“I meant to wake you up a while ago, but I figured you needed your rest.” Actually, he’d gone as far as to enter into her room to wake her. But the sight of her had stopped him cold. She’d obviously had a restless night. All the covers were kicked onto the floor in one big lump, and her hair was a sweaty mess around her face. As he watched, her legs kicked out as if even in her sleep she was fighting off her attacker.
But it wasn’t the first time she’d had to fight for her life. He knew it from reading her file, and there was visual proof in the small but devastating scar on her upper thigh. The bullet wound that was the reason for her transfer to New York City in the first place.
After seeing how restless her night had been, Luke hadn’t been able to bring himself to wake her. She needed every moment of sleep she could get. And now he was grateful he hadn't. She looked refreshed, almost no hint of redness left in or around her eyes and her damp hair was drying into the curls he’d become so fond of.
Even though she was in her pajamas, she’d put on her bra, which was a great shame. Her thin, flimsy top had done almost nothing to hide the beautiful peaks from his gaze last night. And now that she felt better, he was making it his number two priority to free those breasts to his gaze. Preferably today.
But number one was making Longineu pay for what he’d done.
Luke scooped some eggs onto her plate and set the skillet down. “Eat,” he ordered. “You’ll need your strength.”
He could practically feel her glare burn into his back as he left the kitchen to check through the camera to confirm it was Michael. Once he saw it really was his brother, he hit the button to bring the elevator to his level.
Luke glanced around the corner and smiled when he verified that Evelyn was eating. Good. She was stubborn, but at least she wasn’t stupid. The ding of the elevator rang through the apartment and the doors glided open. Michael and Lori looked decidedly somber.
Damn it. These were supposed to be some of the happiest days in his brother’s life. A whole new rage snaked through Luke even as he forced a smile. “There’s the happy couple!”
Michael cracked the tiniest grin, but Lori stepped forward and wrapped her arms forcefully around Luke. “We were so worried about you! I had to physically restrain Michael from coming here last night!”
Michael rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t that bad.”
“No, I bet that was just an excuse to break out the handcuffs though.” Luke winked. “I always knew you’d be the bitch in the relationship.”
“Luke!” said Lori, while Michael muttered a curse at him under his breath.
There. At least he’d lightened the mood. Sex was always a good way to change the subject, in his experience. “Come on in. There are eggs and an FBI agent. What more could you want?”
He led them into the kitchen, where Evelyn had stopped eating and stood next to the island. “Hello, Michael, Lori. I hope your trip was nice.”
“It was.” Michael leaned against the counter on the other side of the island. “I heard you had a party at your place without us.”
Evelyn’s eyes went wide. “Luke and I were over there for training purposes only!”
“Umm...” muttered Lori. “I think he was talking about the guy who tried to kill you.”
“Oh.” A blush crept up Evelyn’s cheeks. “The murder kind of party.”
Luke turned away to pour himself some coffee as he tried to suppress a laugh.
“So what’s the plan?” asked Michael, never one to mince words. No wonder Evelyn liked him more than Luke.
“Well, we’ve obviously lost the element of surprise. But not everything is lost. Based off the information Lori was able to give us from her uncle’s files and computer, we have more leads than ever. Also we have a full set of prints from the gun we recovered last night, along with some fresh DNA. As soon as we find him, we have enough to put him away for decades. So if we find him, it won’t be hard to cut a deal. Like I’ve been saying, all we need is one good witness and some computer files and we’ll have a case.”
“And what do we need to do to make that happen?” asked Luke.
Evelyn ran a hand through her damp hair. “Well, that’s the easy part. You don’t have to do anything. I’m here on protective duty for the time being until we can find someone more qualified. Your family has been a great asset to us, and we intend to make sure that none of this backlash hits you.”
Luke slammed his hands on the counter. “Like hell! You’re not kicking us out.”
“I’m not kicking you out. That would imply this was your investigation to begin with. But as soon as we know you’re not targets for Longineu, your business with the FBI will be over.”
And Luke’s relationship with Evelyn. His breath caught in his throat as he kept himself from banging on the counter again.
“This is good news,” said Michael somberly from behind him. “We’ve done our part. Now let the FBI do the rest.”
Luke glared over his shoulder at his brother, but his expression softened when he noticed Lori staring intently at the marble tile on the floor. No wonder Michael was so happy to be done with this. Lori had been put through the wringer already, between her uncle being murdered and their former contact within Thirteen Stars trying to kill her. “Do you think the two of you can go out of town again? I know you just got back, but it’s probably safer...”
“I can work from anywhere with Internet.” Michael looked questioningly at Lori.
“I’m almost out of vacation time, but I can see if I can get an unpaid leave. My new bosses don’t know about everything, but I told them Ken tried to kill me. I’m sure that if I tell them some of his associates might be coming after me, they’ll understand.”
Michael met Luke’s gaze and the brothers exchanged a knowing glance. Luke knew that one way or another, Michael would get Lori out of town. And if she ever needed a job, DevX Tech would welcome her back, even if she didn’t want to be known as the employee sleeping with the owner of the company. Hell, if she ended up back at DevX, that would almost make the whole thing worth it. It was damn hard to find people who knew computers as well as Lori did.
“Grayson had a house in the Rockies that went to my mother,” said Lori. “Michael and I can hole up there for a week at least. Mom would probably appreciate us taking a look at the place and making sure it’s in good shape.”
Evelyn nodded. “That would be great. Make sure you tell as few people as possible where you’re going. We’re thinking that an agent of ours might’ve told the Thirteen Stars who I was, so don’t trust any agent who’s not me, understand?”
Michael narrowed his eyes. “I’m not sure who to be more afraid of—Longineu or your people.”
Luke turned and stood between Evelyn and Michael. “Hey. Evelyn has been working her ass off to finish this investigation. This isn’t her fault.”
Michael and Lori exchanged a quick glance. “Well, that’s a switch,” muttered Michael.
Luke clenched his jaw. The last Michael had seen, Luke and Evelyn were barely on speaking terms, and Luke wasn’t about to start explaining what changed. Hell, he didn’t even know what changed. So maybe Evelyn wasn’t the ice queen he first thought, and he wasn’t the spoiled little rich boy she’d expected. None of that was Michael’s business for the moment.
“Maybe we should get started on those arrangements.” Lori set a hand on Michael’s arm.
Luke forced himself to calm down and grinned at his brother’s girlfriend. “How did my brother get so lucky to find you?” Really, he didn’t remember the last time his brother had dated anyone, let alone someone who seemed to be able to read his moods as well as Lori. Normally he and Michael would just hash it out in a screaming match and then make up over a bottle of Scotch later. But since Lori had been around, there hadn’t been any screaming at all. “You need to marry this girl before she realizes she’s too good for you.”
A red blush crept up Lori’s neck and Evelyn let out a laugh from behind Luke. “
You two did not elope!”
“No!” Lori emphatically shook her head.
“Not yet,” clarified Michael.
Luke glanced between the now incredibly guilty-looking couple. “What’s going on?”
Lori looked back to the ground and Michael set an arm over her shoulders. “We’ve just been...talking,” he said.
“Talking about eloping,” clarified Luke. “You didn’t think this was important enough to bring up?”
“There wasn’t a good time,” said Lori. “I told him to call you but every time we started talking about marriage, we’d get...distracted.”
Evelyn made a sudden choking noise and Luke looked back to see her holding a hand over her mouth. “Sorry,” she choked out through her obvious laughter. “I just inhaled orange juice. You all are ridiculous.”
Luke shook his head at her and turned back to his brother. “Do what you want, but I need to be there, understand? And Emma, too. If she doesn’t kill you, she’ll sic her guard dog of a boyfriend on you.”
“Unless they’re going to get married without you too,” said Evelyn, completely unhelpfully from behind him.
Lori held up her hands. “We understand! No big decisions without you.”
“Damned right,” he muttered.
“Control freak,” said Evelyn under her breath.
Luke narrowed his eyes at her. “I heard that.”
“I meant for you to,” she said with another serene smile as she drank some more of her juice.
“Umm...” said Lori, interrupting their moment. “We should probably get headed out if you really think this guy, Longineus—”
“Longineu,” said Evelyn and Luke at the same time.
“Longineu,” clarified Lori, “is coming after us.”
Evelyn nodded. “I can’t say for sure, but better safe than sorry.”
Michael pushed away from the counter and led Lori back to the door. “I’ll call Emma and make sure she knows about the changes in the situation.”
“And I’ll update Jace,” said Evelyn.
Luke wasn’t Jace’s biggest fan, but damn if it didn’t make him feel better to know that the former SEAL was looking out for his little cousin.
He finished up good-byes with Michael and Lori, and in the next few moments, he was alone with Evelyn again. She turned back and padded to the kitchen, where she started to scoop out another serving of eggs. A rush of pride filled him. She might not like him all that much, but she liked his cooking. Ladies couldn’t resist the added cheese.
“So how exactly do you know Jace?” Luke sat on the stool next to hers.
“You read my file. Shouldn’t you know everything about me?”
“Funny thing about your file. Now, I have contacts. Lots of contacts really high up in the Department of Defense. Yet no one could get me a file that didn’t have your military record redacted.”
“At least there’s still some privacy in government.” She winked. “And I think the fact that it’s redacted and you know I worked with Jace should tell you everything you need to know about my military time.”
“Yes, but—”
“And it should tell you not to ask questions that I can’t answer.”
He nodded in defeat. “Fine. No more questions about your terrifying past.”
“Awww,” she said condescendingly as she sat down next to him. “You’re safe with me. Don’t worry.”
He rolled his eyes at her teasing. “You must be really pissed then.”
“I’m normally pissed about something. Care to be more specific?”
“The guy in your apartment last night. He got the jump on you. That’s never happened to you, has it?”
“Oh, it’s happened. Just not often. And yes, I’m pissed. The son of a bitch pepper sprayed me. I had him and he took a coward’s way out.”
“I didn’t realize pepper spray was for cowards.”
“I almost had him.”
“You’ll get him,” promised Luke. “I’ll throw all my resources behind the search. We’ll bring this guy down and Longineu in the process.”
“No. You’ll keep your head down and out of the way. You do your job of wining and dining all the big-time clients of DevX and I will do the criminal catching, okay?”
“Technically, our biggest contract is with the government. So, me helping you catch Longineu would be a good way of keeping ourselves in the FBI’s good graces.”
Evelyn rubbed her temples. “I keep forgetting how much money we throw at you. Are my tax dollars paying for this place?” She motioned around her at the lavish apartment.
“Maybe for the bathroom.” He winked. “The FBI actually doesn’t use our software. The Pentagon and a few branches of the Army do, and that’s a pretty damn big chunk of people. Keeps us on our toes.”
She tilted her orange juice glass toward him. “Well, thank you for keeping our country safe from behind a computer screen.”
“And thank you for keeping our country safe from behind a gun.” He set a hand on her knee. He didn’t know why he did it. Touching her just seemed natural. Right.
And for some reason, Evelyn didn’t remove his hand. She glanced down where he touched her bare leg exposed by the pajama shorts. His fingers weren’t too high on her thigh and there was nothing overtly sexual about the touch.
But somehow everything he did around Evelyn turned sexual. Every look she gave, every time she laughed at one of his jokes—which was rather difficult considering she was a tougher critic than most of the people around him—it was like an electrical charge would fill the room.
It had always been that way, now that he thought about it. Somehow they’d put all that energy into hating each other before. But now that he’d spent more time with her, it was clear that what he thought was a mutual hatred before was actually just a really, really intense chemistry. A chemistry he had never experienced before.
And Luke had thought he was an expert on chemistry.
“Are you planning on getting out of town too?” she asked, still not removing his hand.
“I think that would be best,” he said carefully. “With my FBI escort, of course.”
“Of course.” She rolled her eyes. “So where are we going?”
“I don’t want to go too far. I have a place in the Hamptons. It’s off-season right now, but we can still escape there for a few days. I can have Cali reschedule all my meetings that need to be in person and call into the rest.”
“Sounds good. I have my boss looking into who at the FBI gave Longineu my information. He’s discreetly following up on a few leads.”
“Any ideas?”
“One. I don’t know many people at the New York Bureau, but there was one woman who seemed to go out of her way to make me comfortable. I’m starting to wonder if maybe it wasn’t my charming personality that won her over.” She pulled her knee out from under his hand, and he could see the tension creep into her shoulders.
“It might not be her.” Luke had no idea what to say in a case like this, but it was obvious that Evelyn didn’t want this woman to be the one giving information to Longineu.
“We’ll know for sure when we pull her bank records. Back in Texas, this was my job, you know. Sniffing out dirty cops. For some stupid reason, I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with it here. That I could let my guard down. Should’ve remembered that corruption isn’t solely around the Mexican border.”
“And yet you still want to go back?” asked Luke.
“At least there I know the rules. Rich bad, poor good.”
“Really?”
“Only the bribed cops are the ones driving the fancy cars. The good ones all get shot.”
“Like you.”
“Like me.”
“Maybe it’s time for a change,” he said. “New York needs good agents.” He didn’t know what he was talking about. If Evelyn hated the city, who was he to ask her to stay? But he didn’t want to think about the idea of her leaving. Especially not after solving this case. B
ecause he wanted Longineu to pay, but he didn’t want him getting what he wanted to coincide with something else he wanted leaving the state.
“I have a confession.” Evelyn turned to face him.
Luke took advantage of their newfound closeness and set both hands on her knees, testing her new boundaries. “I love confessions. Is it sexy?”
She didn’t move his hands. “Not sexy. Stupid. The woman who I’m suspicious of—Gail—before yesterday, I trusted her. And since you’re important to this investigation and Longineu saw me in your office, I had Gail tail you.”
“You were worried about me?”
“Worried about the investigation,” she clarified. “So basically, there’s a chance that I had a dirty agent follow you last night.”
“Oh, that is a juicy confession.” Luke leaned forward. “I’m going to make you pay for that one.”
Evelyn leaned in just the slightest bit, and Luke held his breath. If she kissed him, there would be no stopping this time. He’d carry her right up to his bedroom and not let her leave until he’d made her orgasm at least three times. She’d be screaming his name until her voice was raw...
“You’re not going to go easy on me?”
“Not in the slightest,” he warned.
“Ass,” she said with a smile as she jumped off her stool, breaking the moment.
Shit. Cold shower for one, coming up.
“I have to make some calls. How soon will you be ready to leave?”
“Just have to shower and pack,” he called as she turned the corner out of the kitchen.
“Meet you down here in an hour!”
Just a few more hours, he promised himself. Then they’d be alone for days in his secluded Hamptons cottage. And then he could do whatever he wanted with her.
Evelyn was in over her head. She tapped her pen repeatedly on the notebook in front of her as the scenery outside passed by. Luke was at the wheel of his Pagani Zonda and for some reason felt the need to drive at breakneck speeds down the highway.
Maybe it was a natural New York complex. So much time was spent being in stop-and-go traffic or waiting for a subway—not that Luke ever rode the subway—that when they finally did get out of the city, they needed to get some of their speed demons out.
Devereaux Billionaires Complete Series: Books 1-4 Page 42