“Specifically,” she said, “what does your company’s contract promise my father?”
“To strengthen his businesses’ cybersecurity.”
“Cyber. Because of this threat he was talking about.” Caleb’s focus on her legs made it hard to concentrate. “The spy? Right?” Maybe this spy threatened her in particular, threatened to leverage her for money. It would explain why her father wanted to make her someone else’s problem. Well, an arranged marriage wasn’t happening. She’d take care of herself, thank you very much. She had money. She’d lived with bodyguards long enough to know how to stay safe. She’d change her identity before she agreed to marry some…some…some man her father chose.
“No.” Caleb grimaced. “The spy…was news to me. I was told the company had hacking concerns, and details would come after the contract was signed.”
“So, you’re a hacking expert.” Computers. It was hard for Francesca to see Caleb spending his days punching a keyboard.
“No. I created a business being the guy who knows a guy. You come to me when you need something done right.” He shrugged. “I have a crew of hacking experts. They can protect your father’s businesses from crooks out to make a buck, maybe drop a virus, encrypt a server to extort money for information retrieval. Most cases it’s nuisance stuff, but there are worse scenarios. Your father would be smart to sign us on.”
“Worse scenarios? Like that corporate spy.” She bit her lip, tasting Rouge Coco. “My father owns office supply companies, grocery store chains. He’s not Apple or IBM. Why isn’t he just going to the police for this stuff?” Caleb was watching her like he was expecting her to explode. She wasn’t enjoying it, and had no way to tell him to stop without admitting what had just happened. He’d witnessed her father treating her like a child, as nothing more than an asset. It was painful to contemplate what Caleb must be thinking of her now. It was embarrassing and disappointing, too. She didn’t want his pity.
“You mean go to the Feds?” he said. “Maybe he has already, but that’s cleanup. He needs to hire me to coordinate a prevent defense. Stop the cyber-attacks before they steal his businesses’ employee data, or intellectual property, whatever.”
She felt a wave of hope hit hard. Caleb sounded like he knew what he was doing. “So you’ll stop this threat. I won’t have to marry anyone.” He laughed and then caught himself when she revealed her irritation.
“We’re talking deep Web,” he said. “There’s no stopping this threat, just managing its influence in his company’s business decisions.”
Which meant whether or not Caleb’s company was hired, the threat to Francesca would remain. Disappointing. “Deep Web?”
“Nooks and crannies of the internet where buyers and sellers of shit to fuck people up commune to make a buck. Shady entities, companies, terrorists, or your garden-variety assholes find these sites set up like Amazon, with reviews and everything. They buy their malware, or worms, or whatever the latest shit is, and they kill your server or extract contact lists, maybe order a hit, a kidnapping, or just convert your computer into a doorstop because they’re bored.”
“A hit?” Or kidnapping. Of all the craziness he detailed, those were the ones most likely to trigger her father into medieval mode and demand Francesca marry.
Caleb nodded. “Names are put on a list, and it’s open season for whoever takes the contract. Using Bitcoin as currency, the whole thing is untraceable. Your father thinks marrying you off to the meanest bastard he can find will keep you alive. And he’s right.”
Maybe, but that didn’t mean it was the only solution. “So you can’t protect me?” She meant to say his company, but if it was anything like her father’s, they were one and the same.
Caleb opened his mouth, as if he had an answer on the tip of his tongue, but then he stopped himself, reassessing, slouching deep into the chair. “My contract is to install a cybersecurity system that will anticipate and eliminate deep Web threats. Protecting you is your father’s job, and your husband’s.”
The “meanest bastard” to be found, apparently. The cage was closing and her options winnowing. “I’m not married yet.”
“Good thing.” He winked, stretching his legs until his feet were tucked out of sight, under her father’s desk. “Because I don’t kiss married women.”
She could only marvel at his aplomb, but then he wasn’t the one being threatened with marriage. “I’ve given up plenty because Jonathan Hamilton is my father, but I refuse to give up my choice of husband.” And Francesca refused to marry a “mean bastard.” “But message received. I’m scared.”
A hardness fell over his features, or maybe his good humor had been the mask. “It’s long past time you should be scared, Francesca.” His damaged throat added credence to his words and made her wonder what he’d be like when he was angry, rather than just intense. She couldn’t even imagine how fierce he would be. Would he be cruel like her father?
She leaned toward him, poised on the edge of her chair. “I want to trust you.”
Caleb searched her eyes, revealing a confusion she couldn’t blame him for feeling. She didn’t say she trusted him, simply that she wanted to…an unattractive hedging he was smart enough to pick up on. Yet it was true. But trusting was a leap of faith she was ill suited for. She hadn’t become a clinical psychologist because social situations or personal relationships were easy. Her mother’s early death and being kidnapped as a child had done their damage. Her personal journey for answers led her to seek a psychology degree, a desperate reach for order in her world, in her head, and control of her heart. Wanting to trust Caleb because he made her feel good wasn’t weakness. It was how she survived a life under constant threat. But…she understood the risk and didn’t want to be burned.
He sat up, facing her, and took her hand, revealing more sympathy than she was comfortable with. When he kissed her palm, holding her gaze, she repressed a sigh, not wanting to admit that without a word, Caleb had found a way to make her feel cherished. He made her feel as if she could trust him—and she knew that was a vulnerability. It made her less safe, so she should hide it, but hiding her feelings didn’t make them go away.
Unlike anyone she’d ever met, he was rough, larger than life, certainly not an academic beta type, or one of her hypermasculine guards, more weapon than human. Caleb was huge, sure, intimidating, definitely, but the moment she set eyes on him, she’d wanted to know him. A quick Google search told her nothing, and her father was no help. Whenever she’d asked him about Caleb this week, he’d wave her out of his office, declaring himself too busy for “this nonsense.” A few friends gave her tidbits of gossip, but not much, mostly that he was rich and…the description most used was “ball buster”.
Caleb dropped her palm and gave her hand a little squeeze. “Sweetheart,” he said, “your father will be back soon, and it’s time to get ready.” His expression was sad, and he seemed like a tower of strength, inviting her to lean on him. Well, Francesca wanted to stand on her own two feet. She’d spent her life fighting her father’s attempts to put her in a protective bubble, and she wasn’t about to give in to this latest attempt.
“Ready for what?” she said.
He stood and leaned against the desk, facing the door. “The real world.” He sighed. “Your father is dying, his businesses up for grabs, and he needs to marry you off to stop a feeding frenzy. You’re a bargaining chip currently in the wind. In my business, that’s called market uncertainty, and with the stakes at play, it’s dangerous to be in the game. You need to be married. That’s the real world, and on the other side of that door. When your father returns, he’s going to play hardball until you relent. Your resistance will decide how low he’ll go, but he won’t bend on this. It’s happening, because he thinks your life and his business are on the line. He has nothing to lose. You do.”
Francesca studied Caleb as his words spilled out, searching for an iota of hesitation to hang her hopes on, but she found none. Caleb believed every word he’d sa
id. How did he understand her father so well? As soon as the question popped into her head, she feared the answer and retreated to a safer question. “What do I have to lose?” she said.
Caleb shrugged. “He knows you best. I’m sure he has it all planned out and will make it hurt.”
She stood, feeling ten times heavier, and dejected. Leaning on the desk next to him, she sipped her scotch, glaring at the door her father would soon open…intent on ruining her life. “What about you? Is my father playing hardball with you, too? I mean, with your contract.”
He lifted both brows, looking surprised that she’d even bring it up. “If not your father, it will be someone else. Some other company will sign on the dotted line. Contracts have a way of blurring together, one after another. They keep coming. I fulfill them, and then I start all over again. My life is a never-ending contract.”
His disgruntled tone made her want to roll her eyes, because it was hard to believe Caleb would do anything he didn’t want to do, but she restrained herself out of courtesy. “And you have no choice?”
Caleb frowned, startled by the idea. “Of course I have a choice.”
Exactly. “Hmm. Must be nice,” she said. “I want a choice.”
“About who you marry? Don’t blame you.”
“I’ve been a bargaining chip before.” She kept her gaze on the door. Safer that way. Caleb saw too much, and she was vulnerable. “It’s not a feeling you forget, being something to use to hurt my father, to influence him. I deserve better. He’s a rich and powerful man, and yeah, I get it. There are bad people in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’ve met them all.” She played with the idea of telling him about her kidnapping and what she remembered about it…she’d been young, and her mother had just died. But then she decided against it, not feeling up for revisiting the pain, and she didn’t want to bore. “Is it too much to ask to have a life not defined by my father’s choices? To make my own?”
Caleb shrugged as if the topic were semantic, that the arranged marriage was set in stone. “He’s protecting you.”
“To protect himself.” She shook her head. “Listen, I’m not saying he’s not doing his best by me, I’m just saying it’s not fair to define my life as being a pawn in his.”
“All true.” Caleb crossed his ankles, frowning at his feet. He was so big and fierce, but as he leaned on the desk next to her, all she saw was his kindness and intelligence; it was…sexy as hell. “Whoever controls you controls him, and therefore his business. Protecting you is protecting himself. All true. What does that change? He’s thought it out, and decided you married is the answer. So what are you going to do?” She hadn’t a clue. “If he has his way, you’ll be married by the end of the month.”
“He’s dying, Caleb. I know this is all happening because of that. I also know he needs me. I know it, but I have to do what I believe is right, despite his fears. If he makes things too hard for me”—she shook her head—“then Harvard is waiting. I’ll move into faculty housing.” Or maybe wait him out and make the hard decisions after he’s gone. She didn’t say it aloud, because it sounded morbid and unfeeling, but she was in a corner here and wasn’t willing to discard any option that might save her from a marriage she didn’t want.
Caleb pursed his lips, as if stopping himself from speaking, but then his words rushed out. “He trusts you. Can trust you. I’m not sure there are many people, if any, in his life where that is true.”
Francesca blinked, processing the implications of his words. “You can’t possibly think I should marry a stranger.” She kept her eyes front, clutching the edge of the desk so tightly her fingers hurt.
“I’m saying your father needs trustworthy people around him now, more than ever, and if you leave, it will screw him.”
“He has Brent and Harris.”
“Do you trust them?”
“My father does.”
“I’m sure he knows best, but…”
“But, what?” Francesca turned her head to study his profile, and saw his hesitancy. “Have they done something?”
Caleb shrugged. “I’d need your father’s ledger to prove my suspicions, and I believe Brent Levine is in charge of it, so that’s not happening.”
“Ledger? What ledger?”
Caleb’s expression tensed, as if she’d said something he hadn’t expected. “For the last few years, partly because of these cyber concerns, your father has kept his companies’ records on paper. He uses a ledger.”
“That’s not possible. The amount of paperwork that would require—”
“Not everything. Just…particular data that would be problematic if it got into the wrong hands.”
“You just described most data collected by businesses.”
“Hmm.” Caleb lifted his brows, shrugging. “A good hack can clean a company’s accounts out. He’s smart to be careful. But Levine has access to the decryption and could shop this ledger around. I don’t know of anyone else with that access other than your father, so it makes me wonder if…well, if he’s the spy your father’s talking about.”
“My father said he knows who the spy is. If it were Brent, he’d be fired already.”
“I don’t know. His security information is coming from Levine and Tate, right? What if they’re both involved? A person has to wonder how reliable their intel is. We can’t really know until we compare the damage already done to his businesses with what is logged in the ledger.” He was acting as if the problems were merely academic. To him this was shop talk. To Francesca, her future was on the line. “If he signs my contract, that will be the first place I’ll look.”
“I could talk to him.” Though talks with her father usually ended with him chastising her for something or other, acting as if she were wasting his time. And he’d want to push his marriage idea, and so far his reasoning was creaming her reasons for saying hell, no. Francesca liked to think of herself as brave and independent, but the constant threats she’d been living under were a harsh reminder that she was only as safe as money could buy. She didn’t want to be kidnapped again, or maybe worse, but there had to be another way.
Caleb sighed, as if the conversation had petered out, and he was ready to move on. “Your father is a smart man. I’m sure he has everything in hand, but…are you sure you haven’t seen the ledger? It would be about this big.” He moved his hands to illustrate a fourteen-by-eight-inch book.
When he’d said ledger, she’d thought small, like a journal. “I did see my father give Brent something like that when I first arrived in Boston, but I haven’t seen it since. That was two months ago. Maybe it was the ledger.” She picked at her manicured thumbnail, having almost completely stripped it of its fuchsia polish. “Caleb, if you really suspect Brent is committing corporate espionage, you need to tell my father.”
“I have no proof.” Caleb lifted his hands, palms up. “And until your father signs the contract, it’s unsolicited advice…and presumptuous. Who would your father trust more? The new guy or Levine, whom he trusts with his secrets?”
He had a point. “I wish you were working for my father. Then I’d feel safer.”
Caleb tilted his head to the side. “You are the sweetest woman I have ever met.”
She smiled back, feeling all warm inside. “Does it lessen the compliment to admit it’s not a high bar to feel safer with you? I never did like Brent.” He’d always creeped her out. “What exactly makes you suspect him?”
“Patterns.” Caleb pushed off from the desk, as if too energized to remain still. “People like Levine don’t suddenly appear. They’re developed and leave stains wherever they go. And I have a hunch. It might be nothing.”
“Tell me if I can help, and I’m there,” she said. “Unlike my father, I don’t think I know it all. I can take advice.” Still leaning against the desk, Francesca watched Caleb prowl before her, restless.
Then he stepped in front of her, resting both his hands on either side of her hips, palms flat on the desk, forcing her to lean back to p
revent a collision. “So you don’t know where the ledger is.” He was so close, and he searched her expression as if it held truths only she could share. It was mesmerizing, and made her miss their intimacy in the solarium, which reminded her that her father was shopping her around to prospective husbands. So why wasn’t Caleb running for the hills? She figured he was sticking around for the contract, so he couldn’t run far…still, she’d be sad when he finally got around to it. Caleb had a way of making her feel special in a world that, more often than not, treated her as someone to use.
“No, I don’t know where it is, sorry,” she said, wondering what he’d do if she kissed him now. His lips were so close, and he was giving her the vibe he wanted to kiss her, too. Surely if he thought she should marry a stranger, he wouldn’t be tempting her to kiss him. Or was she being stupid? “Am I being stupid?”
“Not stupid.” His gaze lowered to her lips. “Tender.”
“A compliment?” He was giving her a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach. “I think you’re crushing on me.” Her attempt at humor fell flat. Caleb was not amused.
“It wasn’t a compliment.” Then he kissed her, and the force of his lips pushed her back, tipping her, despite her bracing hands on the desk. Caleb caught her just as she threatened to disturb paperwork, and stood her up, crushing her to his chest. “How much time do you think we have before they return?” he said.
A true seductress would have played coy. Francesca didn’t have it in her. She was conflicted and overwhelmed. Her world was blowing up, and too much change at once left her feeling helpless. Caleb’s gaze signaled a promise of pleasure, and she knew he could wipe the unpleasantness away, if only for a while. And she wanted it gone. She wanted Caleb.
“I don’t know.” She wasn’t even sure if she cared. She just wanted his kiss.
His hand dropped to her thigh, inching upward, bringing her dress’s hem with him. She waited breathlessly to discover what he had in mind and then found the waiting intolerable, so she stood on her tiptoes and threw her arms around her shoulders, desperate for his kiss.
Seduced by Sin (Unlikely Hero) Page 5