by Lydia Rowan
“Oh, I will,” Sloan said, lingering for a moment as she looked at Lucian expectantly.
He pointedly ignored her too and stayed silent as he watched her leave.
“Not a word,” Lucian said when she had finally left.
“Silver, what are you talking about?” Adam asked.
“Fuck off, Adam,” Lucian said, which earned him one of his old friend’s rare full smiles and got laughs from Cruz and Seth.
“I think that’s our cue, gentlemen,” Cruz said, standing from the table. “I suspect Cassandra will be here in the next thirty seconds or so, and we want to give them their privacy.”
“I should fire all your asses,” Lucian said.
His only response was more laughter as the men left the room. It never failed to shock him how juvenile the best mercenaries money could buy could sometimes be. Nor did it fail to amaze him how much pleasure they took in needling him about Cassandra. In fact, Cruz had taken it easy on him today, and Adam and Seth hadn’t even joined in, for which Lucian was grateful.
They all had something. Adam gave Seth unrelenting shit about being the youngest. Seth returned with barbs about Adam’s “advancing age.” Lucian never let up on nice guy Cruz, and Saint was simply Saint. So Lucian supposed their fixation with Cassandra was the same, a part of the bond that held them together.
It wasn’t the team’s fault if their words hit a little too close to home, which they did.
Even now, his blood was thrumming with the anticipation of seeing her again, sparring with her again. He could guess what the conversation would be about, a continuation of yesterday’s aborted chat undoubtedly, but he didn’t actually care. It was enough to know he would see her, hear her voice, get to watch the flash in her eyes. And, yeah, at some point, she’d enrage him, but as far as he was concerned, that was simply the cost of admission and a price he’d gladly pay for a few minutes in her presence.
What the fuck was wrong with him?
That wasn’t a question he had long to consider. As Cruz had predicted, Cassandra soon arrived. “Lucian?”
Before his mind could tell him otherwise, his body responded to the sound of her voice, the soft and husky noise instantly conjuring thoughts of heated caresses in dark rooms, warm, heavy breaths, the way her voice would hitch when skin touched skin.
For a moment he allowed himself to enjoy the sound, the images it conjured, but only for a second. His eyelids had lowered, but he lifted them and finally let his gaze settle on the room’s newest occupant.
“Have a seat, Cassie,” he said, deliberately using that name and the predicted flash of anger in her eyes to create some distance between him and the heated thoughts that would overtake him if he didn’t.
After a moment’s pause, Cassandra strode into the room and settled into one of the conference room chairs. He kept his gaze on her face and didn’t let it drop. Instead, he took in her full lips, just this side of pouty, the only hint of softness in her otherwise icy expression. Strong jaw, feminine but not soft, sculpted cheekbones, rich brown eyes topped by a smooth brow.
Though he had been determined not to allow himself to look, Lucian felt his eyes begin to drift down, over the kissable brown skin of her neck and lower down the trail of skin that led down into her blouse. That was Cassandra, entirely put together, wrecking his equilibrium without effort.
Lucian looked into her eyes, saw a flash of something there, and then, despite his intention to remain cool, felt a shock of heat rush through him.
Attraction, anger, some combination of both probably. Lucian prided himself on his distance, his reserve, but they were meaningless when it came to her. Cassandra demanded a response, and Lucian hadn’t yet figured out how to keep from giving her one.
He caught a flash in her eyes, anticipation, preparation for what was to come, he knew. Cassandra had come here for a reason, one he expected she wouldn’t have a problem sharing.
She didn’t disappoint. Hadn’t, not once in the twenty-five months she’d worked with Silver Industries.
Her amber-brown eyes brightened and then lasered on him before she finally began to speak.
“My name’s Cassandra,” she said, her voice coming out a little deeper than usual, a husky bedroom voice Lucian wasn’t immune to though he knew quite well the bedroom was the furthest thing from her mind.
“Can I help you with something, Cassandra?” Lucian asked.
“I’d like to finish yesterday’s conversation, and I have a few other questions besides,” she said.
Lucian stayed silent for a moment, preparing himself. Cassandra’s “few questions” almost always blossomed into hours-long conversations, she and Lucian going back and forth on topics that ranged from mundane to major, neither he or Cassandra willing to give on any issue.
The low-level tension that had been present since she arrived notched higher, and Lucian prepared himself.
She smiled, the expression lifting her features in a way that gave her beautiful face a softness that was absent only moments ago. The calm before the storm, Lucian knew, something Cassandra proved when she again spoke.
“You know Vietnam was a fiasco, don’t you?” she said, her tone calm and easy, yet at odds with the words she’d said.
For a moment, he marveled at her, not at her attractiveness, which he couldn’t pretend he didn’t notice, but at the breezy way she delivered her little bombs. She didn’t blink, and she certainly never hesitated, instead simply delivering her statement as if it were entirely true.
“A fiasco?” Lucian said a moment later, feeling the tension notch even higher. He’d seen fiascoes, but his team was the best, and even when a mission didn’t go according to plan, they always did the job as best it could possibly be done, so her assertion put him on the defensive. “A little harsh, don’t you think, Cassie?”
She quirked her brow, about as exercised as Lucian ever saw her, no doubt her response to his second use of her hated nickname in as many minutes. But she quickly recovered.
“Harsh?” Her voice was still easy, though it dripped with Cassandra’s special mix of disbelief and scorn. “No, Lucian. I don’t think it was harsh at all,” she said.
“Care to explain?” he asked, though he knew she didn’t need an invitation.
Cassandra leaned back in her executive chair, the movement enough to draw Lucian’s gaze down to the roundness of her luscious breasts. He looked at her face quickly, not daring to risk lingering, let alone giving in to the impulse to look lower, to the curve of her waist or her full hip. He knew danger when he saw it.
She opened the leather folio that laid on the conference table in front of her, and Lucian watched as she made a show of lifting the sheet of paper that laid on top and reading it.
“Let’s see,” she said, eyes scanning the sheet, “Silver Industries ran an illegal military operation in a foreign country, violated only God knows how many international laws, and had an employee executed by a foreign government.” She dropped the paper and again met his eyes. “Sounds like a textbook fiasco to me.”
“Ex-employee. And we didn’t violate any laws. Many laws,” he corrected after she again quirked her brow.
That wasn’t entirely accurate.
Lucian could think of at least fifty laws that some part of the Vietnam operation had violated, but he couldn’t let himself get lost in the finer points with Cassandra. It was a losing proposition, and she would press the advantage. She took her role very, very seriously, and would use any whiff of potential wrongdoing by Lucian and his men as a tool against him.
His brother Damien had chosen well when he had selected Cassandra, though it still pissed Lucian off he’d hired her at all, pissed him off that his family had been forced into the position of having to take on shareholders because it was the only way Silver Industries could survive.
Cassandra watched him, silently daring him to contradict her. Still, he was reluctant to get into the details with her, so he took a different approach.
�
�We did a good thing,” he said, gaze not wavering from hers. “We took down an organization that trafficked in nearly extinct animals. Exposed a dozen corrupt military officials from four different countries. Not to mention that ex-employee was a traitor, one who put the team, not to mention Cruz’s wife’s life, at risk.”
Lucian continued to watch Cassandra after he’d spoken, the long table that separated them keeping physical distance between them but doing nothing to decrease the intensity flowing between them.
“Lucian,” she said, her voice changing in a subtle, almost imperceptible way. There was something like understanding in the sound, but Lucian knew he hadn’t won her over. Cassandra confirmed as much with her next words. “You have to be careful. The world doesn’t work the way it used to,” she said.
Her words set Lucian on edge, lit the ember of anger that had been brewing on a low simmer in the background. “I don’t need you to tell me how the world works, Cassie,” he said, letting edge bleed into his voice.
She gave no outward sign she had noticed the change in his tone, but he knew she had. “Don’t you?” she said.
He held her gaze and she his, and for a moment they sat in ever-thickening silence.
Finally, her expression softened, only a little but enough that some of the anger that beat at the back of Lucian’s mind began to fade. “You did a good thing. I’m glad Cruz could break up that animal trafficking ring, that he found Nola. But you guys just can’t go traipsing around, doing whatever, and messily, I might add,” she said.
“Of course we can. It’s a messy world, Cassandra. I suppose it’s easy to forget with the nice office building and civilized conference room, but we’re mercenaries. That is exactly what we’re supposed to do,” he said.
“That you think so is exactly why your brother hired me,” she said.
Lucian didn’t show how her words rankled, nor would he admit that there may have been a shred of truth in what she said. His team worked by the book to the extent possible; they were good guys, but the world was complicated, far more than he had recognized when he’d joined his brother’s merry band of mercenaries. But he didn’t exactly appreciate Cassandra’s or the shareholders’ interference.
“Look, Lucian,” Cassandra said, her voice even softer with actual understanding this time, “I get it. You have a job to do, and I know you do it well and with the best of intentions.”
“But,” he said, knowing that there was a “but,” and hating that her lack of confidence in him hit him so hard.
“But we have to be careful,” she replied with finality.
“We do, but I’m not going to be hamstrung or interfered with,” he said.
“You know I have no interest in doing either,” she said.
Lucian let the short, barked-out laugh emerge, that sound conveying what he thought of that better than words would.
She gave him a grudging smile. “Clearly you disagree, but I don’t. However, I won’t hold my tongue if you aren’t running operations appropriately,” she said.
“Meaning?” he asked, leaning back in his chair and overlooking her grating use of the word “appropriately.”
“Meaning by the book,” she replied easily, unruffled.
He laughed again, wondering if she was really as naive as that. “You think there’s a book?”
That got a response, and Lucian didn’t miss the way her face turned down with her displeasure.
“Lucian—”
He cut her off. “We can agree to disagree about philosophy, so let’s get to the heart of the matter. What exactly do you want? Concrete terms, Cassandra. And no nonsense about counting bullets,” he said.
“What I’ve always asked for. You need to keep me in the loop. Tell me about your plans and include me in the process. Help me help you,” she said earnestly.
When she went silent, sitting up straight, her eyes lit with conviction, Lucian watched her as she watched back. A few seconds later, he laughed. Seemed not only was she naive but she knew her way around a cliché too. Cassandra soon joined in his laughter, the smile again giving her face a lightness and beauty that was so rare, so treasured.
She shrugged. “Okay, so ‘help me help you’ isn’t exactly an eloquent expression, but you get the point. Yes, I report to the shareholders, but I care about Silver Industries. Whether you want to recognize it or not, I’m an asset. Use me,” she said.
The reaction was immediate, unwanted, and after a second, Lucian could see the spark in Cassandra’s eyes, the flash that she struggled to suppress. Use her? He could do that, had thought of all the ways how he could, how she could use him, but now wasn’t the time or place, though the insistent and increasing throb of his instant erection made him regret that.
Cassandra cleared her throat, again bringing Lucian back to the present, and when he gazed at her, he knew she still had more to say.
“What, Cassie?” he asked, his voice edged with question and the certainty he wouldn’t like her answer, the intense sexiness of the moment ebbing.
“I need input on personnel decisions,” she said.
The heated moment passed in a blink, fast enough that Lucian almost forgot it had happened. Cassandra sensed the shift too, and Lucian could see her calculating her next response. He hadn’t said anything, but she knew she had touched a topic Lucian considered nonnegotiable.
She knew that, but Lucian would make the point plain anyway. “And here I was thinking we were making progress,” he said nonchalantly. But despite how he may have sounded, he felt the scowl twisting his features, felt the pressure burning at his fingers as he gripped the table. Yet another illustration of how she could so quickly throw him off course.
“My guys are off the table, Cassandra. No one, not even you, has any input on that,” he said.
“As—”
He cut her off. “I don’t care what your position is, don’t care that my brother hired you, and I don’t care who you report to. My team is off the table.”
The tightness in her jaw, the slight narrowing of her eyes, the way she leaned forward, setting her shoulders in a defensive hunch, looking ready to pounce, told him she didn’t intend to let this go.
Her tenacity was one of her most annoying traits—and one of her most appealing, but even his admiration for her, his attraction to her, didn’t change the fact his team was his, and his alone. Nor did her displeasure. In this he would not relent. The team was the thing that made Silver Industries run, the trust between them something that couldn’t be bought but instead could only be nurtured through time and experience. And Lucian wouldn’t screw with it, upset that rare and delicate balance for any reason. He’d shut Silver Industries down first.
After a long moment, Cassandra nodded faintly, her lids dropping and some of the tension leaving her jaw, a signal that the subject was tabled for now, though Lucian expected the topic would come up again.
“Your team, your responsibility,” she said.
“Mine,” he said, some of the tension leaving him a moment later. After another moment of eying Cassandra, he asked, “Who are you worried about in particular?”
“All of them,” she said.
He laughed. “Lacking your usual precision, Cassie,” he said.
She frowned slightly. “Well, since you asked, you need to keep an eye on Marcus. Adam too,” she added.
Lucian shrugged. “Have you met Saint? With my eye on him or not, he’ll do whatever he wants.”
“That fills me with confidence, Lucian,” she said sarcastically.
“Happy to be of service,” he replied.
She frowned deeper. “I reserve the right to revisit this topic,” she said.
“I had a feeling you would. My guys will still be off-limits,” Lucian replied.
Cassandra stayed silent but the little tilt of her head was a promise of what was to come. Lucian didn’t look forward to that day. Going toe-to-toe with Cassandra on matters of vital importance while he did everything in his power not to ogle h
er tits took a lot out of him.
She looked at her watch. “It’s getting late. Until next time,” she said.
She gave him a terse nod, stood, and then turned to exit without giving him another glance.
After the door closed again, Lucian felt himself relaxing further, giving himself over to the thoughts of Cassandra and this little dance of theirs.
When his brother had first admitted the seriousness of Silver Industries’ debt and the necessity of taking on shareholders, Lucian had been upset but understood that they’d had no other choice. And then Damien had told him that shareholder money came with all kinds of strings, one of the main ones being a full-time shareholder liaison who would be embedded in the company.
Lucian’s reaction had been immediate and intense. Bureaucracy had been part of the reason he’d left the military and gone into private work, so the idea of such oversight, having a person inside the company who wasn’t fully on board, had been unthinkable. But Damien had made it clear they had no other options and tried to reassure him he’d selected the best possible person. Lucian had been irritated but determined to be fair. After all, it wasn’t her fault she was caught in the middle of Damien’s shit storm.
So he’d planned to do his best to be as accommodating as he could be, open, and after they went through the getting-to-know-you phrase and Lucian had figured out if he could trust her, he might even consider listening to her.
Cassandra had had none of it.
She’d shown up on her very first day, prim, proper, and oh so fuckable, enough to distract usually focused Lucian. Or it had been until, mere minutes after their introduction, she had proceeded to tell Lucian everything she’d thought needed to change at Silver Industries and then proceeded to push hard to see those changes come to fruition.
And damned if she hadn’t gotten almost all of what she wanted. Reports, systems, processes all implemented at Cassandra’s insistence. Even the very table he now sat at was her idea, the beloved air hockey table that used to occupy this space now relegated to the break room. It had taken six months for the guys to finally let him live that down.