Luke must have thought I was broken if he thought I needed to be hugged so often. That’s when I realized he really didn’t know why I had shown up at his office yesterday morning. He didn’t know about the $250,000 lump sum plus stock options NeoSys offered Janice to retire. Luke didn’t know that while he was trying to put me back together I was trying to demolish him.
“I’m meeting with Imitex today to discuss Blaze,” he said, pulling me out of my pit of self-loathing. “I can’t have you sit in today. I have to wait until the full results of your background check come in. You understand, right?”
My hand jerked involuntarily and I squeezed his hand as if it were a ship’s wheel in a storm. He didn’t know why I was there because he hadn’t done a full background check on me. Well, if he didn’t know before, he would know soon. This meeting with Imitex might be my last opportunity to gather intelligence. My last opportunity to show Luke that I wasn’t the broken girl he thought I was.
“You do understand, don’t you?” He repeated his question as he turned onto the off-ramp in Newport.
Then it hit me. The hurt unraveling in my chest, strangling my words. Even after what we had just done in my bedroom, he still didn’t trust me. It was stupid and irrational, especially since he had every reason not to give me his trust. But it still hurt. And it hurt because I cared.
This was bad. I would have to pull myself off this assignment as soon as we got back to Seattle.
“Of course, I understand,” I replied, smiling as I gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. I understand that I have just blown my chance at a promotion. I understand that my parents will have to continue to scrape by on the meager sum I send them every month. I understand that you will soon find out who I truly am and you will hate me. I totally understand.
“Good,” he said, letting go of my hand as he pulled into the parking lot at Imitex headquarters. “Because I was just testing you.”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t bring you all the way out here to wait for me in the lobby. I want you in the meeting with me. This is a huge project and you need to know everything if you’re going to be part of the team.”
He rolled the car into a parking space and killed the engine.
“So… you did do the background check?”
“More thorough than the background check I just did on you an hour ago, if you can believe that.”
Not thorough enough.
I closed my eyes and swallowed the bile in my throat as I prepared to speak the most painful words I had spoken in seven months. “I don’t talk about my brother to anyone,” I began. “I don’t like people pitying me. I don’t like the looks they give me when they find out I’m the one who found his body in the back of the VA hospital after he jumped off the roof. My brother had just been cleared by the mental health staff for another tour, but he was far from clear. I drove him to that appointment because he hadn’t had a chance to renew his driver’s license while serving his first tour. I took him there.”
“You know it’s not your fault,” he said, his voice soft and reassuring as he reached for my hand again, but I pulled my hand away.
“I know that. I’m not irrational. But that doesn’t change the fact that I drove him there. It’s just a fact and now my brother is just a statistic. And every time memories of him crop up, I push them aside. I want to forget him.” I paused to take a deep breath as my head and throat began to ache with a cocktail of grief and guilt. “I can’t go in there with you today. I’m not in the right state of mind. I’m sorry.”
I can’t betray you the way I’ve betrayed my brother.
Luke’s silence made me uneasy. He probably thought I was a horrible person for trying to forget my brother. At least now I could go back to Seattle and turn in my resignation at both jobs. Maybe I should just move to Mexico and forget everyone. It’s not like anyone would hire me after this.
“I’m not letting you give up. You’re going in there with me,” he said. “You don’t have to talk; just listen. And that’s not a request. This is an order, from your boss.”
He exited the car and I followed reluctantly. This was my chance to help my parents out of the cloud of poverty and depression that had followed them since my brother’s death. This was the moment I had been working toward for the past two years. Luke was everything I had ever wished for in a man.
Be careful what you wish for, it just might turn you into a selfish bitch.
PART TWO: MEMORY
1
I reached into the bare refrigerator and pulled out a carton of milk. I checked the expiration date and my heart sank.
“Jesus Christ, Mom. This milk expired three weeks ago.”
The refrigerator exhaled a breath that reeked of rotten broccoli as I slammed the door.
“It’s fine,” my mother replied, taking the carton from my hand and making her way to the sink. “So long as it’s not curdled, it’s perfectly fine to drink. See.”
She poured out the milk and it plopped into the drain, slithering down in sluggish chunks.
“Where’s all the food? What happened to the check I sent you three weeks ago?”
My mother shook out the rest of the milk without looking at me. “It ran out. Your father had a colonoscopy and some blood work done. The co-payments and deductibles are getting out of hand.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” I snatched the empty carton of milk out of her hand, annoyed with my mother though I knew it wasn’t her fault. It was my father and his stupid pride.
I tossed the carton into the trash bin and leaned against the kitchen counter, being careful not to look at the refrigerator where my mother still displayed a baby picture of Ryan in a magnetized frame. Instead, I glared through the window to the backyard where my father was mowing the lawn.
“Brina, I have to tell you something.”
“Look at you. You’ve lost weight. You can’t keep living like this. To hell with his fucking pride.”
“Watch your mouth.”
I pushed off the counter, set to storm out of the house I’d grown up in; the house that was now so haunted with memories I only visited once a month to deliver a check. He was everywhere. I couldn’t hang my coat in the closet without smelling his leather boots. I couldn’t sit on the sofa without seeing the cigarette burn where he passed out drunk on his first night back from Afghanistan. I couldn’t even go to the bathroom without remembering the time my cousin dared him to drink a glass of toilet water. And he did it for no reward other than the gut-clenching laughter that ensued.
I shivered at the thought of this memory then pulled my checkbook out of my purse and began writing a check for a thousand dollars. Though I had yet to get my first paycheck from Maxwell Computers, if the salary Luke promised was real, I would make this thousand back soon. In the meantime, I’d take lunch to work and eat breakfast in the company cafeteria.
“You can’t afford that,” my mother said, as I held the check out to her.
The back door swung open and my father entered the kitchen. My father liked to call himself Bruce Springsteen’s redheaded brother from another mother. Though reddish-gray would be a more accurate description of his hair color these days. When I was young, I was glad I had inherited my mother’s brown hair, but nowadays I often considered dyeing my hair red. Maybe a big outer change would jolt me into some kind of inner change; a cosmic realization that my life had veered horribly off course since Ryan’s death.
“Hey, pumpkin. What brings you here?”
“Just a quick visit. I’m on my way to a meeting and I figured I’d stop by to say hello since I was in the neighborhood.”
My father glanced at the check I was about to hand to my mother and his smile disappeared. “Put that away. We don’t need it.”
“Mom told me about the doctor’s visits. This is nothing, really. I have a big bonus check coming in a few days.”
He gave my mother “the look” as he made his way to the sink to wash his hands, but it wasn’t just
anger in his eyes; he was trying to communicate something to her. She looked away, as if “the look” didn’t have the power to penetrate the thickest of skulls. My father never hit us. He didn’t have to. He had “the look.”
“I have to get going,” I said to my mother, as I dropped the check on the table and rushed out of the kitchen.
The pictures of Ryan on the mantel were a blur at the edge of my vision as I raced outside. By the time I sat in Luke’s car, I was shaking.
“Drive,” I demanded. “Please, just go.”
He pulled away from my parents’ curb and headed toward the outskirts where he was taking me for “the best espresso in Seattle.”
I had worked as executive assistant to Luke Maxwell, CEO of the largest computer company in America, for all of three days, and I had yet to find a single negative quality in the man that would justify what I was planning to do to him sometime in the next few weeks. Luke’s biggest software competitor, NeoSys, had hired me to steal the password for the mirror network used by Maxwell Computers. The mirror network housed the entire code for their latest invention: Blaze. If Luke knew why I had walked into his office for an interview three days ago, he was doing a very good job pretending to be clueless. Thus far, none of the meetings he had invited me into had given me any clue about what Blaze actually was. The engineers and programmers spoke in a code I didn’t understand. I had no doubt this was by design. I also had no doubt this would be my hardest assignment to date.
“I can take you to Greene’s another time if you’re not feeling up to it,” he said, as he pulled onto the main road.
“I’m fine. I just hate—” I stopped myself before I could say it. I love my parents, but I hate that house.
“You hate what?”
“Nothing.”
He shook his head as he leaned forward to put on some music. “Locked up tighter than Fort Knox.”
“How much do I owe you for that astute psychoanalysis, Dr. Phil?”
“You owe me a shot of espresso and a date.”
“Sugared dates?”
“You know what kind of date I’m talking about.”
A chill ran through me as I realized there was probably nothing I wanted more than a date with Luke Maxwell, and nothing more dangerous to my mission than becoming emotionally attached. I couldn’t allow him to court me, but he was a difficult man to resist.
“How about I buy you a double espresso and we call it even?”
He laughed a hearty, sexy laugh that made my skin tingle. “How about I buy the espresso and you help me set up a few things on my boat. I’m having a party tonight for the programmers who worked their ass off on Blaze.”
“Do you need me to call anyone? A caterer, possibly?”
“Janice took care of everything before she left yesterday.”
He reached across and put his hand on my thigh as he pulled into the parking lot of Greene’s Coffee and Tea. He squeezed my leg once and I had to stop myself from sliding his hand higher.
“Of course, I’ll help you set up for the party. That’s my job, isn’t it?”
He shook his head at my unconvincing attempt at indifference. “Come on. I’m about to show you a whole new world.”
“Is it shining, shimmering, and splendid?”
He leaned across the console and kissed me so suddenly it took my breath away. His hand cradled my face as he kissed me slowly; the kind of kiss that made me feel as if I were fading in and out of consciousness. He pulled away and placed a soft kiss on the corner of my mouth. I pressed my mouth into a hard line to keep myself from licking my lips, to taste him, but I couldn’t stop a smile from forming.
“You’ll crack,” he said before he exited the car.
My smile disappeared as reality crept in again. I couldn’t crack. If I cracked, my parents would break. That was not an option.
2
I walked a couple of steps behind him so I could stare at his perfect ass. He opened the door for me, but I looked away too late and he caught me ogling him.
“What are you staring at?” he asked, as a sweet, coffee-scented breeze hit me in the face.
“Why do you get to wear a suit to the office and the rest of us have to wear this?” I asked, yanking the bottom of my plain fitted T-shirt. “I like to dress nice, too.”
He put his hand on the small of my back and guided me toward the cash register. “I’m not wearing a suit.”
“You’re wearing everything but the jacket.”
“I dress like this because I meet with clients and investors all day long, but I want my clients to know that I don’t expect my employees to dress uncomfortably or to spend outrageous sums on business attire for my benefit. It’s important to me that my employees are happy. Casual dress makes them happy. Satisfied?”
“Wow…. You really are so…..”
“So what?”
Thankfully, we reached the counter before I could finish that thought. The woman behind the counter looked about my age, just a bit too tanned, but her eyes lit up when she saw Luke. He smiled at her as he removed his hand from my back.
“Hi, Lany. This is Brina.”
Lany flashed me a curt smile before she resumed batting her eyelashes at Luke. I wondered if they had ever slept together. Imagining this brought forth an ugly roar of jealousy inside me; a raging desire to claim him as my own.
“We’ll both have a double espresso and some of those coconut ladyfingers. How’s your mom doing? I heard Kay was in the hospital.”
Lany took Luke’s credit card, making a point to brush the back of his hand with her fingertips. “She’s doing okay. She had knee surgery, so they’re just waiting for the incision to heal before they start physical therapy. I’ll tell her you asked about her. It’ll make her day.”
Luke took his card back and I couldn’t help but notice every customer and employee in the place staring at us as he led me to an empty sofa at the back of the café. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the sofa was on permanent reserve for him; the perks of being a gorgeous and dangerously charming billionaire.
“Don’t worry about them,” he said, as he took a seat and patted the cushion next to him. “They’ve just never seen me here with anyone as beautiful as you.”
“How many women have you been here with?” As soon as the words came out of my mouth I regretted speaking them. I was supposed to be keeping this light. Talking about past relationships was not light coffee banter. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer that.”
“Okay. I won’t.” He smiled at me and that jealous seed that had taken root earlier began to grow again. His smile widened. He knew exactly what he was doing to me. “You’re the first woman I’ve ever brought here.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that because…?”
“Because they’re staring at you like you’re an alien, and you are.”
“Best compliment I’ve ever received from a man.”
“Well, to them you are. This is a pretty tight-knit little group. You’ll like it.”
He grabbed my hand and laced his fingers through mine just as Lany strolled toward us with our espressos. She set the tiny cups and saucers on the shabby coffee table in front of us and scowled at me before she turned on her heel and strutted away.
“Thanks, Lany,” Luke called out, to which she held up her hand and kept walking. He didn’t bother mentioning that she had forgotten our ladyfingers.
My stomach flipped as I realized I really was the first girl he’d ever brought in here. I’d bet anything Lany thought she had a chance with Luke until today.
Luke was a private person. The tabloid magazines had photographed him with women only a handful of times over the last few years, but no one ever seemed to get the details on those relationships. His relationships with women were either so brief or so secretive, they had successfully flown under the radar for years. Why then was he bringing me here to his personal Cheers, where everybody knew his name?
He leaned toward me and placed hi
s lips right next to my ear. “Drink your espresso before it gets cold. I’m dying to get you on my boat so I can rip that stupid T-shirt off of you.”
I shoved him away. “The stupid T-shirt you made me wear. You T-shirt Nazi.”
He laughed so hard I couldn’t help but join in the laughter and soon my limbs were too weak to push him away as he leaned over and kissed my cheekbone.
“I love your T-shirt.”
A deep sigh formed inside my chest and I exhaled slowly, trying to keep myself from making out with him right there. I gulped down the bitter espresso like a tequila shot to keep my mouth busy and he shook his head.
“Next time I bring you here you’re going to sip it and savor it, slowly, tasting every drop.”
Oh, God.
“Can we leave now?”
“Ready to leave so soon? Are we not entertaining enough for you?”
“Really, Luke? You can’t think of anything more entertaining you’d like to do right now than sipping coffee with a bunch of people staring at you?”
He smiled as he studied my face. “There are a thousand other things I find more entertaining, and 999 of them include you.”
“So?”
He picked up his shot of espresso and poured the whole double-shot into his mouth. “Let’s go.”
“Only 999? What’s the one thing that doesn’t include me?” I asked, ignoring Lany’s scowl as we exited the café.
“If I told you I’d have to screw you senseless so you could forget.”
“That sounds like a risk I’d be willing to take.”
He opened the car door for me and grabbed my hand before I could sit down. “I like a girl who isn’t afraid to take risks.”
He kissed my hand then waited for me to climb in before he shut the door. Something had shifted between us. I could feel it in every part of me, vibrating down to my bones, humming like a guitar string in my fingertips. That nagging sense that I was being played.
When we arrived at Luke’s boat, Captain Craig was there doing stuff I didn’t understand, and this time he didn’t bother leaving Luke and I alone as he had a few days ago. I supposed that meant Luke and I would not be releasing this sexual tension anytime soon and I couldn’t help but feel a bit annoyed with Captain Craig. As he and Luke discussed boat-y things, I had to stop myself from shouting, “Go away, old man!”