Hired by the Mysterious Millionaire

by Ally Blake

  “It’s truly not that interesting.”

  She shifted, her hair spilling through her fingers, the light catching her cheekbones, her jaw, the curve of her lashes just so, her tone hushed as she said, “It is to me.”

  Armand felt the past creeping cold and slow up the back of his neck. For Lucia—his ex-wife—had felt the same. She’d fallen for the hero. Had never understood that at the end of a mission he didn’t want to come home to a rent-a-crowd, to rehash the gritty details. Home for him was a place of quiet comfort, of warmth, clean sheets and locked doors.

  When reality finally hit, she’d felt tricked. Perhaps even justifiably so. For he was very good at his job, his company growing exponentially in those early years, becoming the name in European private security and exposition of corporate espionage. But all the success in the world did not make up for the way dealing with the lowest of the low chipped away at a man’s soul.

  “If ‘not interesting’ means you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay. Granddad fought in the Korean War and he needed to be in the right place, right moment, for the stories to come out.” Evie shifted so he saw her in a new light—those rich brown eyes, the sweet curve of her smile, the insouciance of torn jeans, messy hair and slightly chipped black fingernails.

  She was no Lucia. She was wholly herself. Kind, hard-working, curious and genuine. No ulterior motives. No judgement.

  Armand found himself saying, “Men come to the Legion for any number of reasons: travel, bloodlust, the desire to do good in the world, a second chance. There are seekers, there are hiders and there are the romantics. Only one in four makes it through the sit-down exam, medical, fitness, interview, psych test. Those who do are required to give up their nationality, and their name.”

  She sat forward, eyes wide, taking it all in.

  “Training occurs for many months—in weapons, teamwork, standing still, marching through snow, following orders. Deserters are not uncommon. Those who make it emerge clear-eyed and well-shaven. Reborn. One.”

  “Mmm...” she said, her mouth twisting. “I can probably find everything you’ve just given me on their website. Tell me they didn’t take one look at you and know they had something special.”

  “Turned out my family name was irrelevant.”

  “I wasn’t talking about your name.”

  Armand’s chest tightened. He breathed through it. Tried at least. It was becoming harder to steel himself against the onslaught that was Evie.

  “Who I was didn’t matter,” he said, his voice coarse. “Only what I did from that moment on.”

  And within the ranks Armand found true esprit de corps—not based on where a person was from, who they knew, but how they conducted themselves.

  He had learned faster, worked harder than anyone else and soon, despite the levelling nature of the corps, he had risen fast, his affinity with languages, with anthropological nuances, seeing him promoted swiftly, until he was put at the helm of a sharply honed team. A dagger hidden within the end of a blunt tool.

  “Those men,” she said, “the ones you brought in to help you find that little girl. Your Action Adventure All-Stars. That’s how you knew them, isn’t it? No better way to learn who you can trust than living in the trenches together.”

  “As much as it’s possible to trust a bunch of ne’er-do-wells.”

  Evie shifted again, this time unhooking the band from her hair till it spilled into her hands. She gave her scalp a scratch and hummed with pleasure.

  With no window to show if it was night or day—a trick used in department stores and torture chambers—Armand felt the quiet settling, the sense of possibility, of intimacy hovering on the air.

  “Did you ever consider becoming a ne’er-do-well yourself?” Armand asked. “With your skill it would be a lucrative choice.”

  “Nah. I’ve always been a good girl.” She batted her lashes, as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. “Preferring to build rather than tear down.”

  “An idealist. Like Jonathon. No wonder this is your dream job.”

  Her mouth twisted, her brow furrowing as she glanced towards the door. “Well, not exactly.”

  Armand stilled. “You told Jonathon otherwise.”

  She held up a finger. “I said this was a dream job, not my dream job.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “When I was little, like four or five, my dream was to become a dairy farmer. My mum and I both grew up on my granddad’s dairy farm, so it wasn’t a huge leap. Then I turned eight, started taking the bus to school, and realised there were other jobs in the world. Bus driver! Teacher! When Granddad had heart problems I was determined to become a cardiologist.”

  When Armand frowned, she said, “He’s good. Doing great. Clucked over like a prime rooster by a plethora of single septuagenarians in a very posh retirement village.”

  “And your mother?”

  A shadow fell over her eyes, and she slouched a little in her seat. Always sunny—or bolshie, or impertinent, or frustrated—she was vibrant in every guise. Only now she seemed leeched of colour.

  She said, “Not everyone has an all-consuming dream that sticks with them their entire life. My mother did.”

  The greyness swept over her, all the way to her fingertips as they began fidgeting with the ends of her short nails.

  “What was it? Her dream?”

  Her eyes lifted to his and he caught a flash, the glow inside her pulsing back to life. He felt the same pulse in himself, a beat of heat and light. His hand moved to his belly. To put a stop to it, or to hold it close. He couldn’t be entirely sure.

  “My mother was one of a kind. A true free spirit. She wanted to be an artist from the moment she held a crayon. She moved to Melbourne to follow her dream, only she never quite got a foothold. Then I came along and she went back to the farm. She died when I was six. Suddenly. Ruptured cerebral aneurysm.”

  She shot him a smile to say it was okay, it was a long time ago, but it was short. Flat. “My granddad did become a dairy farmer but it wasn’t his big dream either. But he found immense pleasure in following his curiosity—getting his pilot’s licence, inventing a board game, writing a book about colonial Australia. When I was born in the dead of winter he asked the Country Women’s Association to teach him how to knit. In every baby photo I’m wearing a different beanie.”

  She breathed deep, sat taller.

  “Where I’m from most local girls marry the local boys and keep local house while raising local babies. The only thing I liked about the local boys was how easily I could whip them gaming. With one hand tied behind my back. Literally. One day Granddad read that programming was the way of the future and cleared out a corner of the attic for a desk and a computer; he signed us up for Wi-Fi, signed me up for an online course in programming games and I was hooked.”

  “Follow your curiosity,” Armand repeated, the feel of the words on his tongue new and fresh. For it was a concept he had never considered before. Raised to strive, to succeed, he had done just that, equating failure in any of his endeavours as failure in himself.

  But to step back, to look inward, to know oneself enough to be comfortable with change—change of circumstance, change of heart, change of mind—with simply following one’s curiosity; what a powerful, yet devastatingly simple, view.

  “And now?” he asked. “If you were given the chance to follow your curiosity right now, what would you do?”

  Something capricious flashed over her eyes; hints of humour, intrigue, and heat. A feeling he understood too well. For he had been wrestling with the same curiosity about her too. Fighting to keep it contained, hidden, lest it create discord, drama, dissension.

  In that moment he paused, breathed, and simply let it be.

  “You mean work-wise, right?” she asked.

  A smile slid onto his face. “Of course.”


  “Other than ballerina princess firefighter astronaut?”

  “You tell me.”

  Her mouth twisted as she tried to decipher if he really wanted to know, then eventually said, “I’d love to have a team of my own. Hand-picked. Enthusiastic. Creative. Nice. To develop the million game and app ideas I have mapped out in my “One Day” file. Game apps. Health apps. Learning apps. Much like our esteemed employer, actually. Have you ever had a job like that? That made you feel like you were contributing in a real, honest way?”

  As she asked it Armand realised that, at one time, he had.

  “Those first months after the foiled kidnap, when we started getting work without even looking for it, I had no choice but to organise, to create a framework, a business model. To hire in. It was wild. Crazy busy. But fulfilling. Yes.”

  Not just the work but also the knowledge he was giving good men secure futures went soul-deep. Allowing him to fall into bed at night with a sense of exhausted contentment for the first time in his life.

  And yet his sense of duty had meant he’d allowed himself to be pulled away. Driven by the deep-seated need to do the right thing by all those he cared for. Not just his men. To keep his family safe and happy. Lucia safe and happy. Putting himself and his own needs last, as he’d always known deep down he was the strongest of them all.

  No wonder the cracks had set in. No wonder he’d begun to feel lost in the fog. He’d buried his idiosyncratic spark, his curiosity, so deep below the layers of duty he’d forgotten how to recognise it at all.

  “Were none of your Action Adventure All-Stars available to help you on this job?”

  Armand’s brow twitched. The thought of any of the brutes who worked for him knowing how to turn on a computer, much less understand how one worked, was laughable. Besides, it had been many months since he’d handed over the day-to-day running of his company to his second in command, knowing the man would not bother him unless civilisation was on the brink of collapse.

  “It’s a one-man job.”

  Evie’s eyebrow crept higher and higher.

  “Apologies; one man and one woman.”

  A knock came at the door.

  Evie and Armand’s gazes caught. Evie bit back a smile and Armand laughed, his voice raw, as he ran a hand up the back of his neck. “More shadows than you’d bargained for going down that path?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve never been afraid of the dark.”

  “Well, you should be.”

  All he got for his efforts was a hint of a smile, glinting dark eyes and a sense of unfurling heat deep within. Volcanic. Untapped. Vast.

  He drew himself off the armrest and moved to the door. He gathered the pizzas and wine and put them on the coffee table, watching as Evie slowly lowered herself to her knees, then onto her backside on the floor. Her long legs tucked under her.

  “Pizza and wine?” she asked.

  Armand smiled. “Of course wine—I am French.”

  She held out a glass. “Vive la France.”

  They ate and drank in companionable silence. The room warm, the light golden. The curl of interest and attraction simmering between them.

  When Armand offered Evie the last piece she didn’t argue, taking it with a happy sigh.

  After which they cleaned up and went back to their respective corners, Evie with her profile lit blue by the computer screen, Armand taking a break from the real world within the pages of a novel. Or pretending at the very least.

  “Armand,” said Evie a little while later.

  “Yes, Evie.”

  “When you ran to the Legion, what kind of recruit were you? The seeker? The hider? Or the romantic?” The pause between her second guess and her third was infinitesimal. And thoroughly telling.

  “Wasn’t there something about a thorn, or a knot, that required your attention?”

  She looked over at him. “There was. And you really don’t have to stay. I’m a big girl. Tough as nails. No dew in these eyes.”

  “I’ll stay till you’re ready to leave.”

  “Because we’ve not been in the trenches long enough for you to trust me not to make off with all this fancy equipment?”

  “Because we are in this together. A team. No man—or woman—left behind.”

  Her gaze widened a fraction—dewy as all get-out.

  Her voice was a little rough as she said, “Okay, then.”

  Watching her settle into her chair, hooking a foot up onto the seat and resting her chin on her knee, all coltish and clever and keen, he no longer even trusted himself.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  EVIE FOUND AN error in the code. Not a virus, or a time bomb—and no evidence of sabotage—just a thread that could have been better written.

  She was disappointed that it hadn’t been incendiary. But also pretty impressed with the fact it was the first error she’d found. Seriously sophisticated coding. Which made sense, as Jonathon was far too savvy to put his name on anything less.

  She fixed the problem, then left her own trail back in case she needed to show it to Jonathon later on.

  She stretched her arms over her head and rocked her neck from side to side. Her brain thus no longer locked onto her work, Armand’s last words found a nick and slid back into her mind.

  Because we are in this together. A team. No man—or woman—left behind.

  The fact she’d been able to concentrate at all after that little bombshell had been a small miracle. Her mother had passed away when she was six. She’d never met her father. Her granddad had practically kicked her out of home—after the local doctor had convinced him it was far better for him to be in a residential village, surrounded by his peers and medical help, than stuck on the farm with a bad heart. And now Zoe was moving into the next phase of her life.

  She knew her granddad was in good hands where he was, which was why she was happy to pay extra for the rent. And she was delighted for Zoe and Lance. Didn’t mean she didn’t ache for the fact that everything was changing.

  No, Evie was not new to the concept of being left behind.

  And yet Armand had stayed. It was a little thing in comparison. Keeping her company for no other reason than he believed it was the right thing to do. She understood that when the job was done he’d go back to the far more exciting life he’d led before. Yet the man was making it terribly difficult to remember why she shouldn’t be falling for him in a big way.

  Once the first yawn hit, Evie knew she was done. She glanced at her phone to find it was nearing midnight. The witching hour. When shadows and noises and illicit thoughts sprang up where in daylight they would not. She found herself actually looking forward to falling into her futon, lumpy and less than private though it was.

  She saved her work and set her own secret encryption protocols in place. Better safe than sorry.

  Evie clumped heavily over to Armand’s desk.

  “Done?” he asked, looking up from his book.

  “For now,” she said, her voice husky from under-use. “My eyes are crossing and my fingers feel twice their normal size. Skiving off?”

  “Skiving?”

  “Playing truant. Cutting class. Instead of working, you’re reading...”

  She leaned further over his desk, tipped the cover towards her. And nearly fell over when she saw the title.

  Armand noticed. He noticed everything. Now she knew he’d been in the French Foreign Legion of all things she had an inkling as to why.

  If she wasn’t great at reading people, she got her heart stomped on. If he wasn’t great at reading people, people died.

  He turned the book over to glance at the cover. Hardback, ivy scrolled over the borders. The title: The Poetry of Elizabeth Browning.

  “Not a fan of Browning?” he asked.

  “Hmm?” Evie squeaked, thinking, Poetry, poetry, poetry...


  “Elizabeth Barrett Browning.”

  “Um... I’m not sure I know anything she wrote.” Think, Evie, think. Change the subject.

  How ’bout them Cubs? usually worked. But what did they even play? Baseball? Football? Lacrosse?

  “I doubt that,” he said.

  She watched in growing horror as Armand flicked a few pages, pressed the open book to the table. In his deep, rough, lilting voice he read:

  How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

  My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

  For the ends of being and ideal grace.

  I love thee to the level of every day’s

  Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

  I love thee freely, as men strive for right.

  “Oh,” Evie managed through the pulse beating hard and fast in her throat. “That Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Sure, she’s great.”

  It’s just a book, her subconscious said. The fact he’s reading poetry doesn’t mean anything. Heaps of guys read poetry. Educated French guys from pre-eminent artistic families, anyway. Now, say goodnight and go home.

  “Then you do like poetry,” she said.

  Really? Are you trying to humiliate yourself?

  “Some. I speak several languages but I read them far less. While here I thought it best to brush up on my English vocabulary. Poetry, newspapers, literature, websites. It all helps.”

  “Cool.”

  The man’s reading Browning in a language that is not his own and all you can come up with is “Cool”?

  “Have you ever written poetry?” she asked. And her subconscious threw up its hands and left.

  “Why do I feel as if we’ve covered this already?”

  “We haven’t,” she insisted. “Not really. Have you ever written poetry?”

  He pushed back his chair and collected his things. “Of course.”