocks to Monroe and turn left. There’s an alley behind Italian Village—you’ll see me there.”
“Whatever this is, you get bonus points for making it very cloak-and-daggerish,” she said, dodging a pothole in her heels as she crossed the street.
“Never met an ex-con in a strange alley before, Ms. Pierce?” he teased.
Indeed, she had not. After hanging up, Rylann walked the two blocks and then crossed the street. She spotted the restaurant, Italian Village, and headed to the alley. When she turned the corner, she slowed her step at the sight before her eyes.
An elegant black limousine waited for her.
A driver stood at the rear right-side door and nodded as she approached. “Good afternoon, miss.” He gallantly opened the door for her.
“Thank you.” Rylann bent her head and saw Kyle sitting inside, wearing jeans and a white button-down shirt casually rolled up around his forearms.
He gestured to the windows. “Tinted, for privacy. And you don’t need to worry about the driver; he’s worked with my family for years. So your secret is safe.” He held out his hand. “Shall we?”
With a smile, Rylann took his hand. She climbed in, slid across the seat, and set her briefcase on the floor by her feet. “Come on. Now can you tell me where we’re going?” She buckled her seat belt as the limo began to move.
Kyle stretched his long legs out in front of him. “I don’t know. I like keeping you guessing like this.”
“I hope I’m at least dressed okay.”
His eyes slowly traveled over her, taking in the V of her dress and her bare, crossed legs. “A helluva lot more than okay, counselor.”
Her body went warm from the look in his eyes. “No cow wrangling, then.”
The edges of his mouth twitched. “You? I’d pay a half-billion dollars to see that.” He put his hand on her knee, caressing her skin lightly with his fingers. “So about tonight…I’ve been wondering if this is one of those ideas that sounds better in my head than it is in actual execution. I hope you won’t be disappointed.”
“If that’s the case, I promise I’ll fake excitement so well you’ll never know the difference.”
“I appreciate that. Okay, here’s the deal: you probably don’t realize this, but exactly nine years ago on this very day, May 16, I spotted a certain dark-haired, sassy, first-year law student across a crowded bar. Seeing how it’s our anniversary, of sorts, I thought we should go back to the proverbial scene of the crime.”
It took Rylann a moment. “You’re taking me to Champaign?”
“Yep. I rented out the second floor of the Clybourne.” Kyle reached up and brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “I promised you a date when I left your apartment that night, Rylann.” His eyes held hers meaningfully. “I might be almost a decade late in delivering on that, but here we are. Finally.”
Tiny sentimental tears sprung to Rylann’s eyes.
And here he’d been worried that she’d be disappointed.
She smiled softly, then leaned forward to brush her lips over his. “It’s perfect.”
A LITTLE OVER two and a half hours later, the limo pulled to a stop in the alley behind the Clybourne. Kyle took out his cell phone and dialed. “We’re here,” he said when the voice on the other end answered.
He hung up and saw Rylann watching him with amusement.
“More with the cloak-and-dagger routine?”
“You wanted to stay off the radar.” Kyle pointed to the bar. “So here’s how this will work. Dex used to be the manager here, and knows the guy who’s now in charge. That guy is going to take us up the back employee staircase, and then we’ll have the whole second floor to ourselves.”
“It’s the last week of school—the upstairs bar would normally be packed. Do I even want to know what you had to do to arrange this?” she asked.
“Let’s just say that the manager and I came to an understanding.” Actually, he’d told the manager that he’d give him half the bar’s expected food and beverage sales for the night plus 20 percent, plus an extra five thousand bucks for setting up the place per his exact instructions. But she didn’t need to know that.
He saw the back door to the bar open, and a guy in his early twenties waved at the limo. Kyle looked at Rylann. “Ready to go back in time?”
She laced her fingers through his. “In case I forget to tell you later, this was the best first date I ever had.”
“Did anyone ever tell you that you can be really sweet when you want to be?”
“I try not to let too many people know about that. It cuts against the bad-ass prosecutor reputation.”
He tugged her hand and pulled her closer. “I’ve already seen the Bozo the Clown hair, counselor. We have no more secrets.” With a quick kiss, he pushed open the door of the limo and stepped out. After checking to confirm that the alley was empty, he helped Rylann out and led her to the bar’s back door.
The manager grinned as he shuffled them through, then exte
nded his hand to Kyle once they were inside. “Joe Kohler. I’ve been stoked about this all week. Frankly, I thought the whole Twitter thing was hysterical.” He shook Rylann’s hand next. “And the mystery lady.” He pointed to Kyle. “Whoever you are, you better treat this guy better than the last girl did.” He gestured toward the stairs behind them. “Follow me.”
Kyle shrugged when he saw Rylann’s bemused expression. “One of the high-fivers.” With his hand in hers, they followed Joe up the narrow staircase to the second floor.
“I brought in one of the waitresses to help me set up the place according to your instructions,” Joe told him. “Figured we could use a woman’s touch with this sort of thing.”
Rylann raised an eyebrow at Kyle as they got to the top of the stairs. “Instructions?”
Joe led them around a short corridor, into the main bar area. “Hope you like it.”
Kyle rounded the corner with Rylann, pleased when he saw they’d gotten it just right. White pillar candles—over a hundred of them—covered the tabletops and bar, casting the entire space in a warm, romantic glow. In the far back corner of the bar was a table covered with a white linen tablecloth, two crystal glasses, and an ice bucket that chilled a bottle of Perrier-Jouet Fleur de Champagne Rose—a recommendation from his sister, the wine expert.
With a stunned expression, Rylann took it all in. “This is…incredible.” She walked over to the table with the champagne, then looked over her shoulder at Kyle. “This is the table I was sitting at that night.”
Nodding, Kyle headed over. “I’d watched you for a while before making my move. There was a guy with red hair sitting across the table from you, and I was trying to decide if he was your boyfriend.”
Rylann smiled. “That was Shane. God, I haven’t spoken to him in years.” Her eyes swept over the place, the flickering candles having transformed the normally semi-seedy college bar into a romantic setting. She stepped closer and curled her fingers into his shirt. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Kyle brushed the hair out of her eyes. “Anytime, counselor.”
“I CHOSE POORLY,” Rylann said, eying Kyle’s plate from across the table. “I should’ve gone with the curly fries instead of the regular.”
“Yep, you should’ve.” Kyle picked up one curly fry and generously set it on her plate.
She looked offended. “One fry? That’s all I get?”
“You’ve got to live with the consequences of your decisions. How else are you going to learn?” He smiled and popped another curly fry into his mouth.
The Perrier-Jouet had begun to take effect, bringing a pretty flush to Rylann’s cheeks. While normally not a huge champagne drinker, even Kyle had to admit this one wasn’t half-bad. True, one probably didn’t often pair a three-hundred-dollar bottle of bubbly with cheeseburgers and French fries, but that was about as fine as the dining got at the Clybourne.
Kyle’s cell phone buzzed with a new message, and he checked to make sure it wasn’t Sean, the executive from Silicon Valley he’d hired to be his second in command at Rhodes Network Consulting. “Sorry. My business line has been flooded with calls ever since the Twitter announcement,” he said to Rylann. “Sean’s going through all the messages now. I told him to call me if there’s anything that can’t wait until tomorrow.”
She leaned in interestedly, reaching for her champagne glass. “So what’s the next step for you?”
“I set up meetings and begin pitching to potential clients. The two graduates I hired from U of I start work on Monday, and then we’ll be ready to rock and roll. After that, I cross my fingers and hope there are some people eager to get in bed with the Twitter Terrorist.” He flashed her a cheeky grin. “Metaphorically speaking.”
Rylann cocked her head inquisitively. “I’ve been curious about something. What was it that made you change your mind about the corporate world? Back when we first met, I remember you saying that you wanted to teach.”
It was a perfectly innocuous question. And Kyle knew he could answer it vaguely, the same way he’d answered that question many times before. But as he sat across from Rylann, one day away from the nine-year anniversary of his mother’s death, he thought maybe it was time to open up about that part of his life. He kept telling himself that he wanted all of Rylann—perhaps, then, he needed to let down a few of his own walls.
So he cleared his throat, trying to decide where to start. “My perspective on things changed after my mother died. It was a rough time for my family,” he began.
KYLE. THERE’S BEEN an accident.
For as long as he lived, he’d never forget those words.
He had known instantly from his father’s voice that it was serious. His grip had tightened around the phone. “What happened?”
“It’s your mother. A truck hit her car when she was coming home from a drama club rehearsal. They think the driver might have fallen asleep at the wheel—I don’t know, they haven’t told me much. They brought her into the emergency room thirty minutes ago, and she’s in surgery now.”
Kyle’s stomach dropped. Surgery. “But…Mom’s going to be okay, right?”
The silence that followed lasted an eternity.
“I’ve sent the jet to pick you up at Willard,” his father said, referring to the university’s airport. “A helicopter will meet you at O’Hare and take you directly to the hospital. They said we could use the heliport.”
Kyle’s voice was a whisper. “Dad.”
“It’s bad, son. I feel like I should be doing something, but they…they say there’s nothing…”
Shock began to set in at that very moment, when Kyle realized his father was crying.
The drive to the airport, the forty-minute flight to Chicago, and the helicopter ride to the hospital’s rooftop had all been a blur. Some hospital staff member—Kyle couldn’t have picked his face out of a lineup two minutes later—rushed him to a private waiting room in the trauma surgical unit. He’d burst through the door and found his father standing there with an ashen expression.
He shook his head. “I’m so sorry, son.”
Kyle took a step back. “No.”
A tiny, drained voice spoke out from behind the door. “I didn’t make it in time, either.”
Kyle turned and saw Jordan standing in the corner of the room. She had tears running down her cheeks.
“Jordo.” He grabbed her and pulled her into a tight embrace. “I just spoke to Mom yesterday,” he whispered against the top of his sister’s head. “I called her after my exam.” She’d been so damn proud of him.
His heart squeezed painfully tight as his eyes began to burn.
“Tell me this isn’t happening,” Jordan said against his chest.
There was a knock on the door, and a doctor dressed in blue surgical scrubs entered the room.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said in a somber tone. “I wanted to ask if you would like to see her.”
Jordan wiped her eyes, then turned around to face the doctor. Both she and Kyle looked expectantly at their father.
He said nothing.
“Some people find it comforting to say good-bye,” the doctor offered kindly.
Kyle watched as his father—a self-made mogul praised for his business acumen and decisiveness, whose face had been on the covers of Time and Newsweek and Forbes, a man whom Kyle had never once seen hesitate in any decision—faltered.
“I…don’t…” his father’s voice trailed off. He ran his hand over his face and took a deep breath.
Kyle put his hand on his father’s shoulder, then turned to the doctor with their answer.
“We’d like that. Thank you.”
Kyle quickly realized, right from those very first moments in the hospital, that his dad was having a hard time handling the many decisions that needed to be made with respect to his mother’s wake and funeral. To help alleviate that burden, he moved into his father’s house and took over most of the arrangements. It was a grim, emotionally draining time, and certainly no
t something he’d ever envisioned himself going through at the age of twenty-four—selecting readings and prayers for his mother’s funeral, and the outfit she would wear in the casket—but together, he and Jordan managed to do what needed to be done.
After the funeral, his original plan had been to stay at his dad’s place for another week or so, helping him sort through all the phone calls, sympathy cards, flowers, and e-mails that flowed in every day. Given the empire Grey Rhodes had built, there was an incredible outpouring of people who wanted to offer their condolences, and Kyle and Jordan did the best they could to keep up with all of it.
But when that first week passed, things still seemed no better. His father showed little interest in receiving visitors or speaking to friends and family on the phone, preferring instead to spend the days alone in his study or go for long walks around the estate grounds.
“Maybe he needs to talk to someone. A professional,” Kyle said to Jordan one night when they were sitting at their parents’ dining room table, picking halfheartedly at a lasagna someone had dropped off the day before. They could feed a small nation for a month with the number of casseroles, lasagnas, and baked macaroni and cheeses they had stacked in the refrigerator and freezer. No matter that their father could practically buy a small nation.
“I already tried suggesting that to him,” Jordan said. “He says he knows what’s wrong: that Mom’s dead.” Her eyes filled with tears, but she quickly shook them off.
Kyle squeezed her hand. “It’s just the grief talking, Jordo.” He had half a mind to march into his father’s study right then and tell him to pull his shit together for Jordan’s sake, but he doubted that would help. And he certainly understood his father’s pain; they were all struggling to make sense of their mother’s death.
He decided to stay in Chicago for another week. And then two weeks became three. There weren’t really any good days, just bad days and slightly better days. Eventually things progressed to a point where his father was willing to see friends and family, which Kyle assumed was a good sign. But his dad continued to show absolutely no interest in his company—and the business-related calls, voicemail messages, and e-mails began to pile up, all unanswered.