Secret Pleasure

CHAPTER TWO (#udce100c3-b252-58fe-b0fd-5aebcd84969f)

JEE-ZUS.

Aidan Beckett took a long swallow of his beer.

He didn’t know how the fuck it had happened, but he was half-hard for the leggy blonde with the tiny butterfly tattooed on her ribs who’d just seduced him in a room full of people.

He’d never seen a burlesque show before. It was different from strippers. The women had a spark to them. No dead eyes and rote movements. There was joy on the stage. Cheekiness. Playfulness that made you feel like you and the performer were sharing some sort of inside joke, even if you couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

He’d been scanning the bar, half cursing his PI for sending him here on a wild-goose chase, half following the dance moves of some redhead in sparkly lingerie shimmying around and mugging prettily about diamonds being a girl’s best friend.

Then the audience had erupted in appreciative cheers, and he’d glanced at his watch as the emcee of the evening introduced the next performer.

That’s when she’d appeared.

Lola Mariposa.

There’d been something...electric about her, something that transcended the mile-long legs. The way she danced. Hell, the way she’d looked at him. Before they’d made eye contact, he would have sworn she didn’t even care that she had an audience. She looked like she had a secret she wasn’t about to share.

She might be dancing, like the performers before her. She might be saucily removing most of her clothes, like the performers before her. But unlike like the performers before her, there was something aloof about her, a definite “you should be so lucky” vibe, and he’d liked it.

But then, Aidan had always liked a challenge.

When their eyes had locked, something had pulsed between them.

Attraction.

Desire.

She’d ensnared him and she knew it. Reveled in it. It was one of the sexiest damn things he’d ever seen.

The kick of lust had caught him off guard. He’d been in a dark place lately. Too dark a place to put the effort into seducing someone. So he’d been making do, tiring himself out at the gym and in the boxing ring, and rubbing one out when the need arose. But for the first time in a long time, his hand seemed like a poor substitution for a down-and-dirty fuck.

The burlesque dancer had made him realize how much he’d missed sex—the give and take, the heat and friction, that release. She’d unwrapped her body and his libido at the same time.

He pushed away from the rough beam at his back and set his half-empty beer bottle on the tray of a passing waitress.

If it was any other night, he might have sought Lola out. Explored that pulse of want that had crackled between them. But tonight, he had business to attend to.

He’d come to the club looking for someone, but the minute he’d pulled his bike into the parking lot, he’d known the intel was shit.

Little Kaylee Jayne Whitfield, apple of her mother’s watchful eye, wouldn’t set foot in a burlesque club on the edge of downtown LA. But the PI he’d hired to track her down was the best, and he said he’d seen her car here on Friday nights for the last month.

No silver Audis had graced the parking lot when Aidan had arrived tonight. But his curiosity had him walking inside for Booze and Burlesque Friday anyway. He’d dropped Kaylee’s name, and a fifty-dollar bill, but the bartender hadn’t heard of her. A quick survey of the patronage hadn’t panned out any better.

He needed to have a word with his intel guy.

Aidan pulled his phone out of his leather jacket and headed for the side door of the club. Ignoring the Emergency Exit Only warning stuck to the door in peeling red letters, he pushed through into the parking lot, wedging one of his riding gloves between the door and the jamb. He’d go back in and do a final sweep of the club before he called it a night.

“What’s up, Aidan?”

“That’s what I want to know. You’re sure this is where you saw the car? Because it’s not the kind of place a Whitfield would normally frequent.”

He remembered a young Kaylee, her dark, shiny hair twisted in a bun, her mother forever dragging her to ballet class or violin lessons. This place was definitely not her style. Too seedy for matriarch Sylvia, not fucking seedy enough for patriarch Charles. There’d been a time when he could have talked Max out of his country-club ways and into a night of debauched fun at a place like this—but that felt like a lifetime ago.

Aidan shook off the inconvenient memory and focused on the phone call.

“I told you predictive stuff wasn’t a hundred percent. But yeah, it was her car. She’s been showing up at that address on Friday nights like clockwork.”

Aidan raked his fingers through his shaggy hair, shoving it back from his forehead. “I’ll do one more lap, but if I can’t find her, we’re going to need a plan B.”

“Well, she’s pretty consistent with her time at the gym, but I’m leaning toward the coffee shop. Her regular haunt starts construction on Monday, and with a coffee habit like hers, I think she’ll find a new place for her caffeine fix. I’m running numbers on her most likely deviation now.”

Damn. This was getting too complicated.

That’s exactly why plan A was for him to “accidentally” run into Kaylee tonight, play the “old friends” card, and hope his ongoing feud with her brother wouldn’t deter her from accepting his offer to take her to dinner tomorrow. From there, installing the malware on her phone and downloading a copy of the app should be easy. According to his sources, she was one of five people that Max had trusted to test the prototype version of SecurePay, the digital cryptocurrency app that was poised to take Whitfield Industries to the next level.

Actually, plan A had been to buy the damn SecurePay app legally and have his guys pull it apart to find the string of code he needed to prove Max had violated the exclusivity clause in his contract with John Beckett. Unfortunately, thanks to a security breach, the launch of Whitfield Industries’ flagship tech had been scrapped at the last minute. So now if Aidan wanted to gain the rights to his father’s legacy, he’d have to improvise.

“Let me know what you come up with.”

“Will do.”

He hung up and glanced over at his bike, pulling a hand down his face.

Jesus, he hated this covert bullshit.

You have a problem with someone, you tell them to their fucking face.

Like you’re doing right now? his conscience asked.

Aidan frowned.

He had no choice. Right now was when the stars had aligned.

Charles Whitfield had been indicted for blackmailing a key member of the SecurePay team, Emma something-or-other, and Aidan was damn sure it wasn’t the first time. Because five years ago, the same day he’d died, Aidan’s dad had signed away all rights to the code that represented the pinnacle of his life’s work, a move so out of character that coercion was the only explanation that made any sense.

No way in hell was he going to let Max rule from on high, poised to make billions by commandeering tech that existed only because of John Beckett’s genius. Besides, he thought darkly, there was a certain poetic justice to using the only Whitfield who meant anything to Max—the shy, studious girl who’d stared at Aidan with hearts in her eyes, the intense, focused woman who currently served as her brother’s PR consigliere—to take him down.

Yes. Kaylee was the nuclear option—the quickest, most brutal way to ruin Whitfield Industries the way Whitfield Industries had ruined his father.

And Aidan wasn’t in the mood to wait.

“Damn it.”

Kaylee pulled her hand from her bag to find it covered in liquid foundation. Her jeans were coated in beige, her white T-shirt splotched with it. So much for a fast getaway. She’d been hoping to change and sneak out as quickly as possible. Fooling Aidan from a distance was one thing, but she didn’t want to tempt fate by running into him again.

She laughed at herself as she flipped the light switch in the tiny backstage bathroom with her elbow. As if Aidan would be looking for her at all. Unlike her, he’d spent the majority of their youth completely unaware of her status as a member of the opposite sex. She stuck her makeupy hands beneath the tap, washing the mess from her skin.