Now, Sequence’s hands were on his hips and his brow was so low it was almost obscuring his vision. “Didn’t peg you for a fangirl.”
“Of Moreau Davy? Who isn’t a fangirl?”
Having absolutely nothing to say to that, Sequence ignored the comment. “Are you gonna go in or not?”
“Not.”
“What? You came all the way down here and now you’re going to bail?”
“You honestly think I’m gonna march in there and let Moreau Davy watch me suck at ping pong? Two words. No. Dice.”
That, apparently, was the last straw for Sequence. He grabbed Naomi by the hand and marched her into the room.
“Moreau, Naomi. Naomi, Moreau.” That was all the fanfare she was getting. Sequence was practically getting a sunburn from her blush. From her blush for Moreau Davy. He scowled.
Sequence marched her to the ping pong table and shoved a paddle into her hand. It was only then that he released her. It was also only then that Sequence realized his hand was buzzing with lightning. He felt like he’d stuck his hand into a bowl of ice and then into a hot tub. He barely had feeling where he’d just been touching her.
“Nice to meet you,” Moreau called, looking up from his newspaper. His sculpted face pulled into an expression of interest as his famous gray-green gaze lazily perused Naomi’s body. His black hair, shaved on the sides, flopped over so far as to almost shade one eye from view. He scraped a hand over his artful stubble and uncrossed his legs. “Very nice.”
Sequence rolled his eyes as Naomi giggled and started peeling at the adhesive tape on the bottom of her paddle. “I didn’t realize that I was on lockdown with a famous person.”
“I didn’t realize I was on lockdown with a redhead.”
Sequence’s eye roll was so intense it threatened to give him a migraine. Swift, on the other hand, just let his head bounce back and forth between their two clients. Naomi giggled again.
“So…” Naomi started, still blushing to beat the band. “Are you in danger too? Or… sorry! That’s probably totally rude to ask. I’m sure people invade your privacy all the time and you’d never want to answer that. I’m sorry! Please pretend I didn’t say anything! Strike it from the record. Wipe it from your memory! Let’s just rewind time, shall we?”
Sequence sucked his teeth. He found it incredibly endearing when he made her ramble. He found it irritating when another man made her ramble.
Moreau, however, laughed and set his newspaper aside. “I’m in no explicit danger. When I would like some time out of the public eye, I often avail Mr. Rook of his bunker.”
“But don’t celebrities have, like, paparazzi-free islands and resorts and spas and stuff?”
Moreau laughed again and stood up. “They do. But I find I can never get much work done at those places. I prefer to work here.”
Sequence watched, with one eyebrow raised, as Moreau circled around the couch and started to approach the ping pong tables.
“Can I ask what you’re working on?”
“A screenplay.”
“You’re a writer!”
Her excitement was palpable. “He didn’t say whether he was any good at writing,” Sequence mumbled under his breath. Luckily Swift was the only one who heard him, and he looked as if he were thoroughly enjoying himself.
Suddenly, Moreau was standing weirdly close to Sequence and he was holding his hand out. Sequence looked down and realized that Moreau was asking for the ping pong paddle that was in Sequence’s hand.
Oh hell no. The movie star was trying to hijack his ping pong game with Naomi? “Dibs,” Sequence said.
“I’m sorry?” Moreau’s brow lowered, whether he was confused because he wasn’t used to hearing no from someone, or because he didn’t understand what dibs meant, was anyone’s guess.
“Dibs on the paddle. And on the game.” In case there was any more confusion, Sequence grabbed the spare ping pong ball and shifted into place at one end of the table.
Moreau, who’d always gotten along with Sequence, looked positively befuddled at the strange behavior until his eyes flitted over to Naomi, who was scowling at Sequence. Moreau’s expression cleared.
Feeling territorial over a woman was an experience Moreau understood. He never, ever indulged himself in the impulse, the way Sequence so obviously was, but he understood it.
“Perhaps next game, then,” Moreau said and then moved down toward Naomi’s end of the table. “And this game, I will act as coach and cheerleader for our beautiful Naomi.”
She blushed to the roots of her hair and proved she needed both a coach and a cheerleader when she completely whiffed Sequence’s volley.
Sequence immediately noted his tactical error when he was subjected to half an hour of watching Moreau casually touch and flirt with Naomi. A hand on her elbow to correct her posture. Fingers over hers to show her the appropriate grip. He taught her how to serve the ball, how to return it.
By the time their game was finally over, Sequence was astonished he had any molars left after how hard he’d been grinding his teeth.
Moreau invited Naomi to sit down to play cards with him and it was more than Sequence could handle.
“Dinner,” he told Swift as he turned to leave the room. “Gotta make dinner.”
“Whatever you say,” Swift called after him, a huge grin on his face.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The next week passed in a bit of a blur. Naomi was fairly certain she was being lightly, casually pursued by the most famous man in America, maybe even the world. Moreau Davy wasn’t American himself, though he’d grown up in Hollywood. He was born in France and still had traces of a French accent, and such a romantic way of turning a phrase.
He was mind-numbingly gorgeous. His face was deliciously contoured, his eyes a ghostly, silvery green. He had olive skin that positively glowed. And he was built. Naomi knew this for certain because she’d walked in on him working out in the gym just the other morning.
She’d nearly snuffed her bottled water straight to the brain, but beyond that, she’d managed to keep her cool. She’d even managed to chat with him while she walked on the treadmill.
He’d done shirtless push-ups with the graceful ease of a jungle cat and basically glowed in the fluorescent lighting of the gym.
He was funny and attentive when they talked, his eyes never leaving her face. He was smart and worldly and rich.
So why the hell couldn’t she get it up for him? Besides her initial fangirling over him, Naomi found her celebrity crush had fizzled a bit. Not because the reality of him paled in comparison to the fantasy of him—if anything he was better than the fantasy.
She feared it was because she was still harboring a bit of a crush on a different ripped Adonis who haunted the halls of the bunker.
Yeah. The one whose baby she was carrying.
Oy.
Naomi, feeling a bit overwhelmed with the situation, and with the fact that her 16-week appointment was creeping closer and closer, excused herself from dinner that night and hid out in her room instead. She pulled on baggy sweatpants, a sweatshirt two sizes too large and threw her hair up into a messy bun.
There used to be a time when all she’d had to worry about was Ellsworth’s shitty management style. Now she was carrying a secret baby, she was trapped in a bunker with her baby daddy. And to top everything off, a mob boss was romantically pursuing her. And apparently so was the most famous man in America.
For a moment, Naomi just put her face in her hands and laughed. When she let her eyes peek out from over her fingers, she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her hair was spearing out from her hair tie in a million directions, her skin was pale with her nausea, her eyes looked confused and bemused, she could have used a coat of mascara. She let her hands drop. And she was absolutely swimming in her clothes.
Naomi had grown up an awkward giraffe of a girl. She definitely had settled nicely into her looks, but she wasn’t obscenely beautiful. She wasn’t even a show-stopper, not l
ike Geo, who had to be one of the most effortlessly gorgeous women that Naomi had ever seen.
Naomi shrugged at her reflection. Maybe it was the red hair that had all these men acting like she was Helen of Troy.
She settled herself into a little ball on her armchair and balanced her laptop on the arm. She pulled up a Sandra Bullock rom-com she’d seen a million times and settled herself in for a good time.
Maybe ten minutes later there was a knock on her door. It was 8:30, which meant it was Atlas. He was always checking on her around this time. She thought of him like a mother hen, gently pecking at her to make sure she ate and rested and exercised and followed all the rules. She thought it was sweet.
“Come in,” she yawned.
The door came open and she lazily lifted her head to smile at Atlas. The smile melted into surprise when she realized that it wasn’t Atlas standing in her doorway. It was Sequence.
“Oh. Hi.”
“You didn’t come down for dinner.”
Apparently they weren’t wasting time on pleasantries. Naomi pushed herself up so that she was sitting and caught her computer before it slid off the armchair. When she looked up again, Sequence’s eyes were bouncing all over her, taking her all in. It was silly to wish that she were wearing something that didn’t scream amorphous blob! But alas, that’s how she felt. She wasn’t trying to attract Sequence per se, but she also didn’t want to actively repel him.
“I’m just a bit tired, I guess.” She gave him a half-hearted smile.
He frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. She felt like his gaze was some sort of military grade X-ray system. She felt like he could see clear through to her bones. She subconsciously moved her arms to cross over her stomach. His gaze narrowed. “What do you want to eat?”
His words were gritted out. Barely a question.
“I’ll probably just go down for some cereal in a little while.”
He frowned even further, his dark blonde hair catching the light from the hallway and making it shine. Naomi stared right back at him. His coloring was so misleading. He had tan skin and blonde hair, his beard had the slightest hint of copper to it. But instead of reflecting light the way his twin brother did, Sequence absorbed light like he was made of black velvet. He was like a blackhole. Everything in his vicinity got sucked into him, like a steel marble rolling across a bed sheet.
“Fancy, I’ll make you anything you want. You don’t have to eat cereal just to avoid me.”
She sucked in a breath at his unexpected use of her nickname. Fancy. Hearing it in his mouth brought a rush of memories back to her. The steel push of him, the huff of his breath at her neck, their first twisting kisses. She couldn’t stop the fire that raced from her neck up her cheeks.
He seemed to realize his mistake a second too late and he lifted his arms halfway before dropping them helplessly to his sides. He scratched his palm over the back of his head and didn’t say more.
“That’s okay!” Naomi said brightly, fooling no one. Her smile, though a little pained, was also genuine. She couldn’t help it. She was a smiler. That’s just who she was born to be. “I’m not avoiding you, I swear. I’ve just… been really into cereal lately.”
And pregnant. Super pregnant. With your baby. Bun, meet oven. Harboring a fugitive. Knocked WAY up. She took a deep breath.
He looked at her with that discerning gaze for another long moment and then just kind of shrugged. In typical Sequence fashion, he turned, without saying a word, and closed the door after him.
It wasn’t until the door closed that Naomi realized her heart was banging hard in her chest. She supposed it was nice of him to check on her. And nice of him to clear up that she didn’t need to avoid him. But she was having a lot of feelings right now. About Sequence. And she couldn’t begin to sort them out. She was too busy still trying to wrap her head around the fact that she was going to be a mother. She had enough on her plate.
As a thought experiment, she turned the volume down on her movie and let herself imagine how she would feel about Sequence if he hadn’t gotten her pregnant. How would she feel about him cutting and running like his pants were on fire?
She hadn’t ever been very good at being mad. But she supposed at some point, she probably would have gotten around to it. In fact, right around the time she had found out she was pregnant, she’d been working herself up to a good old-fashioned pissed off. He’d been a jerk to her. And even if it was sad that he was so closed off he couldn’t even hang out with a woman he’d slept with, she was allowed to feel two things at once. So. Yeah. Mad and sad.
She could work with that.
But the fact was, she was pregnant. And confused. And even if she was mad and sad, it made her feel very relieved that Sequence was being at least a tiny bit kind to her. She’d spent a while thinking that she was pregnant with the baby of a man who hated her. But Sequence did not seem like he hated her. He seemed closed off and distant, but at a base level, he was treating her like a human. So, she supposed that boded well for whenever she got up enough courage to tell him?
Her stomach flipped hard when she imagined telling him. She was no good at secrets. She hated keeping them. But she had it in her mind that she might be able to wait until this whole thing was wrapped up with Bastone. Maybe in a month, when she’d hopefully be headed back to her own space, she could tell him. And then he could process his feelings on it when they didn’t have to be holed up in the same bunker. That would be infinitely better than him finding out now and having to figure out how to operate with her in his space.
She sighed and tried to focus again on the movie but her head came up a second later when there was another impatient knock on her door. It opened without her saying anything and Sequence came in with a tray in his hand.
There were two kinds of cereal in two bowls, seltzer and tea on the tray. And, as if he hadn’t been able to bear giving her just plain cereal, a small bowl of cut up peaches. Sequence came into her room as she scrambled upward. Effortlessly, he caught her computer as it started to slip again. He pressed the tray into her lap with his other hand.
“Wow.” She looked down at the tray and then up at Sequence, a smile blooming on her face. “Thanks.”
“We have a TV room, you know.” He frowned at her computer and straightened it yet again.
“Oh. Yeah. I saw that. But I don’t mind watching on my computer. That’s how I do it at home.”
“There’s surround sound and you don’t have to worry about cracking the screen of your laptop when it slips off the chair.” As if to prove his point. The laptop started sliding again. He caught it.
She sighed. “You’re telling me to go there right now?”
His jaw worked and he looked frustrated. He scraped his palm over the back of his head. “I’m not telling. I’m—I guess I’m trying to make sure you know that you can use it anytime you want.”
“You’re bossy.” She made her eyes friendly, but this time attempted to keep her smile in check.
He frowned. “I don’t mean to be. I’m just really, really bad at communicating.”
Naomi laughed, mostly from shock that he would actually admit to that. Also, she laughed because it was true. And it was frustrating. And it was very gratifying to hear him admit it. “I guess as long as you’re trying to get better at it…”
He was quiet for a minute. “I am trying. But I don’t have high hopes. Words and feelings do not correspond for me. Explaining how I feel about something is my personal hell. It’s like getting lost in a maze in the dark. And anytime I try to do it, I fail. So why even try.”
“Hey!” Naomi sat up straight all the sudden. “That was very communicative! Good job!”
His eyes softened just a touch at her enthusiasm and the corners of his lips twitched. “Now I feel like a kindergartener getting a gold star.”
“Hey, gold stars are powerful magic to a kindergartener.”
His lips twitched again and this time his eyes traveled to her hair. Naomi se
lf-consciously put a hand to her messy bun. “I’m a mess, aren’t I?”
“I like this look,” he told her immediately, faster than he normally responded. “You’re messy, but cute. You look comfortable.”
Naomi blushed and smiled. But she could feel the confusion in her smile. Apparently so could Sequence. He took a step back from her.
Nodding his head, he walked to her door and looked back. He looked like he was going to say something, but he didn’t. Instead he just gently closed her door behind him as he left.
Naomi turned back to her show, her mind racing. What the hell had that just been? An olive branch, maybe?
Sure, but it had also felt suspiciously like something else. It had felt like a new beginning.
***
“Naomi needs a doctor,” Sequence said to Rook without preamble.
“What?” Rook jumped to his feet from behind his desk, one hand on his gun and extreme worry in his eyes. “Where is she?”
Rook basically jumped the corner of his desk in his rush to leave the room.
It was then that Sequence realized just how much Naomi had gotten under all of their skins. Every member of the team liked her. Because it was impossible not to like her.
She was just so dang sweet. Sequence figured that on some level, Naomi had to hate him for hitting it and quitting it. But there she was, sweet as pie at every turn.
Over the two weeks that she’d been at the bunker, he’d noticed everyone warming to her. Wanting what was best for her. Normally Rook, Sequence, and Swift were the only ones who worked the recon angles of a client’s case. But even Geo and Atlas were putting in time behind the computer screens. Attempting to monitor Bastone’s actions. To try and figure out what the hell he was doing in regards to Naomi. They didn’t work unpaid overtime for someone they didn’t have a major soft spot for.
“No. Sorry. She’s okay.” Sequence laid a hand on Rook’s shoulder and sat down in a chair to show it wasn’t an emergency.
Rook slowly sat in the other guest chair, his eyes still looking a little wild. “You sure?”
Rook Security Complete Series Page 39