Hostile Attractions

by Raleigh Davis

  I enjoy the thought. It warms me like a hot cup of cocoa. Which he also doesn’t have.

  My gaze falls on his briefcase, lingers over his laptop. I hold my breath.

  This would be the perfect chance to plug in my drive and send everything to the journalist. I won’t get another window like this.

  But he’s sick. Upstairs, all alone. Suffering. And he took care of me when I was in a similar state.

  Reluctantly I turn away from the laptop. I can try again once he feels better.

  First I need to get some food in this place. Real, nourishing food. And honey and tea. Everything I remember as being comforting when I was sick.

  There’s a grocery store just down the street. I could run down there and grab some things. Cans of soup, some tea, crackers—it would take ten minutes tops for me to grab all that. I’d be in and out before anyone saw me.

  But grocery stores are filled with cameras. They’d see me.

  I’m tempted, so tempted to sneak out to the grocery store. I haven’t done something so ordinary in years. And cooking… it’s been so long. I used to love it, back before I was Minerva. I want to give Elliot something cooked by me, with affection.

  I look again at his laptop. Next to it is his phone.

  Delivery. The reason why I haven’t been grocery shopping in forever is because I get groceries delivered. I don’t need to go out—I can have it brought to me.

  Except I don’t have a credit card. Or cash. I need someone to help. The only person I can think who can…

  I swallow hard. Anjie made it more than clear that she does not like me. She’s not going to be pleased if I call her asking for a grocery delivery. I’d rather call anyone else but her.

  Although there isn’t anyone else. If I want to help Elliot, I need to swallow my pride.

  When I pick up his phone, the home screen immediately comes up. He doesn’t even have a password on it. Oh, Elliot. We really need to have a chat about IT security. But first…

  I do an internal fist pump when I see his contacts list. There’s Anjie, right there at the top. I hit the Call button.

  While it rings, I run upstairs to check on Elliot. He’s where I left him, in a restless sleep. His brow is knotted and his limbs are tense. As if he’s physically fighting the illness, even in his sleep. Poor guy.

  “Hey!” Anjie sounds so happy when she answers. “How are things?”

  I clear my throat. “Uh, it’s not Elliot. It’s Em—Minerva.”

  “Oh.” Anjie’s voice drops into disappointment. “How did you get Elliot’s phone?”

  “He’s ill.”

  Before I can finish, she’s talking over me. “Oh my goodness! He’s never sick. I’ll send someone over right away. You know what? I’ll be over myself. Give me fifteen minutes.”

  Clearly she doesn’t think I’m capable of taking care of him. And she doesn’t want me alone with him while he’s sick.

  “We’re fine,” I say flatly, putting the emphasis on we. “I don’t need you to come over. I need you to make a grocery order.”

  There’s long beat of silence. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  I do my Minerva laugh, fake and a little mocking. “There are several armed guards watching this place. What do you think a delivery person could do?”

  Another long beat of silence. I wonder if she’ll come out and just say she doesn’t want me alone there with Elliot.

  “What does Elliot want?” she asks. “Can you put him on the phone?”

  “He’s sleeping right now, with a very high fever. He needs his rest, but I could wake him up…”

  “No.” She says it grudgingly. “I guess if you’d tied him and escaped you wouldn’t be calling me to order groceries.”

  I smile to myself. “No, I wouldn’t. Can you help me? Us?”

  When she speaks again, some of the hostility has left her tone. “Give me your list and I’ll take care of it.”

  “Thank you.” I start to tick off what I need. “Herbal tea, 7UP, crackers, chicken noodle—” I stop, reconsider. “No, wait. Get me a whole chicken, celery, garlic, onions, carrots, and egg noodles. And some good bread.”

  “Are you making chicken noodle from scratch?”

  “Yes.” I nod, although she can’t see me. I haven’t cooked in so long, and I suddenly can’t think of anything I want to do more. If I’m going to make some soup, then I’m going to make some soup.

  “Okay,” Anjie says reluctantly. “Anything else?”

  “Um, eggs and bacon too.” I can make some breakfast as well.

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes. And thank you again.”

  Once I’ve hung up, I head back downstairs and start pulling out the pots, pans, knives, and utensils I’ll need. Elliot might not have any food, but he’s got a well-stocked kitchen tool wise.

  The knock at the door thirty minutes later makes me jump even though I’m expecting it. Although maybe not quite that quickly.

  One of the security guards is there, holding four or five grocery bags. “You ordered these?”

  “Thank you so much.” I’m considerably nicer to him than I was to Anjie as I take the bags. “I’ve got it from here.”

  “Is everything in there? The delivery person needs confirmation.”

  I do a quick visual check. “Yep. It’s all there.”

  Upstairs, I can hear Elliot yelling.

  The security guard glances at the noise, then back at me.

  “He’s sick,” I explain.

  “That’s what Ms. Caprice said. Hope he feels better.”

  I give the guard a wave in farewell, then set the bags in the kitchen before I head up the stairs. Elliot is still yelling for me.

  “I’m coming,” I call up.

  “What the fuck?” is how he greets me. He’s trying to sit up, but he’s only gotten halfway. “Who was that?”

  “Grocery delivery.” I put my hands on my hips as I study him. He looks awful.

  “You had groceries delivered?” He tries for “thunderous frown” but only hits “mildly confused.”

  “I had to. You need food. Real food.” I try to push him back down, but he won’t budge. “And the guards brought it to me.”

  “It’s still dangerous. You shouldn’t have done that.”

  Scolding Elliot might be my favorite pastime. He’s just so deliciously stern. I want to kiss that frown off his face and then make him frown all over again.

  “Well, I did it anyway.” I give up on trying to get him to lie down. “Trust me, once you taste my chicken noodle soup, you’ll thank me.”

  He flops down on his own. “You’re making soup? From scratch?”

  I nod.

  “I don’t need this,” he rumbles ungratefully.

  “Are you this mean to whoever usually takes care of you when you’re sick?”

  “Nobody takes care of me when I’m sick.” He lies back against the pillows with a long sigh.

  “Oh.”

  His expression goes fierce. “Don’t look at me like that. No one takes care of you when you’re sick.”

  “You did.”

  He doesn’t say anything, just closes his eyes.

  That’s my cue to leave him to sleep.

  But as I get off the bed, he takes my hand. Not my wrist or my arm, but my hand. And his grip is gentle.

  “Please stay.” It’s not a command. Or even a request. It’s a plea.

  Can he hear my heart cracking? Because I certainly can.

  “Sure.” I lie next to him, tucking my knees and arms close to me. I’m on top of the coverlet and he’s under it—exactly the inverse of when we first shared a bed. “Do you need anything?”

  He shakes his head, his hair scuffing along the pillow. It’s a soft, intimate sound. “I already feel better.”

  Without thinking, I roll over and feel his forehead. “Still too hot. Your fever hasn’t gone down at all.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant.”

  I’m s
uddenly, achingly aware of how close we are. And how his skin is positively burning up under my palm.

  Chapter 19

  When I wake up, she’s still there.

  Minerva in her sleep is something else. She curls in on herself like a hedgehog, all prickly on the outside and soft cuteness on the inside. Her mouth is slightly open, and she’s making a noise that’s not quite a snore but more than simply breathing.

  I reach over to touch her cheek, then stop myself. I might be feeling sentimental—and much, much better, thanks to her nursing—but that’s a line I shouldn’t cross. Angry kisses and orgasms are one thing. Intimacy is another.

  I’ve already crossed too many lines with her. I have to hold some of them.

  I run my hands through my hair, which is slightly damp from the shower. I woke up sometime last night, maybe even the morning, feeling better but also gross. The fever broke, but the sweat still clung to me. So I’d showered, cleaned up my beard and brushed my teeth, then collapsed back into bed. The effort wore me out.

  Before I did though, I put Minerva under the covers since she looked cold.

  I have to go into the office today. I need to question Dev more closely about what he’s up to, see what Finn’s come up with, and research more of Minerva’s legal options. I’ve got some contacts at the FBI—there might be some way to grant her some kind of immunity if she comes forward.

  It’s not likely though. All the cases I’ve read don’t end well for the whistle-blowers, especially when it comes to evidence as explosive as this, involving two very secretive government agencies.

  “Hey.” She stretches and opens her eyes, her shirt pulling across her chest. Her nipples—

  I make myself look away.

  “Feeling better?” she asks. Before I can stop her, she’s got her palm on my forehead. “Oh yeah, the fever’s gone.”

  “I just needed a few hours’ sleep.”

  She laughs. “A few hours? Try a whole day. I roasted an entire chicken and made soup while you were sleeping.”

  “Really?” I don’t remember any of that. “How did you get the groceries?”

  “I called Anjie.”

  I suddenly remember Dev saying that she’d emailed a reporter. She could have done anything while I was asleep. My laptop was sitting out in plain sight.

  “Is that all you did?” It comes out angrier than I wanted, but the thought of her sneaking around with my laptop is a burr in my brain.

  “Pretty much.” She looks innocent. But she’s also very good at acting.

  “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  She’s not fazed. “It’ll help you feel better once you eat something decent. Even better than you do now.”

  I don’t feel better. I feel frustrated and surly and amped up. Like I’m a starving bear being teased with food.

  Her hand drops. “You don’t have to say thank you. My reward is your improved health.”

  I hate it when she’s right. “Thank you. But if anything had happened to you…”

  “I know.” She blinks. “I was afraid too. But you’re well now.”

  Our gazes lock for a long moment. My skin crackles with the energy between us. She’s so close, looking so delicious, so tempting.

  I clear my throat, shattering the tension. “I have to go in today.”

  She ducks her head, nods. “I figured. But you can eat first.”

  I follow her downstairs. She bustles around the kitchen, heating up the soup, some chicken, and some bread. It all smells amazing.

  “You cooked all this?” I ask.

  She nods as she sets a bowl and plate in front of me. “I used to like to cook. Before.”

  I take a sip of the steaming soup, then close my eyes. Goddamn, but that’s amazing. “This is the best chicken soup I’ve ever had.”

  She smiles and ducks her head. “I’m out of practice.” She tucks into her own bowl, and for a few moments we simply share a meal together. I haven’t had a home-cooked meal in… forever, and every bite is bliss. She’s right—I feel so much better.

  “I’ve been looking at legal remedies for you.” I make my tone hopeful although it’s unnatural to me.

  “Yeah,” she says heavily. “I’m guessing there aren’t many.” She lifts her head. “How did you become a lawyer? And end up at a venture capital firm?”

  I don’t know that anyone’s ever asked me that. People just seem to assume that I was born a lawyer or something.

  “My dad.” My chest gets tight at the very mention of him.

  “Oh. So he was a lawyer too.”

  I shake my head. “He wasn’t anything but a fuckup.”

  “Really? But you’re so…” She gestures at me as if to say Look at you. “You’re the farthest thing from a fuckup.”

  I don’t let the praise get to me. “Dad never held a steady job. Not once. Every few months he’d come home, say that this time it would be different. That this was his big chance. And then like clockwork, he’d come home talking shit about management, his coworkers, how they fucked him over and he was glad to be rid of that job anyway.”

  I remember each and every time it happened too. Probably because the script never changed. It was never his fault, always someone else’s.

  “I’m sorry,” she says quietly.

  I shrug, short and sharp, because my chest is too tight for anything else. “The worst was the get-rich-quick schemes. He’d lose a job, then take whatever money Mom had managed to save and throw it all away on bullshit. Just utter bullshit. I could see it as a kid even, so that tells you how fucking dumb he was.”

  All the old bitterness is running through me, acid across my tongue. I don’t tell people about this because I know I get too mean. Too nasty.

  He’s your father. You have to love him. That’s what Mom always said.

  Well, no, I didn’t. Not when he was responsible for all our miseries as a family.

  Minerva isn’t shocked. Her head is cocked, her expression open. Like this is all interesting instead of appalling. “You hate him.”

  I open my mouth to protest, but she stops me.

  “No, I recognize it. Because you hate me too.”

  I let my gaze fall to my bowl. “I don’t hate you. Not anymore. But I do hate him. I’m not supposed to, but I do.”

  Her hand steals across the table, finds mine. I don’t curl my fingers around hers. I just let her hold on to me.

  I don’t want her to say that it’s okay, that it’s understandable, or even worse, that I don’t really hate him. Because I really do. And it’s an awful feeling.

  “So you became a lawyer because you needed order,” she finally says. “And because you really like to argue.”

  “There was so much goddamn chaos.” I close my eyes, held against my will by the memories. “Like… like steel wool against my fucking brain, all the time.”

  Her fingers tighten on mine. “I’m sorry. I know… It’s hard to be in a place that makes you fight your own nature.”

  Meaning that working for Corvus was kind of the same for her.

  “What were your parents like?” I’m genuinely curious. “What kind of upbringing produced a Minerva Dyne?”

  My path to becoming Elliot Martell is pretty clear. Uptight kid is raised by an out-of-control loser, becomes an even more uptight adult in response. Her path is completely unclear though.

  “That’s not my name.” She says it so simply I almost think I’ve misunderstood. “It’s Emily.” Her mouth flattens. “That’s who I am. Emily.”

  I don’t dare move, like I’ve sighted a deer in the woods or something. She didn’t realize she’d given me her name before… but she’s doing it knowingly now.

  This wide fluttering in my chest must be trust. Because nothing else could explain what’s happening between us.

  “Emily.” I test it out, fitting it to the woman before me. Because she’s not really Minerva, not anymore. Minerva would never be this soft, this giving. And while I was attracted as all hell
to Minerva, it’s nothing like the need I feel for her now. “Emily.”

  She smiles, kind of shy. “Yeah. My parents were… ordinary people. Good people, kind, but I was always hard into these causes. Save the whales, recycle, stop eating meat.” She puts a hand over her mouth. “I used to be a vegetarian.” She raises a stricken gaze to mine. “But Minerva wouldn’t have been one.”

  I turn my hand over in hers. When my fingers curl closed, I completely encompass her hand. “You can be one again. I’ll order fake chicken noodle soup instead.”

  She shakes her head, grabs her stomach. For a moment I wonder if she’s going to be sick, if I need to grab a trash can. But all she does is push her plate away. “It’s okay,” she says. “I’m just glad I was able to make something for you.”

  “I’m glad too,” I say.

  We share a smile, wry and a little battered. Kind of like us.

  When she speaks again, her tone is steady. “So, my parents. They loved me but were baffled by me, I think. They died in my senior year of high school, a car accident. I was already eighteen, so I just… finished on my own. Sold the house on my own, went off to college on my own.”

  I take our plates since we’re both finished. Once they’re in the sink, I pull her to her feet and we head back upstairs. I need to get ready, and she… I want her close to me.

  “Would they have been proud of you? Your parents?” That’s a foreign concept to me. Dad died before I finished college, not that he cared about my education, and Mom was always too tired from cleaning up after him to lavish much praise on us.

  Logan was proud when I finished law school. He was there to hug me when I walked across the stage to get my degree.

  Her face twists up. “I don’t know. Honestly, they would’ve tried to talk me out of it. And they probably would’ve succeeded. They had smaller dreams and ideals. Stuff that was closer to home.”

  I don’t know that the mixture of admiration and affection in my chest is pride, exactly. Pride seems simpler than this. And I don’t want to say something as silly as “I’m proud of you.”

  “Emily.”

  Her head snaps up, and there’s a flash of deep pleasure in her eyes. No one’s called her by her real name in forever, and she likes it.