by Megan Hart
“I have one of the most stressful jobs in the world,” Nina said sourly. “And this hasn’t happened before now.”
Leona grinned. “So, blame it on Mr. Ewan Donahue. Want me to add a hazard surcharge to his bill?”
“That won’t make this go away,” Nina said, but laughed, because she knew Leona was hyper serious and would do it.
“It might not, but it will make you feel better about it.”
Nina shook her head. “I have enough money. Anyway, I’ll figure it out.”
“I wish you’d go get another checkup, at least. And we can bill that to Donahue for sure.”
“Yeah. I’ll make an appointment.” Nina didn’t think another physical was going to make a difference, but it was unlikely to cause a problem. For now, she was going to keep paying attention and making notes about what was going on. She changed the subject to divert her boss. “What’s up in your world?”
They chatted a few minutes longer before Leona signed off. Nina considered starting another workout. Her body would manage it, but her mind was less than interested. Too much exercise could be boring. Still, she hadn’t yet managed to get her blood pressure to spike again, and she wanted to keep trying.
At the sound of footsteps in the doorway, Nina tensed with an internal chuckle. Maybe Leona was right, at least a little bit, about Ewan being part of the cause. Her heart had certainly started beating a little faster all on its own.
“Hey,” he said quietly when she didn’t turn to face him.
Their eyes met in the reflection of the mirrored wall. He looked good, all tousle-haired and lean in his low-slung pajama bottoms, feet and chest bare. He would always look good to her, she thought. No matter what had happened between them. No matter what still might happen.
“What’s up?” she asked him when he said nothing more.
Ewan held up his comm. “Wanda Crosson is petitioning for an early release.”
“She won’t get it, will she?”
He shook his head and slipped the comm into the pocket of his bottoms. “I don’t think so. Nobody seems to care very much about her anymore.”
“Are you worried?”
“No. Not really.” He cleared his throat. “How are you feeling?”
“Good. Fine. Shiny fine,” she added for clarification.
“No more . . . ?”
She shook her head. “No.”
She didn’t mention to him that she’d been trying to push her body into recreating the glitch. Her working out wouldn’t seem unusual to him, and he didn’t need to know how hard she’d been pushing herself. Ewan moved farther into the room. Nina waited for him to mention last night, the way she’d slipped in and out of his bed without a word. When he didn’t, she pushed some hair out of her eyes and studied him.
If he’d crossed the room and taken her in his arms, if he had kissed her, she would have let him, she thought. Ewan stopped more than an arm’s reach away from her. The yearning ache she’d admitted to the day before rose again inside her, biting her more fiercely than she’d ever bitten him.
“If you change your mind about me calling my doc, let me know,” Ewan said finally. “I can make you an appointment.”
Nina smiled, thinking of Leona’s declaration that they’d make Ewan pay her medical bills. “I can call one for myself, if I want one.”
“I know that.” He paused. “It would be easier for you. He’d come to the house. Unless you’re planning to leave.”
She studied him. “I have an open-ended contract.”
“That means you’re as free to leave at any time as I am to relieve you,” Ewan pointed out.
“With Wanda Crosson petitioning for early release, there might be some new fresh dangers for you,” Nina answered after a few seconds. “It’s probably best that I stay, at least for now.”
Ewan nodded, face solemn, although she thought perhaps she’d caught a glint of amusement and relief in his gaze. “Are you done working out?”
She bounced on her toes, jabbing at the air. “Depends. Want to spar with me?”
Ewan snorted under his breath. “What, and give you the chance to punch me in the face? Admittedly, I deserve it, but that doesn’t mean I’d like it.”
“I wouldn’t really try to hurt you,” Nina said.
Ewan looked at her, saying nothing, memories of the times when she had hurt him clear in his gaze. Heat rose in her throat and tried to flush her cheeks, but she kept herself from showing any visible reaction. She couldn’t stop herself from recalling how his skin felt under her fingertips when she dug her nails into him, or how he moaned when she did. She couldn’t stop herself from thinking about it, but she could definitely keep herself from showing that it affected her. Ewan could not, but she could just as easily ignore the hitch in his breath as she could fake her dispassion.
“Something came up on the security screens,” Ewan said finally.
Nina frowned, moving toward the door at once. “You should have said that right away.”
Behind her, he followed. “It didn’t seem to be anything important. A bump in the motion detection, that’s all. It could be the wind. A rabbit. Anything.”
“Your security here isn’t anywhere close to what it was at Woodhaven. And there are no rabbits left here,” Nina said over her shoulder as she went at once to her room and grabbed her shockgun from the harness she hadn’t been wearing because it hadn’t seemed necessary before.
She regretted that decision now. No matter what Ewan’s sec team had said, no matter what the reports declared, she’d already seen the lengths people would go to in order to harm him. It wasn’t out of the question to think someone new might have built up a grudge.
“You know I have people to check out stuff like this. They can be here within minutes,” Ewan said from the doorway.
“If you’re mine, you are mine all the way,” she told him without thinking, the words slipping off her tongue too quickly for her to bite them back.
“I remember that,” Ewan said. “But I didn’t think I was yours anymore.”
The sound of the front doorbell ringing stopped them both. Ewan took a step toward the noise, but Nina moved in front of him. She shook her head.
“Nobody should be ringing that bell without notifying you in advance they were going to be there,” she told him. “You let me go first.”
CHAPTER TEN
The alert had pinged to Ewan’s personal comm from the sec team, remotely monitoring his house. He’d gone to the workout room to talk to Nina about it not because he was truly worried, but as an excuse to find her after waking up alone. He’d overheard her talking to someone and waited until she was finished. At no time had another ping come through alerting him to someone actually gaining access to the property, yet the front bell had rung twice, now.
“Probably someone selling cookies,” he said lightly, watching her.
She’d gone into protection mode, and even if he’d been concerned that someone really was trying to get to him, the sight of her so fierce, so strong, so beautiful—it made his heart stutter. He did believe she would keep him safe, which was a big part of why he wasn’t worried. The other part was, as she’d pointed out, he had people who were monitoring the area and no true threats had been reported.
The doorbell rang once more.
Nina gave him a wry smile. “Sure. Because that still happens.”
“You never know. Maybe door-to-door cookie selling is experiencing a nostalgic comeback. Could be a vacuum salesman,” Ewan added to see if he could earn a giggle from her. “Maybe encyclopedias?”
“Oh, yes, the new, revised version, downloaded directly into your brain.” Nina pursed her lips. “Or it could be someone ready to murder you because of something you said in a viddy interview. How about we go with that possibility, just to be on the safe side?”
He held up his personal comm. “No more alerts. I pinged my team. They ran scans.”
“And yet, someone is ringing that bell. Which means they bypa
ssed the fence and the plethora of NO TRESPASSING and PRIVATE PROPERTY signs.” Nina paused to lift her weapon.
“Maybe they can’t read.” He was still joking, but she wasn’t.
“Then they certainly won’t appreciate my excellent use of the word ‘plethora.’” She gestured at him to stand to the side. “You went from the highest level of security around Woodhaven, and this house doesn’t even have a front-door cam?”
“I hired you,” Ewan said.
Nina looked over her shoulder at him. Her lips quirked. “Yes, you did, but I’m not going to hold that against you. I’m going to open the door. Stand out of the way.”
He did. She opened the door with her weapon at the ready. Whoever was on the porch would definitely have a full view of it.
“Can I help you?” Nina’s voice was stern and definitely intimidating.
“Is . . . I came to see . . . Oh, wow. Um, I’m here to see Mr. Donahue.”
Nina gestured at Ewan to stand out of view from the door, and he did. “Who are you?”
“Jordie Dev. I work in his lab.”
“Ewan?” Nina gestured again, this time for him to move forward. “Can you identify this kid?”
“Jordie. Yeah. Hi. What’s going on?”
“Can I come in?” Jordie looked nervous, shifting from foot to foot. His bleached hair stood on end, the tips sparkling with some cosmetic tech that changed the color in a slow cycle. He’d painted his bronze skin with slashes of white and black along his hairline and jaw, a trend Ewan hadn’t seen before.
Nina looked at Ewan with raised eyebrows. He nodded. She stepped aside to usher Jordie into the foyer. She didn’t put her weapon away, something that was clearly making the kid anxious. Ewan didn’t blame him.
“Say, Jordie, do you often ignore NO TRESPASSING signs so you can access private property?” Her words were calm and casual, but there was no doubting that Nina was neither.
Jordie looked surprised. “I didn’t think that applied to me.”
“Do you feel that way about a lot of things?” Nina asked before Ewan could say anything. “That what applies to the rest of the world doesn’t apply to you?”
“I meant that I’m one of Mr. Donahue’s apprentices, that’s all. I figured he always said we were welcome to contact him at any time. That’s all.” Jordie shook his head and gave Ewan an appealing look. “Right?”
Ewan had never expected any of the kids to show up on his doorstep unannounced, but he understood where Jordie was coming from. “It’s okay. What’s going on? Are you okay?”
Jordie grimaced briefly; the twist of his expression was familiar. Ewan had done candy for a short time and had sold it for longer than he’d been a user. He’d never gone full sugarhead, but he’d seen enough of them to know that Jordie was on it at the moment. Although he knew a few of the apprentices used, Ewan hadn’t thought Jordie was into candy.
“Yeah, yeah, I just had some great ideas and I didn’t want to wait until you got back to the lab, because I want to move forward with them, and I know you said that we should put in our proposals with the online portal and you’d get them, but you know, I just, I just thought it would be great to talk about it with you.” Jordie bounced a little on his toes, rubbing his hands together. He gave Nina a sideways glance and a nervous smile. “Talk about it in person, you know. Bro to bro. Can we go to your um, do you have a home office or something? Wow, this place. It’s not what I thought it would be. I thought you lived in someplace special, you know what I mean? Hyper posh.”
“I have an estate, yes. But right now I live here.” Ewan glanced at Nina, but her attention was focused on Jordie. “I do have a home office, though. We can talk in there. It’s down the end of this hallway and the first door on the right. Why don’t you go ahead and wait for me? Are you hungry, thirsty, anything?”
“Could use a snack, yeah, sure.”
Candy made the metabolism run faster, hotter. Sugarheads ate a lot to keep up. Jordie was whip-thin with hollowed cheeks and circles under his eyes that spoke of sleepless nights.
“I’ll bring something in. Go ahead.” Ewan waited until the kid had gone down the hall before looking at Nina.
She was still watching Jordie, maybe to make sure he was going where he’d been told. “I’ll make something, if you want.”
“You’re not my maid. Or my secretary.” Ewan shook his head, moving closer to lower his voice. “It’s Jordie, baby. It’s shiny fine.”
“He’s acting plenty weird.”
“It’s the candy,” Ewan told her flatly.
She frowned. “I got the feeling he didn’t use candy.”
“I didn’t think he did, either, but you know how easy it is to get. It’s practically issued in elementary school lunches.” Ewan shrugged and gave her a curious look. “How would you even know about him?”
“I talked with Betts when we were at your lab. She said Jordie was the only one who could really be any competition for her, because the other kids were pretty involved with the sugar. I took that to mean that he wasn’t.”
Ewan chewed on that for a second. “That doesn’t mean he couldn’t have taken it up. He’s twitchy like he’s been on a bender, or he’s a new user.”
“Let me ask you something,” Nina said after a second. They stood so close together he could feel her breath on his cheek. “Are you at all worried about him?”
“No. I have no reason to be. Anyone I take on as an apprentice has to have passed several rounds of security clearances, aptitude tests. That sort of thing. And . . . he’s Katrinka Dev’s son.”
She nodded and glanced down between them, perhaps noticing how close they were standing. She took a step away. “I’ll make some snacks. I need to eat something myself, anyway. I’ll bring it to you.”
“Hey.” He snagged her wrist as she moved away. Beneath his fingertips, the pulse of her heart throbbed faster for a second. He smiled. After a second, so did she. “Thank you.”
She waited until he’d let her go before nodding. “You’re welcome.”
Neither of them moved for a few seconds. Her slow smile warmed him inside. With the hand not holding her weapon, she ran a fingertip down his arm and tapped it gently a couple times before backing away. She glanced at him over her shoulder, too, that same smile clear even from a distance.
I love you.
The words stayed unspoken, even though he opened his mouth to call after her. If only it was as easy to stop feeling it as it was to stop himself from saying it aloud, Ewan thought as he headed to meet Jordie. Except he didn’t want to stop feeling it. He didn’t want to stop loving Nina, not even if it hurt to keep doing it.
Jordie was staring out the window overlooking the backyard when Ewan came into the office. He turned, still a little twitchy but less so. He’d probably taken a hit. “You have a lot of real grass. Not synthgrass. Wow. Who takes care of it?”
“I have people who come and take care of it.” The comment was a little strange. Ewan was starting to think maybe this kid was simply a little odd, in general, candy use aside. “So, Jordie. What can I do for you?”
“I have some ideas, Mr. Donahue.” Jordie looked eager. Smiling. Shifting back and forth. His hands made fists, relaxed, then again, but not in a threatening way. More like he was trying to keep himself from gesturing too wildly. “Some really great ideas. They just couldn’t wait for the online portal approval, I mean, sometimes it can take weeks before you grant the permissions, and I just couldn’t wait. I wanted to talk to you about it now.”
Ewan had set up the online portal for his apprentices to use precisely so they didn’t have to wait for personal time with him. They were supposed to enter all the details of the project they were interested in doing, including the proposed costs, outcomes, and materials needed, along with any access to current tech that they might need. He made a point of looking over the portal weekly, although there had been times when it had taken him a bit longer to approve proposals. None of his other apprentices had e
ver shown up at his door.
“All right, Jordie, let’s see what you have,” he said now. “Take a seat.”
Jordie didn’t sit. He paced. He started gesturing finally, fingers flaring or snapping as he spoke. “So, this tech, you know the enhancement tech. It’s incomplete. It needs upgrades to it, but there haven’t been any.”
“It’s illegal to upgrade that tech,” Ewan interrupted before the kid could get any further.
Jordie paused, twisting at the waist to look at him. “That’s just stupid.”
“It’s still against the law.” Ewan frowned, looking the kid up and down. “Jordie, how much candy did you take?”
“Not much. A little to help me focus, that’s all.” Jordie’s grin tilted. “That’s all. You know what candy’s like, Mr. Donahue.”
Ewan did. This seemed more than that, however. He hadn’t spent much time with Jordie, who’d always been quiet and reserved in the lab. He kept to himself, without the outgoing personality of his mother. The kid had pulled together some amazing projects in the past, but Ewan realized now he had little idea of who Jordie was as a person.
“Anyway, Mr. Donahue, here’s the thing, the thing is this, that enhancement tech needs upgrades, right? I mean there are people who have it who need it, like your bodyguard out there. Nina Bronson, right, she’s one of the enhanced. She needs upgraded tech. But here’s the thing, Mr. Donahue, it’s illegal because you lobbied to make it so, right, which is just—” Jordie put his fingertips to his temples and spread them out with a low noise, “I’m going hyper mental about that. Right? You invented it, then you turned around and blocked the use of it and more than that, you like, made it totally against the law.”
“You pay attention to the news.”
Jordie looked surprised. “Yeah, sure. Of course I do, Mr. Donahue. How else would I know what’s going on in the world?”
“I can’t approve any projects that are illegal, Jordie. You know that. You signed the agreement when you accepted the apprenticeship.” Ewan frowned again, studying the kid.