Page 17 of Wilde Secrets

He nodded for her to continue.

“Well, he’s not really my friend,” her eyes darted away as she made the admission, her hands playing with the hem of her sweater. There was a brief flash of smooth white stomach.

He blinked, willing the image out of his mind and dragging his eyes back to her face. Now they weren’t in the dim light of his truck, he could see her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed, like she had been crying. There were dark circles underneath her eyes, and she swayed on her feet.

Despite how obviously exhausted she was, he got the impression she needed to get something off her chest. Logan waited. In his experience, most folks rushed the talking and missed important things. She’d say what she needed to in her own time.

“He—King—is my sister’s bodyguard,” she said.

Logan blinked. Not much surprised him, but that did.

He’d spent a lifetime watching and listening, and often knew what others would do before they’d even realized it themselves. A fact that had annoyed the hell out of his little sister, Cassie, when he’d stopped her from climbing out her bedroom window at night on more than one occasion as a teenager.

The only people who had bodyguards were those who could afford them, which really wasn’t that many people. He’d known a few people who had bodyguards, but that was in another life. That was before. What was so risky to her—and her family—that they needed to hire a bodyguard?

What was Harper running from?

“Your sister has a bodyguard.” He stated bluntly, crossing his arms.

“Yes.” She looked down, twisting her fingers in the fabric of her sweater.

He knew Mason had friends from the Marines, and he vaguely remembered a few of them worked in private security. But Harper had a sister who needed a bodyguard?

“Are you in some kind of danger?”

Logan quickly ran through what he knew of her. She was frightened, but not of him. She had been sent to a stranger to stay at short notice by her sister’s bodyguard who had served with his brother Mason in the Marines. She had to come without Mason knowing, because if he had known he would have made arrangements for her arrival.

So she had to be in some kind of trouble. Because why else would she have been sent to Mason?

“No. I don’t know. Probably not. I hope not.” She paled as she spoke, and he regretted asking the question. “My sister is Isla Holden.”

Logan might be something of a loner, but even he knew who Isla Holden was.

“Ok.” So, his house guest was the sister of one of the world’s most popular singers.

Cassidy was going to go nuts. She was one of Isla’s biggest fans.

“And I think I just ruined her career.”

ChapterEight

Harper

And there it was—the look she always got when people realized who Harper was related to. She pushed down the familiar sting of disappointment. What had she expected? That this man, who rescued her in a storm, really was her knight in shining armor?

She knew better. Life wasn’t a fairy tale. Nobody got to live happily ever after—just look at her parents.

Her dad never got over her mother’s death, throwing himself into managing Isla’s career with single-minded focus bordering on obsession, purely because their mother had wanted to see Isla succeed.

Harper had been fourteen, and Isla sixteen, the year Isla won the biggest TV talent show in the country, rocketing her to stardom.

Stardom on the wings of Harper’s songs.

“How did you ruin her career?” Logan asked, jerking her from her thoughts.

“If I tell you, you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

He narrowed his eyes. “It depends on what you’re telling me. Did you kill someone?”

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