I’ve been doing well with money, and I have almost enough saved up now for a deposit and a good few months’ rent. I know that Livvy said that I can stay with her for as long as I like, but I want to be able to get my own space. I want to be able to say that I did something for myself.
Once we’re back at the house, we make a start on all of the food, not stopping until everyone starts to arrive.
Livvy is practically bouncing around on the patio, waiting for her boyfriend, James, to get here. Only Mal and Cal have met him, and I think that part of the reason Seb and West are coming today is so that they can size him up.
Although I don’t know why: how much harm can a seventy-five-year-old man do?
“He’s here!” she shouts, walking as fast as she can to the door. My gaze turns toward Seb and West and we all silently say the same thing with our eyes.
Livvy’s laughter wraps around us all as she comes back through the kitchen and out onto the patio, her arm in the crook of James’.
“James,” she says, her eyes shining bright. “This here is Lexi. My jailbird.”
“Hi, Lexi.” He nods at me, a soft smile on his face.
“And these two rascals are my grandsons: Sebastian and West.”
“It’s nice to meet you.” He steps forward, shaking both of their hands and then stepping back to Livvy.
“And of course, you know Mal and Cal.”
“I do.” He smiles and looks back at Livvy, their gazes locked.
It’s almost too much to watch so I laugh nervously and stand. “I think I can smell the steaks.”
We all move our eyes from them and as I walk over to the grill, I feel Seb and West at my back.
“We need a background check,” West says to Seb.
“Yeah, I think we do,” Seb answers, moving his blue eyes to me. “What do you think, Lex?”
“Huh?” I point at my chest. “Me?”
Lifting up the grill, I turn the steaks over and then close it, smoke wafting around us.
“Yeah, you. You’re a part of this family, are you not?”
“I…” I’m stumped for words. I was sure that Seb hated me; West not so much, but definitely Seb. “Family?”
“Yeah.” He swipes his hand through his blond hair. “You’re family.”
He says it like a statement and I stumble back slightly. “I am?”
“Fuck’s sake, Lex. Just take it, will you?” His eyes narrow and I swallow before widening my eyes and nodding my head. “So? Background check?”
“Evan.”
My head whips toward West at the sound of his name. He can’t know, can he? No one saw us kiss, they weren’t even there.
“Good idea,” Seb answers. “I’ll get him to look into him tonight.”
I straighten the utensils that sit on the side of the grill, trying to act uninterested. “Is he not coming tonight?”
“He’s on a job,” Seb says lightly. “I’ll leave him a coded message.”
He pulls his cell out, starting to type away as I stare at his back, wondering what the hell coded message means.
“I’m confused. What does Evan know about background checks? And why are you both talking like you’re James Bond?”
West smirks. “You have no idea, do you?”
“I wouldn’t be asking if I did.”
West stares at Seb’s back for a beat before he shrugs. “You’ve seen where Evan works and the people he works with. They’re a security firm.” A security firm? “He’s the backbone of it all. He’s the best of the best when it comes to computers and electronics.”
My whole body goes tense at the new information. I knew he had another job apart from the community center, but I thought he trained with the guys or something. Not that he was an expert in digging into people’s backgrounds.
Has he looked into me?
I narrow my eyes on West, about to ask him where he and Seb fit into all of this but Seb interrupts my train of thought. “Don’t even ask.”
“Ask? I didn’t ask anything.”
“Didn’t need to,” he grunts. “I could hear the questions rolling through your mind from here.”
I start to open my mouth, feeling word vomit about to pour out until West steps up beside me.
“So, new family member, when are these steaks gonna be done? I’m starved!” West rubs his stomach and I can’t help but laugh at his antics.
It’s not until he’s sitting back down with Seb at the table that I realize that they’re right: I am a part of this family.
My back straightens as Monty—Kay’s dog—stares at me from the other side of the meeting table. The way he stills his head and pulls his top lip back against his teeth has my fight or flight instincts kicking in. I want nothing more than to run away.
I don’t know what it is about dogs—no, that’s a lie, I do know what it is. My birth mother used to have a German shepherd and she’d let it run wild; she’d also get it to guard the door to the room that she used to shut me in. Every time I would open the door, he’d be there, snarling at me to get back inside.
My hand flutters to my bicep where the scar sits from where he sunk his teeth into the flesh and muscle. I hated that dog, much like I hated its owner.
“Evan?”
My eyes don’t move from Monty’s, and as much as I know he wouldn’t attack me, that doesn’t mean that I trust him. A dog can become wild at any stage, no matter how well trained it is.
“Evan?”
My head whips up and my eyes widen as I settle my gaze on Ty. “Huh?”
He puffs out a breath and shakes his head. “I said… Darrell? Anything new with him.”
I sit up straighter, clicking on my laptop to bring the screen to life. “No, not since the meeting. He gave me the cell phone and now I’m waiting for his call.”
“Did you find anything on the cell?” Dean asks, leaning forward and placing his hands on the table.
My lip quirks up and I move my eyes to him. “It has a tracker in it.”
“Thought as much,” he answers.
Both Luke and Dean followed me to the meeting; having my back in case anything went wrong. I knew it wouldn’t though because I had a feeling that he’d want for me to show him my skills in some way.
“Did you take it out?” Ty asks.
“No.” I shake my head. “I pinged it so that it would be on the other side of town.
Dean smirks and holds his fist out to me. He’s into the tech side of things too; not as much as me, but he’s still into it.
“I think we need to start thinking about protection,” Ty says, running his hand along his jaw.
“Protection?” Kay asks, her eyes widening and then moving to me as her hand unconsciously strokes the top of Monty’s head.
“Yeah. He’s not gonna let you go around without having someone following you.”
I flit my eyes away, knowing that they’ve already been following me, but I haven’t told Ty that yet.
“Dammit, Evan!”
“What?” I ask, my face blank, not showing a single emotion.
“They’re following you, aren’t they?”
I shrug. I’ve been handling it this far, and I know they’re only trying to work out who I am.
“Luke, Dean? You’re on Evan watch, wherever he goes, you go.”
“They haven’t been watching me for the last day or so,” I tell him.
“I don’t give a shit,” he thunders, standing up. He storms across the warehouse and slams the office door closed behind him.
I turn my head slowly back to the table and take in all of their faces. None of them look pleased with me, but it doesn’t matter because I’m not the kind of person that needs other people to protect me.
My car is practically a fort in itself, so there’s no way anyone would be able to get into it if I didn’t want them to.
“Great,” Luke groans. “I’m stuck with him again.” I ignore Luke’s dig: he’s the one who spends the most time with Dean and yet he s
till can’t stand to be around him.
I look down at my wrist—even though I don’t have a watch—and say, “I better get—”
I’m cut off by the sound of my cell ringing out; only it’s not my cell, it’s the one Darrell gave me.
I pick it up gingerly, almost scared to answer it as my mind runs away with thoughts on what he’ll want me to do for him this time.
“Hello?” I say when I’ve pressed the answer call button.
“Evan.” I open my mouth to say yes but he beats me to it. “I’ll message you coordinates, be there in two days, six a.m.”
The line goes dead and I pull the cell away from my ear, frowning at it and watching as a message pops up with coordinates.
“What did he say?” Luke asks, standing up and reading the message from over my shoulder. “Coordinates?”
“Two days, six a.m.”
I take a screenshot of the coordinates and then put them into my laptop, finding out where it is. The circle ring in the middle of the screen shows that it’s loading, and when it finally comes up, I narrow my eyes.
“It’s two hours away.”
Which means I’ll have to get up around four. Not that it’s a problem, I run on little to no sleep anyway. I press print on the directions and close the laptop, standing up and collecting the sheets of paper from the printer before walking out of the warehouse as I tell them, “I have work to do.”
I don’t have work to do, but I need to get inside my safe room and decide what I need to adapt on my car.
I have cameras, recording devices, the whole thing is bulletproof; but one thing I can’t do is fight back. My car is made for defense, not offense. I need to install something—something that will take anyone down that tries to get to me.
I know, I know, I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
My mind is already working on overdrive, figuring out what weapons I can install and how I can put them inside the bodywork so that they can’t be detected.
As soon as I open my cabin door, I lock it behind me and set my laptop down on the desk next to my computer screens.
My eyes wander to the floor where I know my hidden hatch is and I walk over and lean down, pushing my palm into the invisible scanner that lights up when it recognizes my palm.
The sound of several locks unclicking sounds around me and then the four floorboards slide one way as the brushed steel door that sits underneath it slides open, the lights in the safe room flicking on.
I walk down the first ten steps before scanning my palm from the inside, causing the doors to close. My eyes scan the whole area when I’ve made it down the next ten steps.
The whole space is bigger than my cabin, twenty feet underground and lined with steel that’s impossible to get into. I have a long desk set up with more monitors along the wall on the left, a board above it that has several pieces of information pinned to it.
The wall in front of me and to the right is full of weapons: guns, grenades, small rocket launchers, and many, many more. But it’s the last wall that is my favorite.
I walk toward it, typing in the twenty-five-digit code on the pad that sits on the empty wall. The brushed steel slides open, and much like when I first came into the safe room, the lights flick on, illuminating the twenty-by-twenty-foot space. Now, for me, this is heaven.
All of the equipment that I’ve made, adapted, or bought, lives in here. There isn’t anything in here that you can get from mainstream places. Every single item has my stamp on it.
This? This is where the magic happens.
I step inside, collecting several bits that I’ve been working on before closing the door behind me by punching in the access code again.
I set the pieces on the table that sits in the middle of the main room with six white chairs around it. I then collect a couple of rocket launchers off one of the weapon walls and add that to the pile I’ve already made.
I sit down, pulling open the invisible drawer that sits under the table and grab my car blueprint, trying to work out where I can place them.
Up until now, I’ve built my car to protect me, to keep me safe. But now it has to be a weapon in itself too.
I sit behind the main desk in the community center, listening as Evan teaches his self-defense class. I say listening; what I really mean is watching intently.
When he walked in the main door after not being here for nearly two weeks, I didn’t have a clue what to say.
The last time I saw him, he was running away from me after he attacked me with his lips. Not that I didn’t like being attacked by his lips; I liked it… a lot.
It’s been a week since then, and I haven’t seen him once, but as soon as his honey eyes set their sights on me, it was as if we’d only just seen each other yesterday.
He planted a kiss on my cheek and winked, telling me he had to go and set up for his class.
That was a few hours ago, and in that time, I’ve cleaned the whole center, fixed a few last things that were on the list Roy gave me, and now I’m sitting here, staring at the class and willing it to be over so that I can talk to Evan.
I don’t want to be one of those needy girls, but I do need to know where I stand: where we stand. I’d like to think I can do the whole casual kiss thing and be able to flick my hair and be okay with it, but I’m not.
The chatter of the women as they come out of the room has me whipping my head away from the closed door and clearing my throat as I shuffle papers around, acting busy.
I step into the office when the last one leaves, making sure all of the jobs are done. Like I haven’t already checked that several times. Why the hell am I so nervous?
It’s Evan, it’s not some stranger. Though he may as well be, it’s not like I know a whole lot about him. I know where he works, his name, who his parents are, oh, and of course the stories that Seb and West like to tell about their childhood adventures.
The main door closes and I hear footsteps as they head back into the room Evan was just teaching in.
I lean my head against the wall, taking deep breaths and giving myself a pep talk. I need to pull up my big girl panties and walk in there, demanding to know what is going on. I’m not going to be a pushover, I’ll stand my ground and not back down. Yep, that’s what I’m gonna do.
I push up off the wall, my back straight and sheer determination flowing through me as I make my way out of the office and around the front desk.
I take one step into the room, and all of that determination evaporates as I watch Evan pick up the mats—bare-chested. Did you hear what I just said? Bare-chested.
How am I meant to talk to him when I can see all of his muscles out on display, slick with sweat. My eyes widen as they track along his defined pecs and down to his abs and that V. Goddammit, why did he have to have a V?
His head snaps up and I realize I must have made a noise because when he sees me, a smirk spreads across his face and he stands to his full height.
“Erm… Hi?” I lift my hand in an awkward wave, squeezing my thighs together as I try to tell myself to not even go there.
“Hey, Lex.”
I take two steps forward as he steps toward me, coming to a stop a couple of feet away. I’m not ashamed to say that my eyes are still drinking him in like a person dying of thirst. How can he be carrying all of that under his shirts?
My hand lifts as I see a scar on his bicep, but as I’m about to touch it, he stops me by grabbing my wrist and placing a soft kiss there before letting me go.
I breathe deep, taking in his musk scent that is unequivocally Evan before looking up into his eyes and watching the gold swirl, hyperaware of how close his body is to mine.
“So…” I say, biting my bottom lip which gains his attention.
“So…” he replies, tensing one of his pecs. My gaze flits down and back up.
“I haven’t seen you for a while.”
“Yeah.” He smirks, tensing his other pec.
I r
aise a brow. “What are you doing?”
“Me?” He points to his chest again, tensing one pec and then the other.
“Yes, you.” I shake my head but can’t stop the chuckle that breaks free.
“I.” Left pec. “Have.” Right pec. “No idea.” Left then right pec. “What you’re talking about.” Both pecs.
I make a choking sound as I try to hold in my laughter. “That!” I point to his chest. “What are you doing?”
“This?” He tenses his pecs again several times to some invisible beat. “It’s the pec dance.”
“The...” I gasp. “The pec dance?”
He smirks, moving his pecs again before grinning wide at my reaction.
“I’m trying to talk and all of…” I wave my hand at all of his muscles. “Is distracting me.”
I bring my gaze back up to his, seeing the laughter shining in their depths as he steps forward, his pecs no longer dancing.
“Work has been manic.” He takes one last step toward me, his chest now inches from me as his hand grips my waist. “I’ve been dying to see you.”
“You have?” I ask, my voice unsure. “I… I didn’t…”
He tilts his head, spinning us around and walking me backward. “You didn’t what?”
“I thought maybe you… erm…” I swallow as his hand wanders around to my back and slips under the back of my shirt, the pads of his fingers grazing along my skin, making me shiver. “I didn’t think you would want to see me again.” I close my eyes briefly when my back hits the mirrored wall. “That maybe you didn’t mean to kiss me last week.”
“Hmmm.” He dips his head, placing a soft kiss on the side of my neck. “I definitely wanted to kiss you.”
“Then why…” I moan as he trails kisses up my neck and over my jaw. “Why did you run away?”
He doesn’t answer me for several seconds as he continues kissing my neck, eliciting goose bumps to skate across my skin.
“My head was a mess,” he says, pulling away and cupping the side of my neck, his thumb coming up and swiping across my bottom lip. “I shouldn’t be starting anything with you, not with how soon after…” He leaves that hanging in the air, but we both know what he’s saying—that he’s only just gotten out of a relationship. “But there’s something that pulls me to you. Something I can’t deny any longer.”
ReBoot (MAC Security Series Book 4) Page 17