“Would you tell me if you did?”
His voice had taken on a warm whiskey tone and had the effect of calming her temper. “Yes.” Her answer was honest. She would have told him.
“Are you going to quit and run his company?” He waved the paper in the air, fisted in his white-knuckled grip.
Maureen pulled her shoulders back as much as she could without causing pain, and lifted her chin. “I honestly had not given it any thought.” She blew out a breath and slouched a little. “Look, all I want or care about is finishing what I started. I want to meet my commitment and then I can re-examine everything else and decide whether to stay or move on.” Would she leave Mickey’s organization? Could she walk away from an organization that did so much good for so many people whether they were aware of it or not? Then there was Lucas. She gazed into his glaring eyes. Could she get along without the possibility of running into Lucas ever again? Did she want to close that chapter in her life? Or did she just want to turn the page and hope for something more, better, happier?
Damn him! With a lightning strike, she knew she would never have said yes to Jimmy. Not because she didn’t love him, because she had. Just not enough or the same way she had loved Lucas. Before her mind could go any farther, she was saved by the proverbial bell, or in this case, the sweeper team.
TWENTY
As he worked with the two sweepers to put out the residual fire and then bag and tag evidence, his mind kept replaying Maureen’s statement. All I want or care about is finishing what I started. Would she leave the organization, leave him behind, and just walk away? How could she?
A piece of the fender slipped in his hand and sliced his palm. “Shit!” He swore not at the cut, not at the pain in his leg, but at the woman who screwed up his world. He wanted to do more than swear at her. He wanted to give her a piece of his mind and show her that she belonged to him and he to her. Why did she not get that? Had he not just explained that in the hotel room earlier that morning?
He pressed his fingers to his temple and tried to remember what he had said when his hand was tugged down.
“I know the Mustang was your baby, but you should be careful and let the other guys deal with her.” She washed his wound with a packaged antiseptic wipe.
The Mustang? He couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the car compared to her. Didn’t she understand that? He could rebuild his car or start on another one, but he could not replace her.
“Where did you get the gauze?” he asked as she wound another length of cotton around his hand and then taped it.
“From Chuck and Steve. They also said there’s a first-aid kit in the loaner car they brought for us.”
“I guess we should be on our way. It’s already going to be dark by the time we hit my place.”
Gilly nodded. “Ruby said the supplies and parts should be at your place before we get there.”
Oh, goody. “Great. Let’s blow this Popsicle stand.” He pivoted on his heel and headed toward the non-descript silver sedan. He reached the car and across the hood he asked, “Do you have the keys?”
She tossed them to him and he snagged them out of the air with his good hand. “No argument?”
Gilly lifted one brow and her lip quirked up on one side. “Would it make a difference?”
He chuckled. “No.”
“Besides, I didn’t think you would like me to drive one-armed.”
“Smartass.” Lucas unlocked the doors and they both slid in. “Can you manage the seatbelt?”
His answer was the snick of the metal male sliding in and locking into the female slot. “I guess so.” He backed out of the parking slot and aimed for the exit. As he passed by his Mustang, he glanced at his baby and a twinge of loss tweaked his heart. More than a twinge if he was honest with himself, but then a thought struck him. Maybe he would just have to finish Maureen’s green machine. Hmm. Maybe he could even start on it while Gilly worked on the robot.
He gunned it, pushed his Mustang into his past, and looked to his future, the redhead sitting beside him in the passenger seat. After spiraling his way down the ramp, he exited out onto Caroline Street. Turning right, he hit the highway in a few minutes.
“Gilly.” When she didn’t answer, he turned and found her asleep with her head tilted at an odd angle between the headrest and the seat back.
“So much for a pithy commentary.” Ah, well, he would call Ruby and ask her about getting Maureen’s car moved to his place.
* * * *
Unbelievable. Gilly slept until they hit Connecticut. He grinned as on cue, she woke and he pulled into a parking spot at Hooters. “Hungry?”
“Only if we get Three-Mile Island wings,” she answered, smiling and fluffing her tousled hair.
“How’s your neck?” Lucas got out of the car and went around helping Gilly out of the vehicle.
“Stiff.” She rubbed at her neck until he took up the work for her, kneading the muscles.
As they walked up to the entrance of the restaurant, he slid his hand down and slipped an arm around her waist in a possessive gesture. “Two,” he told the waitress who greeted them dressed in skimpy orange running shorts. Lucas wondered if she actually wore the vibrant tight-fitting shorts jogging. He doubted it.
Once seated, Gilly ordered two light beers for them. Before he could object, their busty server had slipped away to do their bidding. “I hate light beer.”
“It’s good for you.”
He grunted in response to her claim. “Just make certain that I get coffee before we leave or we’ll never make it home tonight.” She nodded her ascent.
When the waitress returned with their drinks, he ordered the naked wings the way they liked them with extra blue cheese and celery and asked for a side order of curly fries before Gilly could protest. It was one thing to suck up the light beer, but another for a man to do without carbs.
“Okay, so last time we ate a meal together, I answered your questions. Now it’s your turn to answer mine.” She looked at him with skepticism in her green eyes.
Gilly sat back, blew out a long breath that sent her bangs flying, and nodded. “Shoot.” She stared him straight in the eye.
Damn. It wasn’t as if it was an inquisition. “How did you get involved with Jimmy?”
“Involved with him?” she asked with one raised brow and took a sip of her beer. “Define involved.”
“I don’t want to know about your sex life,” he scoffed and downed a portion of his own drink. Did he? Hell, no! He had no desire to know about any man she had been with since him. “I meant, how did you meet him?”
“Oh.” She smiled at him. “We met because of the DARPA contract.”
“Who sought who out? Did you win the contract or did he?”
Her smile turned smug and triumphant. He knew without her answering.
“I did.”
“If you won the contract then why did you seek out Jimmy?”
“Honestly, it had to do with time and resources. I created the original prototype, but knew I lacked the resources and experience for proposal writing. Jimmy and his company, NanoRobotics had that expertise. I am not a paper pusher. I want to design and build it and leave the rest to the folks that know what they are doing. Add to that the time constraint,” she shook her head, “there was no way I could have delivered it on schedule alone.”
“Makes sense.” He paused as their server brought over their food and two more drinks. Once she left, he continued. “Who did you have to sell it to at DARPA?”
Lucas groaned inwardly as Gilly sucked hot sauce off her slender fingers, one-by-one. When her tongue shot out to lick her lips, he grabbed his beer, and concentrating on his glass, willed his instant hard-on to deflate. She had no clue how sexy she was, her lack of awareness making her even more appealing. Damn near irresistible. He set his glass down and kept his gaze on his plate.
“First, I had to propose an idea to a Program Manager who gave me the military terms for seedling money to fund an initial study
of my proposal. That paid for my initial prototype. After that, the Program Manager had to get approval to create an actual program, which of course, requires the government to put out a broad agency announcement.”
“What is a broad agency announcement?”
She swallowed her fry and then spoke. “It’s a competitive solicitation procedure used to obtain proposals. That is when I decided I needed a partner and I found Jimmy. He wrote the white paper with my input. Then there’s an evaluation process where a committee assesses all solicited proposals without comparing them and finally DARPA makes one or more awards.”
Confused, he frowned. “You mean they can award a contract to two businesses to do the same exact work?”
“That is exactly right and now you know why I was upset about Jennifer going to work for Jimmy’s biggest competitor.”
“Damn straight,” he said letting his fist slam against the table with a bang. “That’s messed up.”
Lucas narrowed his gaze as Gilly attempted to hide a smirk with her napkin. “What? Don’t tell me you agree with their process.”
Her good shoulder lifted and fell back into place. “It’s just the way it is.”
“So why would DARPA fund two or more groups to develop the same thing? Isn’t that wasteful spending?”
“Not really. It’s actually rather smart. They’re hedging their bets that at least one of the groups will pull through and develop the next best weapon, or whatever, since the invention of sliced bread. They probably write off the failure costs so nobody really loses, and in the end whoever produces the best of what the Department of Defense wants gets a full multi-year contract, and obviously is well compensated for their effort.”
“You did this for the money? You really do want to leave the agency and run your own business.” Her left eyebrow hiked skyward and her temple changed to a bright shade of pink, the telltale sign of her irritation. He hit a nerve.
“No, this is not about money. It’s about something I’m good at and my father taught me. It’s about seeing something through that he believed he could accomplish.” Her voice choked up and she took a sip of her beer. “I wanted to see my father’s dream of his gadgets or toys as grandfather always calls them, be useful and help save lives. And they will, Lucas, on a major scale.” She reached out and touched his arm, stroked it with warm fingers.
He laid his hand over hers and peered into liquid green eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” He lifted her hand and kissed her fingers. “He would have been proud of you,” he told her, his own pride swelling in his chest and constricting his heart.
Lucas cleared his throat. “Why did you tell Jimmy so early on in your relationship about your talent?”
Gilly tugged her hand from his grasp and leaned away from him. He couldn’t help it. The question burned at his insides, filled him with resentment for the dead man. She had bared herself to Jimmy, a man she knew barely six months, yet she had been his for over two years before she approached him on the subject. Why? What made Jimmy so special?
“I didn’t tell him.” She shoved hair out of her face, a nervous habit.
TWENTY-ONE
And she was not about to go into how Jimmy had discovered her ability. Right now, only she knew about her neural network connection with the robot. The only one alive that is, she hoped, and she intended to keep it that way.
“What, he just figured it out?” Lucas’s face scrunched up in disbelief.
“Drop it.”
He pulled his lips in on each other and clamped them together, but she could see he was laughing at her. The corners of his mouth turned up, just a tad, but enough to tell her he was smiling under that thin-lipped gaze.
“Are you ready to go?” She laid her napkin on the table and scooted the wooden chair back. “I’m going to use the ladies’ room before we leave. Excuse me.” She pivoted on her heels and headed for the restrooms.
When Gilly returned to the table, Lucas had paid the check and had two cups of coffee to go. “Is one of those mine?”
“That depends.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “On?”
His eyes crinkled and his grin grew wide. “On whether or not you stay awake and keep me company?”
“Of course.” She grinned at him and shrugged, forgetting about the shoulder until it screamed in pain at the movement. She clenched her hands in response. This, of course, made the sensation of stabbing needles intensify. “Jeez,” she gasped and reached out for Lucas’s bicep.
“I think you need to take some more ibuprofen, if not a pain killer.”
Gilly shook her head. “No narcotics. I’ll take the ibuprofen.”
One side of his mouth lifted while the other side drooped. When he made that frustrated—damn woman—I know better face, a thin white scar normally hidden under his chin emerged and emphasized his rugged rogue appearance. She tore her gaze from his sexy chin and reached for a Styrofoam cup, refusing to think about him in that way.
“I’ll, uh, take some tablets when we get in the car,” she told him over her shoulder as she pushed through the glass doors of the restaurant. “I can’t be in a drug induced state if I’m going to get the work on Morpheus done on time.”
He grunted in response and helped her into the car.
On the highway again and heading North, they settled into a comfortable conversation. Lucas told her about the last two assignments he went on in the Russian Republic of Dagestan. “The more we, the West, dig into the energy corridor over there and try to build those oil and gas pipelines, the more governmental in-wars are provoked and terrorists pop up.”
“You were there because of terrorists?” She turned in her seat to look at his profile across the dark interior of the car.
“Not exactly.” He cleared his throat. “I went over to lend some intellectual property in regards to one particular thorn in the side of the Russian government and now ours.”
“Intellectual property?” She wrinkled her nose. “Is that your way of saying brain dump?”
Lucas gave a low chuckle. “Yup.”
Okay, enough of work stuff. “What are you going to do about the Mustang?”
She heard rather than saw his shirt brush against the leather seat when Lucas shrugged his broad shoulders. “Well, are you going to get another one or start over on the red one?” She slapped her knee. “Oh! I know. You could get an old Chevy Nova or a Chevy Impala.”
“Are you kidding? An Impala?” His voice rose. “Why on earth would I get one of those? It’s not a muscle car.”
“The Nova is considered a muscle car. Wait! I’ve got it. A 1964 Buick Skylark.”
He groaned aloud and Gilly giggled at his fake pain. “Okay, okay. I know the perfect car.”
“I can hardly wait to hear this one,” Lucas said, his sarcasm dripping like melted ice cream on a hot summer day.
“Hush. A 1966 Pontiac GTO.”
“Now you’re talking about a real muscle car. What color?”
“Black with midnight blue racing stripes and blue or dark charcoal interior.”
“Been thinking about this awhile, have you?”
Gilly turned back in her seat and stared out the windshield, watching the streetlights and street signs whiz by. She had been thinking about it. Knowing Lucas had very little left to do on his Mustang, she had considered locating another car for him to restore. She had even gotten to the point where she had spoken to a couple of different people that had project cars available. Right before their breakup, she had located the perfect specimen. It had all the PHS documentation and the serial numbers on the motor and frame and other parts all matched. It was a 1966 GTO, the year they modified the headlamps so the lights sat on top of each other and gave the car a unique flare. She smiled at the thought of seeing Lucas drive that car. It fit him. Both he and the car were strong, solid, and reliable with a rough, sexy exterior. They were throwbacks to simpler, straightforward times. She sighed. Too bad their relationship had gone to hell in a hand basket
.
“Earth to Gilly.”
“Huh?”
“Where did you go?”
“Nowhere.” She shifted in her seat, wanting to be anywhere but with Lucas going down memory lane. He glanced at her and she fidgeted. She knew they still had a couple of more hours to go. Okay, think of a safe topic to discuss, something that would not have her remembering anything related to them as a couple.
“What do you think of the state of the economy?”
Laughter erupted from the other side of the car.
“Not too subtle, huh?”
“Not even close, babe. However…” He reached over and gave her hand a quick squeeze. “I give you an A for effort.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Okay, so you want a change of subject, no problem. I can accommodate.” He rubbed a hand back and forth over his day-old beard. “How’s Frank’s Irish pub doing?”
She smiled into the blackness. Her grandfather’s Irish pub was Gilly’s Row, named so for their family name. It was also how she came by her nickname. “It’s good. I haven’t been in a while because of work. Frank only goes there about twice a week now that he has Brandon managing the place. I’m really glad he found and trusts him.”
“I think he likes the guy simply because he’s Irish.”
“You’re probably right.” Gilly chuckled. “Have you been lately?”
“Yup, last week on Irish night.”
“What the heck is Irish night?”
“You don’t know? It’s terrific. Every Monday Brandon has different Irish entertainers come in to play music, sing, and dance. If you order Irish food, you get a discount. I don’t think anyone goes on Monday night and orders a burger.”
“Grandfather never said anything about it.”
“Maybe he hasn’t been yet.”
They glanced at each other simultaneously and laughed. “No way.”
Gilly sat back, more at ease, and enjoyed the rest of the trip as Lucas shifted from one safe topic after the next until he turned into his driveway. When he cut the engine, the silence between them was deafening. After a few seconds that seemed more like long minutes to her, Lucas opened his door and the overhead light illuminated the interior of the car and his face. He looked almost as nervous as she felt, but gave her a warm smile.
Never Tempt Danger Page 12