Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Adrien
“No photographs.”
She says it like an accusation, eyes scanning my office as if she’s judging the man through his décor.
“But the room does look like you.”
“You mean dark and moody? My sister calls this my ‘brooding billionaire lair.’”
“I didn’t choose those words,” but I take the twitch of her lips to mean she’s humored by my comment. “Is that an original Clyfford Still?”
She knows her art. Of course she does.
“I have a few of his pieces.” Only one is displayed prominently in the office, a darker abstract that flavored the mood and prevented the deep green walls from slipping into smoking-jacket cliché. “Most people see chaos. What do you see?”
“It’s never about what I see—it’s about what I feel.” Her answer shows she’s studied art.
“And what do you feel?” I ask, though what I really want to know is who she is. How much of that weekend was truth and how much was cover?
“Craven need.” Her lips purse, her eyelids lower. “Vulnerability.” For an instant, honesty flickers—then defense. Shoulders squared, chin lifted. “Did I pass?”
“There’s no test. I only want to get to know you.” More than I should. “Do you have an office?” As I ask the question, I attempt to envision her space.
“Not like this.” The tips of her fingers drag along the felt lining of the billiard table as she walks, her gaze fixated on the bookshelves lining a back wall.
I’d gutted three offices to make this one—a hybrid of library and study. “Brighter? Airier?”
“It’s in my home,” she says, “and it doubles as a guest room when needed. And I definitely don’t have a Clyfford Still hanging on my walls.”
“When you told me you worked at an art gallery…was any of that true?”
“I imagine you already know the answer.”
“I went to that gallery. They’d never heard of a Sophie Dubois.”
“You visited the one in London?”
I don’t answer. My question said enough. I’d spent six months and a small fortune chasing her ghost. My family called it obsession. They weren’t wrong.
She wasn’t in any database, never passed through customs in any country.
But still, I traveled to the places she named, showing photographs, conducting much of the search myself to rely on instinct, hoping to sense fear or reluctance.
Blank stares, annoyance at an absorption of time, that’s about all I uncovered.
“The Dubois identity was sculpted by my employer. But I was only supposed to use that alias for one event. I imagine my handler didn’t expect it to matter if someone visited a gallery in another country and discovered I hadn’t worked there.”
“Or called?”
“If you’d called that day, let’s hope the person answering the phone would have confirmed my employment.
But truly, they weren’t expecting anyone to call.
The alias was a party girl. If for some reason my employment cover was questioned, I could’ve played it off as a lie to pretend employment, to weasel my way into the art circles. ”
“And why were you interested in art?”
“You mean my employers?”
I nod, letting my hands drop into my trouser pockets to fight the urge to step closer and touch her, to pull her to me.
“Money laundering,” she says, her tone stripped of apology. “Art was just the vehicle.”
For a moment, something like regret shadows her expression before the mask resets. “We were tracking weapons dealers who used gallery sales to move dirty money. And we weren’t interested in stopping it; we just wanted the intel.”
Disdain echoes in her tone.
“Is that why you’re no longer with the CIA?” Her long lashes flutter, her blue eyes zeroing in on me, and I lift a shoulder nonchalantly. “You already told me, it was CIA. There’s no surveillance in here.”
With that one word, her interest in my surroundings is shut down, and her expression transforms into what one can only describe as business.
“My status as a former CIA officer isn’t a secret.” She leaves the billiard table behind, and I watch closely as her long legs carry her across the office to my desk. “You have blueprints?”
“I do, but not in a file cabinet.”
“If they’re electronic I didn’t need to come here.”
I stride past her to the art hanging behind my desk, push a button behind the credenza, and the framed image raises, revealing a safe.
“You keep the blueprints in a safe?”
“Only because they didn’t fit in the filing cabinet, and it seemed like the kind of thing I should save. There are handwritten notes on the edges from the architect and it’s easiest to read on the paper.”
She steps closer for a better view, but she steps into my space, and I breathe in the subtle hints of saffron and jasmine that I remember from her body wash, a brand I acquired because it stayed with me, long after I’d given up on finding the mysterious golden beauty.
I used to wonder if time would dull the longing.
It didn’t. It hits me again—the same pull, sharp and inevitable.
Stronger, because now I know she’s real, not just a perfect memory I chased.
The urge to thread my fingers through her hair, to angle her head, to taste her lips.
..and the way those blue eyes gaze up at me, pupils dilated, her breath catching—she feels it too.
Her throat works on a swallow. Not nerves—want.
She’d rather die than let me see it, but I do. I could close the distance. I don’t.
Because I remember the way she went still when I implied familiarity. Whatever this is between us, she needs to choose it.
The space between us charges with years of wondering, of wanting, of—
A shrill ringtone ricochets through the room. Air I hadn’t realized I’d been refusing fills my lungs and her gaze drops to the ground, then to the safe.
The ringtone continues, a harsh, cut-through-anything ringtone I selected to ensure I’d hear it no matter where I was or what I happened to be doing.
Reluctance and annoyance coil together as I answer, noting Alicia Morgan’s name.
“Alicia,” I answer.
“Adrien, can you talk?” She doesn’t mean do I have time, she means can I talk without being overheard.
“You’ve got me. Go.”
“I have confirmation Senator Crawford isn’t the only person who received a threat in the last two weeks.
The threat over this second Congressman has nothing to do with The Sanctuary.
Given the nature of this second threat, I believe what we’re looking at is an individual or group who have a list of senators they aim to influence, and they’ve hired someone to dig up what they can. ”
This is marginally better news. The worst situation would have been an employee using security footage as extortion material over any member susceptible to a bribe.
“So what you’re saying is you believe this person or group struck up a one-off deal with one of my employees, maybe someone caught at a weak moment, unexpected expenses—”
“I didn’t go that far.”
“But it’s unlikely this is an ongoing thing,” I say, wanting her to confirm my positive interpretation of this development.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
That’s a frustrating response.
Brie steps closer, full of questions.
“Anything else?” I presume Alicia isn’t going to share any details from her other client’s case, and she confirms my assumption when she responds with, “Nothing else. Have you made any headway on your end?”
“No. The KOAN team is here today to set up surveillance. If this is an ongoing endeavor, we’ll observe something. If it was a one-off…” I let the implication hang. If the employee sold out a member once and never does it again, I’m not sure how we’ll catch him.
“Keep me posted,” Alicia says, and the line goes dead.
I set the phone on my desk and turn back to Brie, who’s watching me with that focused intensity that reminds me she’s not just beautiful—she’s determined.
“Bad news?” she asks.
“Complicated news. There’s at least one other politician being targeted, but not through my club.” I retrieve the blueprints from the safe, spreading them across my desk. “Which means we likely have a rogue employee selling secrets, and someone out there is running a broader operation.”
She leans over the blueprints, her golden strands falling like a curtain as she studies the layout. I force myself to focus on the documents instead of the elegant line of her neck, or the way her slender fingers trace the club’s floor plan with practiced precision.
“Your security is more extensive than most hotels,” she observes. “Cameras here, here, and here.” She points to locations marked on the blueprint. “But there are blind spots.”
“Intentional ones. Members pay for privacy.”
“Yet someone exploited them.” She straightens, and I catch another hint of her scent—tempting, familiar. “I’ll need to see these areas in person. The service corridors, the private rooms, anywhere an employee might access member spaces without being observed.”
“I can give you a tour now, if you’d like.”
Something shifts in her expression—a flash of what might be anticipation, quickly masked by professional composure. “That would be helpful.”
When I look up, she’s closer than before, close enough that I can see the faint golden flecks in her blue eyes.
“Adrien,” she says, and my name on her lips sends fevered need straight through me. “Before we go downstairs...What happened before—”
“Was the most real thing that’s happened to me in years,” I finish, unable to stop myself from stepping closer. “A day hasn’t gone by since that weekend that you didn’t cross my thoughts, that something didn’t make me think of you. A scent. A color. Lace. Silk.”
Her expression softens, and for a moment, I glimpse the woman from my memories, the one who laughed at my terrible Italian and traced lazy patterns and let loose freely.
“This complicates things,” she whispers.
“Everything that matters leaves a mark.”
“It’s not a good idea.”
I’m close enough now to touch her, to cup her face in my hands the way I’ve dreamed. Her eyes flutter closed, and I lean down, drawn by gravity and desire and the impossible fact that she’s here, real, within reach—
Her phone buzzes against the desk where she set it down.
The sound breaks the spell. She steps back quickly, professional demeanor snapping back into place like armor.
“We should start that tour,” she says, her voice that of the consummate professional.
I nod, though it’s the last thing I want. No, I want to finish what we started. I want her against my desk—close enough to prove to my body this isn’t a hallucination. I want to discover if her body remembers what mine can’t forget. Instead, I gesture toward the door.
“After you.”
As she moves past me, I catch her hand briefly, just long enough to feel the slight tremor in her fingers.
“Brie,” I say quietly. “Whatever this is between us…it’s still quite present.”
She looks back at me, and for just a moment, allows her shield to drop.
“I know,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean we should give in to it. We have a job to do.”