Dirty Deeds

by HelenKay Dimon

  All true except for the part Alec didn’t say, so Gaige did. “You’re not him.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  At least on this issue they agreed. Gaige didn’t know what that meant for anything else. “Then what are we talking about?”

  Alec shifted his leg and ran a foot up Gaige’s calf. The move had Gaige’s brain blinking out. He could barely concentrate on a serious topic. Not with Alec naked and curled up beside him.

  “I think we should officially move your clothes downstairs. Put them in there.” Alec pointed at his massive walk-in closet. “It doesn’t make much sense to keep them upstairs if you’re going to be sleeping down here with me all the time.”

  Gaige couldn’t breathe. He didn’t even remember how. “I am?”

  “Every night.” Alec kissed Gaige’s chest. “While we’re at it, we should probably figure out how to get your stuff shipped to Germany.”

  The words…the suggestions. They sounded like promises about a future. But Gaige refused to be wrong about this.

  He struggled to sit up under Alec’s weight but managed. “Wait a second.”

  With a long sigh, Alec sat up, too. He rested his back against the headboard and crossed his arms in front of him. “I like D.C. but I’d prefer to live here for now, if that’s okay.”

  Gaige’s brain kept misfiring. Not that long ago Alec had listened to Caroline’s vile accusations and looked at Gaige as if he believed it all. It had been fleeting, but Gaige saw it. He understood the brief moment of doubt, but that didn’t make the slicing pain of it any less sharp.

  Gaige picked his words carefully. “Are you asking me to move in with you?”

  “I’m trying to order it, because that way I don’t run the risk of you saying no.” Alec tipped his head to the side and smiled at Gaige. “Do you blame me?”

  “Huh.” For a second that was the only response Gaige could come up with. His mind turned but he was so afraid to believe and accept that he held back. For whatever reason, he still needed the words. “I think you should ask.”

  Alec didn’t hesitate. He twisted until he faced Gaige and his hand rested on his lap. “Please move in with me.”

  A whoosh of relief moved through Gaige. He thought back to the loneliness. He’d made promises to himself that if anything like this ever happened to him again he’d beat it off, ignore it and move on. But now with the opportunity sitting right there and his feelings for Alec so real and rushing to the surface, he couldn’t fight it. No part of him wanted to fight it.

  “We’ll need to negotiate some things,” he said.

  Alec’s mouth flattened but the amusement danced in his eyes. “Gaige.”

  “I’m serious.” He slipped his fingers through Alec’s. Used both hands to hold one of Alec’s.

  “Fine. Like what?”

  “I’m going to insist on eating meals. None of this snack-out-of-vending-machines-for-lunch bullshit. Actual food.” Gaige was enjoying himself now. “Sometimes in restaurants. Sometimes here.”

  Alec made a face. “Every day?”

  “Three times a day.”

  “You’re obsessed with food.”

  Gaige ignored that and moved on to the next issue. “And we need a privacy screen. Maybe window shades.”

  Because he planned to do wild things to Alec. The man needed to wear less at home. Maybe perform a little striptease now and then. Gaige sensed Alec might need more privacy for that.

  “Those are only necessary if we’re in this bed together.”

  Since that was going to happen, Gaige moved on. “Wait, there’s more.”

  Alec rolled his eyes. “Go ahead.”

  This one was serious and a bit uncomfortable. It struck right at his ego and no matter how much he wanted Alec—wanted this—he couldn’t ignore it. “I don’t actually have a job right now. You just need to know you’re taking on a guy who freelances, stays up to stupid hours and sometimes—not always, but sometimes—does things others might not consider legal.”

  “That’s how people describe me.”

  Gaige knew if anyone understood walking the line to get things done it was Alec Drummond. “True.”

  “And I can give you a job.”

  “Nope.” Gaige barked out the rejection. He didn’t mean to say it that fast or that loud but he had to make his point. This was too important for Alec to run over him and do it anyway. “We’re equals in this thing, Alec. I mean, I’m not a billionaire and thank God you don’t have a mortgage I need to chip in on, but I can find work.”

  “I’m not worried about you living off me or taking advantage of me.” Alec sat straighter now. “You know that, right?”

  “This is about what I need.” Gaige waited until Alec nodded to keep going. “The way I figure it, Seth and some other people owe me.”

  Alec started shaking his head before Gaige even finished the sentence. “I don’t want you getting sucked into Seth’s life or owing him anything now that you’re finally free of him.”

  “Thanks to your threats.” Gaige knew about that. Seth had told him. Alec had skirted around the issue, but Gaige was grateful for the help. He was also done with being Seth’s unpaid labor.

  “No, thanks to you making him a hero on this Svalbard thing,” Alec said. “You solved it and he knows, but now he’s walked in to his superiors and taken the credit.”

  Gaige was going to wave off the compliment but Alec was right. Gaige did play a role, and he might again in the future. Not if Alec was adamantly against it, but maybe. “Well, if the possibility of more work, this time not under the threat of prison, comes up, we’ll talk about it and decide because that’s what couples do.”

  Gaige expected a fight. He got a smile.

  “And that’s what we’ll be.” Alec lifted their joined hands to his mouth and kissed the back of Gaige’s.

  “Yes.”

  Alec lowered their hands again and rested them on his lap. For a second he just sat there, caressing Gaige’s thumb and not saying a word. Then he looked up. “Then you should know something before you agree and hang up the first shirt in the closet.”

  A fresh wave of unease moved through Gaige. Something had Alec looking pale and half ready to vomit. “What’s that?”

  “In about three weeks I’m going to be in love with you.”

  The words hung there for a second before Gaige grabbed on to them. “You’re planning ahead?”

  “I’m just saying I like you. Really, stupidly, can’t-believe-how-much like you.” Alec looked up at the ceiling. When he lowered his head again the color had returned to his cheeks and a new determination pulsed off him. “I can’t imagine not spending time with you every day. I want to come home to you.”

  Gaige felt something well up inside him. Hope, maybe. Love, probably. A definite sensation of feeling lucky to get a second chance. “That’s a bold statement.”

  “Three weeks from now it—this thing between us—will be something more than us living together.” Alec’s voice grew stronger with each word. “It will be something serious. Very serious. Like, that will be the time when I say I love you.”

  Alec’s excitement was contagious. It bounced around the room and grabbed on to Gaige. “But not now.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Now is too early. Three weeks from now makes more sense.”

  Gaige fought off the smile that begged to come out. “I can see that argument.”

  “And?”

  Gaige knew what Alec was asking. They might be dancing around words and facts, but it was clear what they both needed and how much they’d found. “Three weeks from now if you say ‘I love you,’ I’ll say it back.”

  Alec nodded. “Because three weeks is the right time.”

  “Definitely.” Gaige was pretty sure he could say it right now. But if Alec needed time, if he wanted to tell Gaige by not telling him yet, that was fine. More than fine. It was pretty much perfect. It also made Gaige look forward to three weeks from now. “Until then we’re boyfriends.�
��

  “That word.” Alec groaned. “Jesus.”

  Gaige thought that was the perfect reaction. So typically Alec that Gaige almost laughed. “You’ll get used to it.”

  “Probably.”

  Gaige sobered. The idea of loving Alec wiped away all of Gaige’s fears. Made him feel ready to face life again. That meant both of them needed to change and adjust. “The point is we’re in this together. We fight for this.”

  Alec dropped Gaige’s hand and wrapped an arm around his shoulders instead. “With everything we have.”

  “That sounds like a deal, which means we need to figure out what to do for the next three weeks.” Gaige slid the back of his hand down Alec’s chest. “I’m good with staying in this bed.”

  “I’ll need to go to work now and then.”

  More jokes. Alec did that pretty often now.

  “That’s a shame,” Gaige said.

  “Right?”

  Gaige started to slip down on the headboard. Let his back hit the mattress. “But it will be a good three weeks.”

  “After that it will be even better.” Alec moved with Gaige until he lay on his side next to Gaige. Alec leaned down and stopped just as his lips skimmed over Gaige’s. “Are you hungry now?”

  “No.” Gaige laughed because the last thing he was thinking about was food.

  “Good.”

  Author’s Note

  This book is pure fiction but the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is very real. Videos and news articles allowed me to peek inside and take virtual tours…then basically destroy the important structure for this book. I took some liberties on security and a few other things but the biggest deviation from reality came with the people. I have every confidence the good people who run the vault are not trying to contaminate it. That was all my writer-mind’s creation.

  If you’d like information on the very real and very important work the vault does, check out the Crop Trust and learn about food security. I didn’t know I should be scared of what could happen, and a bit in awe of what these experts do, until I visited the organization’s site. After all, there is a reason they call this the Doomsday Vault.

  To Shauna Summers for being a great editor, an excellent foodie date, and for not panicking when I said I wanted to write a romantic suspense book about a seed vault in the middle of nowhere. You really are the greatest.

  BY HELENKAY DIMON

  Mr. and Mr. Smith

  The Talented Mr. Rivers

  Guarding Mr. Fine

  Dirty Deeds

  About the Author

  HELENKAY DIMON spent the years before becoming a romance author as a divorce attorney—not the usual career transition. Now she writes full-time and she’s much happier. The author of more than forty novels, novellas, and short stories that have twice been named Red-Hot Reads and excerpted in Cosmopolitan, she’s on the board of directors of the Romance Writers of America and teaches fiction writing at the University of California, San Diego, and MiraCosta College.

  helenkaydimon.com

  Facebook.com/​HelenKayDimon

  Twitter: @helenkaydimon

  Read on for a sneak peak of the next tantalizing novel from HelenKay Dimon

  Dirty Games

  by HelenKay Dimon

  Available from Loveswept

  Chapter 1

  Justin Miller had reached his limit. He’d been sending messages to his boss in Germany from here in Morocco. The charity, the food convoy, the unscheduled nighttime pickups—something wasn’t right and he needed answers.

  Today was the day for a showdown. Alec Drummond would touch down and come see him. They’d worked together for almost seven years. Alec, the billionaire in charge of an international agricultural business. Him, the guy paid to run the ground operations of the business’s charitable arm.

  He was the one in the field. When things went wrong, when people died, it fell on him. That meant he spent a good portion of the day shouting and issuing orders, which worked for him because ten years in the Army had honed those skills.

  Oliver Jacobsen, his second-in-command, stepped up beside him and joined in staring out the flap of the tent—and makeshift office—set up right at the edge of no-man’s-land, the strip of land between Morocco and the twenty-foot fence complete with barbed wire that separated the country from Ceuta, a Spanish enclave and Spain’s property on the northernmost tip of North Africa.

  The land didn’t even qualify as a political football. Spain claimed it, Europe backed Spain, and Morocco protested often but to no avail. All of that caused enough tension. Add in its prime location—as a gateway into Europe—and the result was a refugee population and crowds of people who deserved food and safe housing unable to get through the gate.

  That’s where Justin and Drummond Charities stepped in. But he couldn’t do his work if someone, possibly someone at Drummond headquarters, was trying to undermine him.

  He saw a black sedan drive up, scattering dirt and rocks on the unpaved road. Justin bit back a curse. The last thing he needed was an annoying billionaire poking around, but this had to be done. The good news was Alec tended to be smart about these things. He traveled without fanfare and blended in. He also didn’t like being summoned, and Justin had basically done that.

  The front passenger-side door opened. A long leg encased in olive cargo utility pants appeared first, then the rest of him. No suit.

  So far so good.

  Justin’s eyes traveled up to a trim waist over an impressively flat stomach for a guy who sat at a desk all day and…fuck. Justin froze. It had to be eighty degrees outside, and every muscle tightened to the point of snapping.

  This wasn’t Alec. The guy hadn’t even turned around yet and Justin could tell. The light brown hair and broad shoulders. The high, perfect ass that practical pants couldn’t hide. He shifted and turned, and that smile came into view. The one with the dimple Justin couldn’t see from this distance but knew was there.

  Six foot, two inches of pure, walking sex. Big brown eyes and perfect face. Justin didn’t have to search his mind for the memory. Finn Drummond occupied a regular space there, no matter how hard Justin tried to shake the vision free.

  Then he moved. With each step his brown boots crunched against the gravel path. He might be the youngest brother in a family of overachievers, but determination and self-confidence pulsed off him. Yeah, he knew his place in the world. At the top of the food chain.

  Justin decided to fall back on his general hatred of entitlement. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “What’s wrong?” Oliver asked, doing nothing to lower his voice or whisper in that polite British accent of his.

  “The wrong Drummond brother.” The right one in so many other ways. The one Justin once fantasized about. Not as much recently, but nonstop a few years back. The wrong one because this guy should have had off-limits tattooed on his forehead.

  This amounted to a big problem. He’d been prepared to talk the situation out with Alec. To reason and present evidence that shipments weren’t getting here as promised and expected. Alec appreciated people who were blunt and prepared. Justin had no idea how to deal with Finn.

  He waited until Finn stopped in front of him. When Finn started to say something, Justin jumped in. “You?”

  His smile didn’t waiver but he did turn to Oliver. “Salaam.”

  “You speak Arabic?” Oliver sounded more than a little surprised at the fact.

  Finn nodded in greeting to some of the men and women bustling around him. “Being multilingual is a requirement of the job, though I admit region-specific Berber languages are taking longer for me to pick up.”

  There was that fucking smile again. It made Justin want to punch him.

  Oliver nodded. “Impressive.”

  No way was Justin admitting even that much. “Not really.”

  “I agree. It’s the least I can do to show respect.” Finn spared Justin a glance, then held out his hand to Oliver. “Finn Drummond.”

  �
��Oliver Jacobsen.”

  The smiles, the greetings…Justin hated all of it. Seeing his usually hardworking staff and volunteers roaming around carrying what looked like empty boxes and pretending to work pissed him off. He understood being curious about the big boss, the billionaire who could afford to fly in for one day for a meeting, but this was not the big boss.

  Without another word, Justin turned and walked into the tent. He didn’t stop until he stood on his side of his desk. “I call with a serious problem and the company sends me the baby brother in response?”

  Finn sighed. “I see you haven’t changed much in the years since we first met.”

  “Still working my ass off for you.” Justin gestured at the stacks of paperwork covering his desktop.

  “Still a bit of a dick, too.”

  Oliver laughed. “So, you do know Justin.”

  “Please, continue being an asshole.” Finn crossed his arms over his chest as his voice rang out clear and deep. “Don’t let me stop you.”

  The sure way the guy moved mesmerized Justin. No shifting or gawking. He somehow blended in with the dirt and dust, never showing a hint of worry about the potential for violence all around him.

  Grabbing him could result in big money for kidnappers, yet he didn’t have a cadre of guards. He didn’t blow in with an air of wealth. Didn’t issue orders. No, he stood there all tall and lean and hot.

  Justin needed him to leave. The tent. The country. Preferably, the continent.

  “Look, I’m sure you mean well, but this is a real problem that requires a measure of confidentiality and some tact, a great deal of resources and someone with…” He made the mistake of letting his gaze travel all over Finn, taking in every muscle outlined by his navy shirt. The hint of strength in his long fingers, and that practical black-band watch on his wrist. “Let’s call it leadership qualities.”