He’d become her craving. A powerful, euphoric, addicting drug—and he was all hers. For tonight, anyway. Lying there, twitching and spent, Caleb chuckled as he watched her recover.
“You blow my fucking mind.” Filtered through his damaged throat, the words sounded sexy as hell.
She gulped in air, as her body enjoyed a million tiny aftershocks. “And you’re an expert at misdirection.” She opened her eyes and caught a flash of his…guilt, maybe? Anxiety?
“How so?” he said.
She narrowed her eyes, feeling as if she were calling out one of her young patients for fibbing. “What are you up to?” He lay on his back, putting his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling again…shutting her out. Her father shut her out constantly.
“Sometimes you remind me of your father,” Caleb said.
Though weak from satiation, she still managed a respectable snort of derision. “I was just thinking the same thing about you.” She draped herself over his chest, resting her chin on her folded hands.
“Nothing gets past a Hamilton,” he said.
She lifted her brows for a second. “Hmm. True. I wouldn’t want to be the guy caught in my father’s crosshairs.” Caleb revealed a commiserating grimace and said nothing. “He’ll expect a wedding. A marriage. He’s not getting one.”
Caleb smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’ll figure things out.”
“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do.” She decided a qualification was necessary. “Other than marriage.”
“Duly noted. Just keep this rejection to yourself. Until further notice, anyway.” He winked. “Your father will see your refusal as my weakness.”
“How?”
“He’ll say I couldn’t close the deal.”
“And therein lies the problem. I’m not a deal.” She poked his side, making him twitch, as if she’d tickled him.
His callused hands tugged her closer and then settled on her back, caressing, soothing her pique. “Just…don’t say anything yet. Please?”
His “please” was what gave her the courage to ask her question—the question that would keep her up nights if she didn’t ask. “You didn’t have to sleep with me to get your contract or the company. So why did you?”
Caleb arched a brow. “You’ve got it backward, sweetheart.” When she frowned, he rolled his eyes. “I saddled myself with his damn business so I’d have a chance to sleep with you.”
Francesca was almost positive her smile was goofy. “Oh.”
He laughed shortly. “Your turn. Why choose me over Levine?”
She blanched. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“No, it’s not obvious. You were afraid of me when we first met. Admit it. But today you chose me. Why?”
He wasn’t wrong; she had been intimidated. Caleb was a big guy, and he radiated power. Having spent the majority of her life under threat, being controlled by big men because of it, it had taken time for Francesca to see past Caleb’s packaging. But she did. And…she liked him. A lot. “Brent would have pressed for the marriage.” She shook her head, causing her tousled locks to drape over his chest. “But you’re not a shotgun-wedding kind of guy. If there’s a way out for us, I trust you’ll find it. I need you in my corner.”
He narrowed his eyes, unconvinced, and who could blame him. He’d rocked her world…thoroughly. “You kissed me in the solarium, the guy who scared you. But you chose me because I wasn’t Levine?”
“Brent gives me the creeps.” And with Caleb, she could buy time to change her father’s mind, make him see an arranged marriage wasn’t the only solution. She had bodyguards, for heaven’s sake; if necessary, she’d hire more to keep her safe.
“Smart girl. Levine is creepy.” He nodded, gravely. “So you chose me because I’m not creepy. I should put that on my résumé.”
She laughed. “You’re trying to worm compliments out of me.” He lifted his brows, but the humor in his expression told her he wasn’t expecting any. “I like you, Caleb Smith. I think you’re fine.” Her heart melted when surprise replaced his knowing smile. She indicated the door with a glance. “You locked it, right? I just had a horrible image of Brent barging in, trying to change my mind.”
His expression shuttered. “Don’t worry about Levine,” he said. “Your father…fired him. He won’t be bothering you anymore.”
Relief had her dropping her cheek onto his chest. She hugged him. “Thank heaven. I could handle him. I could, and have since I’ve returned home, but it’s nice not to have to, especially with my father’s failing health on my mind.”
Caleb rolled her onto her back and gave her a quick kiss. “Don’t think about it.” Francesca smiled, loving this feeling he gave her. He settled his weight between her thighs, ready again. “Think about me instead.” He positioned himself and moved inside her with a sigh. “Trust me.”
She locked her ankles behind his back, thinking, want, need…easily, but trust? It would be insane. “I can’t,” she moaned, wiggling, wanting faster, harder.
Resting his weight on his elbows, he withdrew almost completely and then paused, prompting an unsettling wave of impatience. “But you already do, sweetheart.” Then he angled his head, his hair obscuring his features. She could still see his eyes, though, and they held a stark hopelessness that moved her, even as he rocked his hips forward, filling her, triggering a now familiar pleasure.
“Hey.” She squeezed her legs around him, cupping his cheek, trying to force him to look at her. “What’s going on?”
He glanced at her eyes, but wouldn’t hold her gaze. “When you look at me”—his words were halting, grave—“I see a version of myself reflect back that I don’t recognize.” He stroked inside her and stilled, keeping a stranglehold on his expression. “Make sure you don’t see things that aren’t there, Francesca. I don’t…” He moved inside her again, as if he couldn’t control himself, and then sighed, taking in the pleasure. He withdrew again, moving more quickly this time, making it hard for her to think. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
They made love off and on for the rest of the night, ignoring their engagement, the party downstairs, and gorging on each other, wallowing in their heavenly escape. What was harder for Francesca to ignore was knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, she could fall in love with Caleb…easily…and he was a man more similar to her father than not. Both those things scared her to death.
Chapter Seven
Late last night, an exhausted Francesca draped over his chest, Caleb woke to the sound of his phone receiving a text. Only a few had his number, and none could be ignored, so he’d reluctantly disentangled himself and walked naked to his pants. It was Tate.
Seven a.m. Transition meeting.
Whatever. Setting an alarm, he turned to see Francesca’s hand searching for him on the bed, eyes closed, probably still asleep. Unable to help himself, he slipped back under the sheets and woke her, smothering her sigh with a kiss. He’d settled between her thighs and drove inside her, hoping the night’s marathon sex might lessen his need…his vulnerability. Much later, as he drifted off to sleep, he had to acknowledge it hadn’t, and it was a problem.
Now, sleep-deprived and irritable, Caleb had his ass back in Hamilton’s fucking office. The man sipped his coffee from a teacup, looking more like an accountant than a villain, and offered him bagels, arranged on a silver platter. They held zero appeal despite a breakfast of black coffee. The fresh green paint covering Levine’s blood on the wall had a scent, and it reminded him of the night before. Enough to suppress anyone’s appetite—and who ate blueberry bagels, anyway?
Hamilton frowned at Caleb’s black jeans, T-shirt, and biker boots. “If you need someone to run your clothes to the dry cleaners, inform the staff.”
“I’m good.” If Hamilton really cared, he would have chosen a show pony. Instead, he chose a street rat.
Harris Tate dropped a file on the desk near Caleb. “Prospectuses for my companies,” Hamilton said. “If you require
access to files beyond those you or your team can acquire on my servers, Tate will retrieve the hard copies and stand guard while you reference them.”
“Hard copy? Do you mean the ledger?”
Hamilton rolled his eyes. “No.”
Fair enough. Caleb flipped through the file, not expecting anything new. “I’ve read these.”
Hamilton’s hand shook as he placed his cup on its saucer, and then he spent the next three hours detailing his company goals, deals in progress, his vision for the future, never mentioning his businesses’ product: extortion, turning others’ sins into gold, the collateral damage be damned. It was dry, frustrating, and an impressive display of master businessman practices. Caleb couldn’t wait to burn Hamilton’s fucking “achievement” down.
Afterward, Francesca’s father and his entourage left by motorcade for an undisclosed meeting downtown, allowing Caleb ample opportunity to search the office. He was comforted to know his team of crack cybersecurity contractors would wipe any trace of his activities from the security feeds. Though there were none in the mansion’s rooms, the hallways were all monitored and recorded and the video stored on servers.
So far, no leads. Nothing to implicate Hamilton as the master extortionist-in-chief. Not an unexpected turn of events, but…it would have been nice to catch a break. He hurried to the late great Brent Levine’s office, not quite crossing his fingers, but with a spring in his step that this might be where he found something. His continuing lack of leads was fraying his patience.
As he neared Levine’s office, Caleb’s hand reached in his leather jacket for his lock picking case. He noticed the door ajar, the light off, and a flashlight beam moving inside. His hand moved to his holstered gun on his hip. Reaching inside the room, he flipped on the light, and pushed the door open.
“Dammit, Francesca!” Francesca dropped her flashlight, which scattered in pieces upon contact with the hardwood floor. “I nearly shot you.” He moved inside the office, and closed the door behind him.
“Shot me? Why do you have a gun?” Falling to her knees, her yellow cotton dress billowing about her, she gathered up the pieces.
“I’m hired security, Francesca. What did you expect me to carry?”
“You’re cyber-security. Surely—”
“Do you really want to argue about this?”
She inhaled sharply and closed her eyes for a moment, before opening them to glare at him. “For heaven’s sake. No, I don’t want to argue. I’m trying to be discreet here.”
“And failing miserably. I could see the flashlight’s beam, and you’d left the door open.” Caleb, heart still racing, locked the door. When she failed for the third time to find a battery next to his leather boot, he told himself to be patient and then retrieved it for her.
“Thank you. As I told you. I was trying to be discreet.” She pieced the flashlight together, and when done, inadvertently aimed its beam into his eyes. “What are you doing here?” she said. He stripped the flashlight from her grip, turned it off, and then handed it back.
“That’s my question.” The office was trashed. Papers were strewn about, covering most of the ten-foot-square room. File cabinets, tables with drawers, the desk, and the chairs before and behind it were littered with papers. The safe, which sat prominently in the corner, was wide open and revealed more displaced files. Caleb forced himself not to be discouraged that Levine’s office had been searched, but he couldn’t help but be worried something had been found…something he’d wanted to find. “You do this, or was he this messy?”
“I walked in about ten minutes ago. Even I couldn’t do this in that short of a time frame.” She bit her lip, looking around. “If Brent kept the ledger here, I can’t find it. I thought for sure it would be in here.”
“Why are you looking for the ledger? Levine was fired. Let me handle things from now on.” And Levine was sleeping with the fishes. Caleb didn’t want Francesca anywhere near that ledger, be damned the Feds and their plans and plots. But her instincts had been true. This office still might hold a lead.
“But doesn’t it make you suspicious? You’re the one that said the ledger would reveal if Brent was up to no good. I want to know, and my father won’t talk to me about Brent’s dismissal.” She smoothed her dress, looking like a fresh buttercup displayed in a rusty tin can for a vase. Out of place. And that dissonance made him smile. Francesca noticed and blushed. “Want to help snoop?”
No. He wanted her halfway across the planet, as far from his operation as possible, but that wasn’t going to happen. He needed her. Hamilton was expecting a wedding.
Francesca sat behind Levine’s desk, gathering up paperwork along the way. “I’ve found a ton of S and M porn.” She gave a little shimmy of unease. “And for some reason, I’m finding mostly personnel files.” With a wave of her hand, she indicated a file drawer against the wall to the right. “Brent must have been involved in HR, or hiring, maybe, because I don’t recognize them. But I guess they could be employees for one of my father’s many businesses. Like he said, I’ve never wanted to work in his company, but sometimes I wonder if I’d shown more interest…” She shrugged. “Maybe this wouldn’t be happening. His work is his life, and I’ve barely been in it.” She frowned. “Caleb, I have more common memories with Facebook friends than I do with my father.”
“So Facebook friend him.”
She laughed. “Does he even know what social media is? I don’t know.” She lifted her hands, indicating the office. “What I’m not finding is anything that even looks a bit hinky.”
“Hinky?”
“Suspect. Brent was fired. He had to have done something wrong.” She arched a brow. “Reading porn at work doesn’t seem like something that would bother my father.”
“Hmm. I’m sure that’s a powerful recruitment tool for his companies.” He chuckled, and then pulled out the chair in front of Levine’s desk to accommodate his size. He sat, propping his boots among the paperwork. Francesca wasn’t going anywhere any time soon, so neither was he. “What are your qualifications for detecting ‘hinky’ activity in your father’s ex-employees?”
“None.” She frowned, jutting out her chin.
“So forget this, Francesca, and leave it to the professionals.”
“You mean you?”
“Yeah. You’ve been in Boston for two months. Your father needs you, so maybe spend time with him, rather than poking around Levine’s porn.”
She left off her cursory examination of paperwork. “He doesn’t want to spend time with me. I’ve tried, believe me. He runs off to meetings. Honestly, sometimes I think he invents meetings just to avoid me. The most I share with him is a silent dinner, or worse, him on the phone while we eat. I need to think outside of the box.”
“Huh?”
“You’re the one who gave me the idea.” She threw him an impatient frown. “You said comparing the ledger to the digital business accounts would tell us if there really was a spy.”
“Did you share this idea with your father?” His stomach sank.
“No. Last night he said he’d already found the spy. Second-guessing him is a sure way of making him angry.”
Caleb needed to shut this idea down. He wanted her as far away from Hamilton’s business as possible, so when the shit hit the fan, Francesca would remain clean. “Your father is a smart guy. I’m sure he’s got this all figured out.”
“He fired Brent. I think my father needs a friend. Someone he can trust to help him.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m hoping if he’ll accept my help, maybe he’ll accept me. Like I said, his business is everything to him, so maybe he’ll—” She bit her lip, emotion choking off her words.
Dismay had his lip curling. “Love you?”
She blinked away tears. “Is loving me so hard?”
For Hamilton? Yes. That Francesca reached adulthood and hadn’t figured that out was a product of her privilege. It was still sad, though.
“No.” He shook his head, afr
aid of saying anything, but unwilling to let that assumption stand. “It’s too easy to love you. Do a guy a solid and eat crackers in bed, for shit’s sake. Develop a love for the polka or Candy Crush. Something, anything to stop me from”—he took a deep breath, drew his hands over his face to ease the tension there—“making a fool of myself.”
She laughed. “Caleb.”
He would have smiled if he hadn’t been so worried about how she made him feel. He wanted to protect her, and he wasn’t sure that was possible. “I got this. My contractors are set up already, working to implement new security protocol. You don’t need to save your father’s company. Leave that to me.” Lies, lies, and more lies. His job.
Francesca flopped back in the chair, arms hanging on the armrests. “You’ve planted a fear.”
“The ledger is encrypted. Even if you find it, you won’t be able to read it.”
“How do you know?”
Shit. Exactly. How would Caleb know? He’d slipped up. “Your father never trusted the internet, and he’s never hidden his distrust. The ledger was the result, but had unintended consequence. It became the white whale of every thief and opportunist that has ever heard of your father’s enterprises. There is a lore surrounding it. I know it’s encrypted because it’s my business to know.”
She grimaced. “You’re saying I’m not going to find it.”
Seduced by Sin (Unlikely Hero) Page 8