by Lena Hart
She was suddenly eager to leave his office, but David continued rattling off a short list of tasks he needed her to attend to that morning. Her to-do list was steadily growing and it wasn’t even eight thirty yet. She couldn’t forget the branding meetings that she still had to finish prepping for, which was due to start in the next half hour.
“Is there anything else?” she finally asked when he fell silent.
He shook his head. “Just be sure those invoices get back to finance, signed, by noon.”
Before she could say anything, his phone rang and he reached for it. Judith took that as her cue to leave, which she did quickly, shutting the door behind her to give him some privacy.
On her desk, she found a bundle of notepads she must have missed when she’d placed her bag and coffee down.
She couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at her lips. Carlos.
He must have left them there for her last night, after she’d practically bolted out of the office. Her smile faltered when she remembered what had caused her frantic urgency to be as far from him and Royal Courts as she could get. How was she supposed to face him today?
“Hey Judith, do you have time for a coffee break?”
She glanced up to find Brian coming up to her desk. “Sorry, but I’m super swamped this morning.” Though she enjoyed their occasional coffee breaks, Judith certainly couldn’t spare what little time she had that morning on gossip.
Brian, however, was determined to spark it. He was practically bubbling over to tell her the latest news.
“Did you hear what happened last night?”
Judith kept her expression cool and shook her head, hoping the anxiety and mortification wasn’t plain for the young man to see.
“There was a break-in to one of the executive offices last night,” he said, his voice pitched dramatically low. “Nothing was taken supposedly, but from what I heard the guy tried to hack into the system and caused the servers to crash instead.”
Judith’s heart pounded in her chest. Guy? Did they wrongly catch someone for this? She sincerely hoped not. She wouldn’t be able to stand the guilt.
“Can you believe this?” Brian exclaimed when she still hadn’t responded. “Someone tried to shut the company down!”
Her stomach flipped. She could only hope that Brian read her stunned silence as shock to his news.
“How—uh, where did you hear this all from?” she managed to ask. “It’s barely nine o’clock.”
“I have a friend in security,” he said with a small shrug. “No one could believe it when one of the co-founders showed up and stayed here all night while his computer was being worked on.”
She forced lightness into her voice. “Do they know who it was?”
“Nope, I don’t think so. Can you imagine how pissed that must make them?”
“Yeah, it’s crazy,” she murmured mechanically, glancing at her boss’ closed door. She wondered what thoughts had been going on behind those cool gray eyes this morning.
On second thought, she didn’t really want to know.
As soon as Brian left, she sat back on her seat and blew out a breath.
What a mess.
Her once quiet, simple life had gone from having spoonfuls of ice cream with Prince to being blackmailed into committing a crime and getting hickeys from Carlos Moreno.
Everything was happening so fast and she again seriously contemplated putting in her notice. The idea had plagued her last night and now it seemed like her only viable option. If they ever found out it had been her, how was she to explain the paralyzing fear that had made her do it? The thought of Ken’s impending parole wasn’t far from her mind and left her almost sick with worry. When he got out, would he come after her?
If that woman had found her, then so could anyone. Even Ken. That wasn’t a risk Judith wanted to take. She would do anything to keep her monster in his closet, and starting over seemed like her best course of action.
Eventually, she would just have to forget Carlos and learn to put him behind her.
Her heart fell at the thought.
Deep down, she didn’t want that. She didn’t want to think of never seeing him again, or starting her life over. She had gotten accustomed to this one and didn’t want it to change.
Pushing the miserable thoughts aside, Judith let everything about yesterday—the letter, the phone call, the flash drive, Carlos’ kiss—fall from her mind. She glanced up and noticed a pretty woman walking toward her desk, a visitor’s pass clipped on her green blouse.
“Hi, I’m Nina Conners from Holstein & Levy,” the woman began with a friendly smile. “I’m here for this week’s branding workshops.”
Judith immediately recognized the name. Royal Courts’ new publicist. Though she had helped set up the woman’s travel from Boston, they had only spoken on the phone. Judith forced her anxiety deep inside her, along with the rest of her fears and worries, and returned the woman’s smile.
“We’re glad to have you with us this week, Ms. Conners,” Judith greeted politely. “How was your trip?”
Between assisting both executives, helping with the branding meetings, and now having to attend to the company’s new publicist, Judith had a long, busy week ahead of her and that left no time to wallow away on worries or regrets.
****
Carlos sat back in his seat and rubbed his gritty eyes.
He’d been staring at the dual monitors on his desk all last night and had resumed again that morning. Most of his night had been spent in front of the computer. After he’d met with the executives, he had sifted through the surveillance videos on their floor. They had agreed to keep last nights’ incident quiet, which left him to do the task alone. But the longer he looked at the footage, the more he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
To his great annoyance, they had found that the other cameras in the central part of that floor had been disabled, which didn’t leave him much to peruse.
Whoever they were dealing with was clearly a professional.
Just thinking about last night and what they’d discovered still left him puzzled, which irritated the hell out of him. Why had the person been downloading information from the company’s servers? What exactly were they looking for?
Those were just some of the questions plaguing Carlos since he’d met with the two co-founders last night. He suspected the men didn’t fully trust him yet and he could understand their reservations. It hadn’t been that long ago since their last security chief had gotten them and the casino resort tied to one of the biggest money-laundering cases the city had seen in some time. The executives had been put under heavy scrutiny and Carlos couldn’t fault them for their wariness.
However, he wouldn’t allow them to challenge his competence.
The meeting last night with the two executives had been tense. They’d been full of suspicion, unspoken blame, and a bit of condescension. Not that Carlos had that problem with David, but the other one was proving to be just a bit more jaded. Carlos wouldn’t have let the other co-founder’s attitude bother him if the man wasn’t so damn arrogant with his distrust. Carlos’ only excuse for the other man’s hard attitude was that, unlike David, he didn’t really know him.
Not that David knew much about him either. It had been through a mutual friend that Carlos had landed the position at Royal Courts, and he prided himself on the fact that he’d come to the casino resort with an extensive amount of his own experience. Carlos had worked under the best in the field in several popular casinos after he’d completed his active duty in the Marines. He’d learned fast and it hadn’t been long before he was managing a security unit of his own.
Coming to Royal Courts had been yet another great opportunity, and a step up as far as his responsibilities, but Carlos was also good at his job and was starting to resent having to prove to the other co-founder that he was nothing like their last security chief, Jeffrey Bates.
But it was evident he would need to show them, and the quickest way
to do that was to find this bastard who’d slipped right under their nose.
Both executives had their theories about who it could have possibly been, but Carlos would let the video lead him to the right direction. His gut told him the answer was here somewhere in these clips, he just needed to stay alert and watch for the sign.
Except the longer he looked at them, the less he was finding anything useful. All he’d seen so far were those who had been in the vicinity of the office and for everyone they managed to identify, no one came up as suspicious or not having a right to be there.
It was frustrating work, but Carlos wouldn’t let up.
He returned his attention to the footage on the screen. He’d studied each piece of recording for hours now and still couldn’t find anything that would help them get any closer to figuring out who’d managed to slip in and leave the flash drive. It didn’t help either that they only had a few video footages to work with.
The angle also wasn’t the best and there wasn’t much traffic, but he kept his focus on the monitor. He caught a glimpse of a familiar red skirt and couldn’t help but smile. He remembered that skirt—and what had been underneath it.
He also remembered their dinner date tonight and couldn’t contain his anticipation. This was another step in breaking down her walls, though last night had confirmed for him that the attraction definitely wasn’t one sided. Now, he would get a chance to be with her outside the office, and convince her that he wasn’t some big, bad wolf who only wanted to eat her up…again.
Carlos grinned ruefully at the thought.
He glanced over at the small plastic bag containing the flash drive. He planned to drop it off with his cousin later. Tristan was an ex-cop and he was hoping his connections could help them get the small device checked for prints and possibly give them something more concrete to work with.
In the meantime, Carlos would continue reviewing all video clips from yesterday.
He pulled up another clip and began studying the next video footage. There was obviously a major flaw in their system, one that he had overlooked, that allowed whoever this person was to not only gain access into the building but also disable their cameras. Unless the person they were dealing with had gotten help from someone internally.
If that was the case, they had a serious problem.
He hated to think they could be dealing with that kind of shit again, but it was becoming a possibility he could no longer ignore.
****
“I’ll type these up and send them over to you,” Judith said, coming to her feet. “Is there anything else you need before I leave tonight?”
She waited as David rounded his desk to his seat, glad that the day had finally come to an end. It had truly been a whirlwind, one made worse by her colossal screw-up that had led to a firm talking to with her boss.
“Did you get the invoices over to finance?”
Judith nodded stiffly. “I did,” she said, glancing down at the notes in her hands, still embarrassed by her failure to complete the simple but time-sensitive task. “Sorry again about this morning.”
She had only needed to get two more signatures on the invoices he’d handed her that morning, and one of them included his business partner’s. The idea of going back to that office filled her with so much anxiety that she forced it out of her mind just to get through her other tasks. But then she’d completely forgotten about it and missed the noon deadline.
David hadn’t been happy about it, reprimanding her in a way that made her feel useless and small. And when he’d confronted her about her obvious growing tension, she blurted the first lie that had come to mind—one that she had regretted after.
Lying about a sick relative was bad karma, she knew that, but a part of her knew that she already had no one. If she had, she would have never uttered those words just to excuse her incompetence and cover her growing anxiety.
“Don’t worry about it, Judith,” he said. His face now softened from the grim, disapproving expression that had been there earlier. “Everyone’s entitled to have a bad day. If you need some personal time off to take care of your grandmother, just let us know.”
She nodded again. “Thank you,” she murmured hollowly. Over the years, she had gotten good at hiding her emotions, but it hadn’t come in handy earlier, when she needed to keep him from seeing the guilt that was plaguing her. So she’d lied.
She was getting good at lying—and she was really starting to hate this person she was becoming.
“Now go home,” David said, though his light tone took the bite out of the command. “You don’t need to stay late working on that.” He motioned to the now longer list of gala invitees in her hand. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
She’d planned to stay late and work on typing and organizing the list, to make up for her blunder that morning, but was grateful for his gentle yet firm dismissal. She needed to go home and sort herself out. She wished him a good night and made her way to the door just as a hard knock came.
“Yeah?” David called out.
She couldn’t help the small tingle that crawled over her stomach when Carlos opened the door. Their eyes locked before he glanced over at David. Heat rushed to her face from the look in his dark, sensual gaze.
She hadn’t seen him all day, but he hadn’t been far from her mind and she’d been both relieved and disappointed when he hadn’t made the effort to see her. Though, she should have been grateful, a part of her had missed his seductive smile and corny jokes. Seeing him now, a small bubble of joy swelled up inside her.
“Have a second?” Carlos asked.
David motioned him in the office and Judith rushed toward the door. Carlos, however, did not move from his stance there. Last night in the supply room was never far from her mind. Now, under the glaring office light, she tried to restrain the memories from flooding to her. Keeping her eyes carefully averted, she continued out of the office.
“Good night, Judith,” Carlos said as she rushed past.
Her steps faltered. He rarely said her name, mainly when others were around, but it still held that special note in it. The kind that said she was…his. She paused briefly, trying to find her voice.
“Good night, Mr. Moreno.”
She could literally feel the charged air passing between them as she slipped out of the office. She didn’t release her pent up breath until she was safely at her desk. She wondered when she would get use to her reaction to him. It wasn’t normal. She had never felt this way with anyone. Not even with Ken.
At the thought of her ex-fiancé, her stomach knotted and she shoved the crippling feelings back into the small, dark part of her where it belonged and instead glanced at David Carrone’s closed office door. What were they meeting about? Were they discussing last night?
The stress of it all was driving her crazy. She kept waiting for security to haul her away from her desk. Or would they confront her in her boss’ office? Would Carlos be there? Would he hate her after he found out about this? She didn’t think she could bare it if he hated her.
The longer she sat there, pretending as if nothing had happened, the greater her anxiety grew.
While she could have been halfway to her apartment by now, Judith decided to stay and type the new list of names. It hadn’t been much anyway, though she secretly knew it was just an excuse she was giving herself to linger so she could see Carlos again.
But she completed the task in no time and yet still, he hadn’t emerged. It wasn’t until she was preparing to leave that he finally walked up to her.
Without a word, he came around the desk and grabbed her hand.
She frowned. “What…?”
But he held a finger to his lips and pulled her into a nearby conference room. He shut the door then pushed her back against it. She held her breath, as he leaned forward. She waited for the heady sensation of his lips to touch hers, but to her surprise and disappointment, he placed a light kiss on her cheek, a fraction of an inch away from her lips. The coarse hai
r of his thin beard grazed a warm path down her face. She shivered and released a breath.
“What are you doing?” she asked fiercely, keeping her voice low.
“Nothing yet.”
His hands were on either side of her, keeping her trapped between him and the cool door behind her. He was close, heat radiated from him, but they were barely touching. Though, the way he looked down at her was like its own sensual caress.
“We shouldn’t be in here. Someone could come in and see us.”
His dark brows furrowed slightly. “I’m getting tired of people butting in between us.”
She tilted her head to the side, confused. But he shook his head, outlining the edge of her jaw with the pads of his thumb.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “I just hate the thought of someone coming between us, messing this up for us, when things are still so new.”
She took a deep breath, his words secretly filling her with a heady pleasure and anticipation for something more. Her gaze travelled to his lips and she couldn’t look away. He caught the telltale action and smiled.
“Did you miss me, muñeca?”
She had. Very much. But he would probably just gloat over it so there was no need for her to inflate his ego.
“I know you missed me,” he continued when she remained quiet. “Don’t pretend that you didn’t.”
“I’ve been busy,” she retorted.
His gaze was penetrating, intense. She had to look away.
“I’ve been busy too, but I still missed you,” he said.
Her eyes swung back up to his, and she swallowed hard. His words were like a warm, soothing balm over her rigid body. He was always so confident and open with his feelings. For a moment, she envied him for that, wondering what would it be like to share her feelings freely, to let herself be vulnerable again.
His gaze drifted down to her lips and he shifted closer to her. She placed her hand hesitantly on his abdomen to stop his advancement. It was hard to the touch and flexed under her fingers.