Free Waiting For Wren (Book Five In The Bodyguards Of L.A. County Series) by Cate Beauman Page A

wanted to know why I wouldn’t call him back. I told him to stop and that I was calling the cops. He started laughing.” She shuddered. “His laugh was more scary than the cat and the flowers and the dark. He said they weren’t going to believe me.” Her voice broke, and she covered her face with her hands.
    Enough was enough. He scooted over and wrapped her in a hug. “It’s over now. You’re safe. You’re safe here with me.” To his surprise, she leaned against him and rested her head on his shoulder.
    “Why is he doing this?”
    He breathed in the bold scent of her soft hair as strands of wavy black tickled his cheek. “I don’t know.”
    “Maybe he’s paying me back for damaging his pride when I hurt him.”
    “Cooke, you’re sexy as hell, but there’s typically more to something like this than a bruised ego.” He rubbed his hand up and down the sleeve of her arm. “Not always, but usually. Rex is the Junior VP of one of the richest companies in the world. He’ll find another date.”
    “No.” She pulled back. “I really hurt him. I knocked the wind out of him and kicked him in the balls.”
    He stared at her, shocked and speechless. She was no taller than five-three and weighed one-ten if she was lucky.
    “He didn’t understand ‘no,’” she continued, “so, I helped him out.”
    “Good for you, Cooke. Sounds like he’s a first-class pig.” Maybe Rex did have his hand in this. Wren had humiliated him, and he was paying her back by terrorizing her. The tactics seemed petty and out of character for the man he’d met on more than one occasion, but it was definitely worth looking into. “I’m going to phone this in.”
    “Whatever you think we should do.”

    The police came with their badges and barrage of questions and left two hours later. Tucker’s murmurs mixed with the cops on the other side of his front door, while Wren rested her head on the arm of the surprisingly comfortable leather couch. Her skull throbbed and her stomach twisted with nerves and outright fear. The detective took her statement and asked what he needed to ask, but Rex had been right. They didn’t believe her, even after the officer flipped through several saved texts and the picture of blue roses placed at her door.
    The officers were heading over to her house to make a copy of Rex’s initial voice mail, which she hadn’t erased, and to photograph the dead cat. Detective Owens sent someone to Patrick’s for a statement regarding the flower delivery. The detective told Tucker he and his partner would stop by Rex’s and ask him some questions, but an investigation was unlikely to go much further. His lawyers were top-notch, and at this point nothing Wren had showed them was a direct link back to Vera Corporation’s VP. In short, the good ol’ boy network was alive and well.
    Wren pressed her fingers to the throb in her temples and sighed. Now that the police were on their way out, she could try to put this away for the night. Tucker had insisted she stay there minutes before the officers arrived, and she hadn’t been stupid enough to refuse. She glanced around at the stark white walls, wretched orange curtains, and enormous flat screen filling up most of the wall. Despite Tucker’s butt ugly living space she felt safe here.
    The door opened and she shot up, still on edge.
    “Relax, Cooke. It’s just me.”
    Her heart settled as Tucker twisted the lock. “They don’t think Rex is doing this.”
    “They’re looking into it.”
    “So they say.”
    “I worked with Owens for years. He said he’s going to look into the situation, so he will.”
    She held his gaze. “Obligatory glimpse maybe. He was ready to close the book on this before he even turned a page.”
    “Give him a chance. He’ll give this more than a glance, because it’s the right thing to do, and because I’ve asked him to.”
    “You’re not one of them anymore.”
    “I was for seven years. Loyalty goes a little deeper than that.