This is going to change everything.
“Careful,” Wanda tells him as she watches, anxious, waiting for him to return the chip to the special protective box she designed for it. “Use the tweezers!”
Ewan doesn’t dare laugh at her in case the puff of his breath blows the chip from his fingertip. The specialty tweezers lift the tiny piece of tech easily, and he slips it into the case. Closes it. Sets it on the table. Only then does he burst into a flurry of relieved chuckles that taper off at the sight of her frown.
“What’s so funny? This is big,” she tells him. “So big, Ewan, how can you be laughing?”
He wants to tell her it’s not because he finds humor in any of this, but because the giddy, relieved joy of holding in his hand, or rather on his fingertip, the results of so many years’ effort is making his head spin. Ewan puts both hands flat on the table, head bowed, while he tries to get himself under control. She could never understand. Wanda is a scientist, focused solely on her experiments. Even the greatest pleasure she takes in creating something that works never results in giggles. She’s one of the most serious people Ewan has ever met.
“This is going to change the world,” she says. “How can you be laughing?”
He wants to stop, but something in the way she looks at him has another surge of chuckles bursting out of him. Up his throat, out his mouth, they bark harsh and sharp. Almost painful. That’s when he realizes he is dreaming, that none of this is real, because he hasn’t spoken to Wanda Crosson since Gray Tuesday.
* * *
So this was a dream, and he didn’t want to be having it. Did not want to revisit the past and his first research partner, didn’t want to be reminded of how he’d failed her as he had managed to fail every other person in his life who’d ever counted on him for something.
He had to wake up.
The problem was, even when he was certain his eyes had opened, he could see nothing but darkness beyond even what was normal in his bedroom. He could hear nothing but a soft, cottony muffle. A weight on his body and face made him struggle to clear his way free. He should have been terrified, yet one thought remained.
Nina was there.
Nina would not let anything bad happen to him.
In the next moment, a firm hand on his shoulder helped him to sit. A gust of warm, sweet breath caressed his cheek. His lips. He was turning his head without thinking, finding that mouth with his own.
He kissed her, lips parting, tongue sweeping inside the sweet cavern of her mouth. Her fingers gripped the back of his neck. His hands reached and found her body. Curves. Muscle. Strength. He kissed her again.
That was when the real pain began.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ewan’s kiss overtook Nina harder and faster than any attack with fists or weapons ever had. It stunned her into inaction, only for a second or so, only for the time it took for her heart to beat a few times. To take a breath or two.
Then she pulled away to take his face in her hands and stare deeply into his eyes. With her mouth still wet from his kiss, she tried to tell him not to worry. Not to struggle. In the emergency lighting that had come on in the aftermath of the decibel bomb’s blast, he should have been able to see her clearly, but his gaze was clouded. He didn’t know what he was doing, that much was obvious.
This was not the time, not the place. Definitely not the man to be kissing her. Yet something in her could not resist brushing her lips over his once more before the security team swarmed in and hauled the attacker off the floor. It was Dima.
“Trust me, I’m here, you’re safe,” she said even though she knew Ewan couldn’t hear her.
He’d recovered a bit by that time, at least enough to shake off the hardest effects from the decibel bomb. He didn’t kiss her again, but why would he? Confusion in the aftermath of an attack like that was common. Expected, actually, since the fierce blast of noise and light often knocked people unconscious and also caused hallucinations.
He must have thought she was someone else.
She got him out of the bedroom, away from the broken glass and toppled furniture. In the anteroom he settled on the couch with his head in his hands while Nina made sure there was nothing else around that was going to harm him. The security staff had gone ahead and called his on-staff physician, who arrived disheveled and grouchy, like a disgruntled parent called yet one more time to the aid of a troublesome teen.
“Sorry I can’t get attacked in the middle of the afternoon when it’s more convenient,” Ewan said in a raspy voice at the doc’s complaints.
The doc, whose name Nina hadn’t learned because, typically, Ewan hadn’t introduced him, frowned. Heavy dark brows furrowed over his glinting black eyes. He stood, an immense mountain of a man who looked more like a wrestler than a medical professional. “How about you stop getting attacked at all? Isn’t that what she’s here to prevent?”
“She’s here to keep me safe. And she did. Again.” Ewan looked at Nina.
Maybe he had heard her, then. Maybe he remembered the kiss as truth and not imagination. An uncommon impulse to take his face in her hands swept over her, but she didn’t give in to it. They shared a long look that broke when Ewan, with a grimace, dropped his face into his hands.
Nina’s head hurt in the aftermath of the decibel bomb, but by the looks of it, Ewan was in way worse shape. He sat with his hands pressed to his temples while the doc checked him over.
“I can give you a painkiller,” the doc began, but Ewan waved him to silence and shot Nina a look.
“No. I’m fine. I don’t want to be impaired, in case something else happens.”
“You’re going to be impaired from the pain, if nothing else. A decibel bomb is nothing to joke about, Ewan. You’ve got several burst blood vessels in your eyes, and the ringing in your ears isn’t going to stop for a few hours, maybe longer.”
Ewan shook his head with another of those sharp glances at Nina. “I said no. I can handle a little headache.”
The doc sighed and muttered under his breath, something about why pay him if he wasn’t going to be allowed to do anything for the patient. Then he clapped Ewan on the shoulder hard enough to make him stagger from the weight of the grip and gave Nina a look. He hadn’t asked her if she wanted pain relief.
“My head hurts, too,” she offered mildly without looking at Ewan. “Decibel bombs are a bitch.”
The doc laughed. “Yeah, and I could give you something that would dissipate in your system so fast it wouldn’t be worth taking.”
She knew that, of course. Her body’s ability to metabolize incapacitating substances was meant to keep her safe from being drugged. Surgery was hell. Just because she had a high tolerance for pain didn’t mean she didn’t feel it at all.
Ewan waited until the doc left before he looked at her again. He still wore the low-slung pajama bottoms that he’d worn to bed. Bare chest and feet. Aside from the couple bright streaks of crimson, one threading through his left eye and two smaller ones in the right, there was no sign that anything had happened to him. Well, other than his rumpled hair and the scowl.
“I’ve known Dima for years,” he told her. “He’s an affable drunk who blows through money like water. And Vanslyke . . .”
Ewan trailed off, shaking his head. So far, there hadn’t been any connections between Dima and Vanslyke and any of the organizations that had so far been behind the attacks on him, but it was only a matter of time before something would turn up. Nina was sure of it. She’d broken both Dima’s arms, and he’d started squealing, spouting out names and dates that had meant nothing to her. He’d passed out before the security staff dragged him away, but they’d be getting more information out of him.
Ewan looked at her. “Vanslyke’s stupid attack was meant as a decoy, wasn’t it? To get everyone out of there, to distract us from Dima on the couch. He’s passed out and stayed over a dozen times in the past. I didn’t give it a second thought.”
Nina nodded slowly, after a second or s
o. “That seems like it makes sense.”
“Except it doesn’t make any sense.”
Ewan got up from the couch. He paced, running a hand through his thick, dark hair and pushing it impatiently out of his eyes when it tumbled over them. “Let’s talk about the fact that I have every single person who comes through these gates double-, triple-checked, then about a hundred times more, and let’s not fucking mention that the only way anyone gets through the front door is if they’re willing to sign their life away and risk losing everything they have for breaking any kind of confidentiality agreement, not to mention what would happen to them if they actually turn out to be in league with anyone who tried to get to me . . . All of them checked out. None of them had anything on them.”
“I searched your rooms when I first arrived for anything like the decibel bomb. The unit itself came in with the deliveries,” she added. “Rather, it must have been added to the pile after it arrived. Surely you have it all checked before it ever gets inside the gates.”
“Of course.” He twisted on one bare heel and kept pacing. “Obviously. “
“So the unit came in with the packages earlier in the day and was set to go off after everyone but Dima had gone. When it detonated, he came into the room.”
“To kill me?”
“He didn’t seem to be prepared to do a very good job of it,” Nina said. “It’s possible, maybe, that he was simply confused? Drunk? Passed out in the media room, heard the commotion, and came to see what was going on? Until you get some truth out of him, you can’t know for sure he’s connected to the League of Humanity or anyone else.”
“That makes the most sense, but it doesn’t feel right.” He frowned.
It didn’t feel right to her, either. “No. Until it can be proven that Dima wasn’t involved, I wouldn’t trust him or any of the others.”
“A decibel bomb isn’t meant to kill. Just distract or impair. Just like none of the attacks so far have been meant to really kill me. Just to warn.” He scowled and stalked the length of the room, one hand pressed to his temple. The headache must be excruciating. Hers was bordering on unbearable, and he didn’t have nearly the level of pain tolerance that she did.
She stood and stepped in front of him so he either had to move around her or stop the pacing, which like his fingers tapping on his chest and a myriad of other fidgety habits, was beginning to work on her nerves.
“Hey,” she said. “Come here.”
He would not, of course. Ewan Donahue would spit into the wind rather than do as she asked. With a lift of his chin, he crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her.
“What?”
“Come here,” Nina repeated gently. She didn’t touch him, didn’t try to grab him. They both knew she could force him to follow her to the straight-backed chair and make him sit in it. She didn’t want to do that.
She stood behind it, instead, and gestured at it. Waiting patiently. After a minute or so in which Ewan stared her down, she placed her hands gently on the back of the chair.
“Come here,” she said again. “Please.”
* * *
It was the “please” that got to him. Nina had never been rude to him, not even when she was teasing or being irreverent. The way she asked him to sit in front of her had him moving without a second thought to settle into the chair.
Her fingertips touched his temples. Then she stretched her pinkies a bit to press a couple of spots on his skull. It took a few seconds, but the ringing, stabbing ache in his head left over from the decibel bomb began to fade. Not entirely, but enough.
Ewan sighed. He’d felt the pain, but hadn’t realized how intense it truly was until there was some relief. He closed his eyes as the tension he’d been carrying in his neck and shoulders began to melt away under the steady, firm, but gentle pressure of her fingertips.
He’d kissed her.
What a jerk.
He could still remember the flavor of her lips and tongue on his, as fuzzy as it had been coming out of the dream he’d been having after the decibel bomb knocked him out. Nina would have had every right to deck him unconscious for kissing her, but instead she’d taken his face in her hands and looked him in the eyes as the agony rocked through him. He couldn’t hear what she’d said over the ringing in his head, but he could make out the words on her lips while her gaze had captured and held him, comforting. By the time the doc arrived, Ewan had extricated himself from Nina’s touch and managed to get himself fully conscious.
The decibel bomb wouldn’t have killed him, but Dima might have, if Nina hadn’t been there. She’d done her job in an exemplary fashion, above and beyond, as a matter of fact, because she hadn’t been hired to hold his hand after an attack like he was some kind of mewling infant. She wasn’t required to offer him the soothing touch she was giving him now, either.
He put a hand over one of hers to stop her. “That’s better. Thanks.”
“I can do a little more. It’s acupressure,” she said. “It will make the pain go away faster.”
“I’m fine.” He didn’t move, but she took her hands away. He regretted the loss of her touch at once but refused to show any signs of that. “Listen. About what happened.”
Her soft chuckle stirred the fine hairs at the nape of his neck. “Hmm?”
“Nina.” He twisted to face her. The sight of her small, tilting smile sent heat whispering along his nerves, and he shoved away the sensation with determination.
“Mr. Donahue,” she said, and although he wished she would call him by his first name again, he would not ask her to.
He’d meant the kiss, not the attack, but looking at her now, Ewan knew he wasn’t going to say anything about it. Nina had made it very clear that she had no compunctions about mixing sex and business, especially if she thought for some reason that it would protect him.
Trust me. I’m here. I’ll keep you safe.
All he could think about now was that Nina had believed allowing him to kiss her was related in some way to keeping him unharmed. He had to get things back on track. An apology for the kiss rose to his lips, but he bit it back without quite knowing why. Maybe because he wasn’t sorry about it. Maybe because saying it aloud would force them both to acknowledge it, and he wanted to pretend he hadn’t been such a colossal moron.
“I’d like your assessment of the situation,” Ewan said.
Nina’s expression smoothed from amusement to professional neutrality. “Of course. Clearly, your preventive security measures are not working. While all the breaches so far have been relatively minor, they still need to be taken seriously. I would say, actually, that it seems like they’ve been created more to threaten and scare you than truly cause you harm. Dima didn’t even have a weapon, which to me says he, or whoever sent him, knew that trespassing is a far less severe crime than attempted murder. However, just because none of the attacks in your home have been truly life-threatening, that doesn’t mean that the next one won’t be.”
“Rhen Maloris came at me with a shiv at a charity gala and ended up killing my bodyguard instead. The one before that, Emilie Henson, managed to get to me at a rally.” He paused, hating the memories. “That’s when I lost the second guard. I decided to go private for a while to make it harder for anyone to get to me, but also because I couldn’t keep going out to events and putting others in danger. I figured I’d stay home until things got quiet. Thought it would be easier. Safer.”
“And you hired me,” Nina said. “I can’t imagine that was an easy decision to make, all things considered.”
Ewan frowned. “You think it makes me a hypocrite.”
“I did, yeah. In the beginning. I didn’t care,” Nina added. “It’s a job, that’s all, and if I refused to take jobs because I was being hired by people who spoke out of both sides of their mouths, I wouldn’t get very much work, would I?”
“But not anymore?”
“Not anymore,” she told him.
“We’re never going to agree on the Enhanc
ement Repeal Act,” he said.
Her smile was a little sad. “We don’t have to agree on it, Ewan.”
She was right. That didn’t make him feel better. If anything, it stabbed an unfamiliar sensation deep into his guts. Guilt. Remorse. Regret. No wonder she wasn’t interested in going to bed with him.
“I don’t know why you feel so adamant about it, but I can tell you’re acting from the heart,” Nina said before he could answer her. “I can respect that. Envy it, as you might imagine. I hope you can respect my reasons for thinking you’re wrong. The difference is that while I will be more than happy to testify against you and donate to your opposition in the hopes that somehow, someway, that act can be overturned, I promise I will never try to kill you.”
He laughed, hard. Shaking his head, Ewan ran a hand through his hair to push it out of his eyes and looked at her. “For which I shall be eternally grateful. Because if anyone could manage to do it, you could.”
He’d meant it lightly, but the look on her face said the joke had gone sour. Nina pressed her lips together and cut her gaze from his. It seemed natural enough in that moment to step forward, to reach for her. He snagged her wrist, taking her hand in his. He wanted to link their fingers together and squeeze, but at the last moment he turned it into a standard handshake.
“Deal?” he asked, searching her gaze with his.
“Of course.”
It was the perfect moment to tell her exactly why he’d gone so far out of his way to lobby for the Enhancement Repeal Act. All of his personal reasons. It would not have been a short conversation, though, and his head still ached from the decibel bomb. More than that, it would have meant revealing truths to her that Ewan had worked tirelessly and with great personal sacrifice to keep hidden. Nina had asked him to trust her with his life, and he did, but he could not yet manage to trust her with his past.
Enough lives had been lost because he’d become a target.